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THE DIGITAL SOAPBOX OF ANDY CLEAVENGER

50mm F1.4 AF D

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This is one of the fastest AF lenses that Nikon makes today. The other is the 85mm 1.4, which I do not own, and probably never will. I think I ran across an old manual focus lens once that was an f1.2, but I forget what focal length it was, and I haven’t seen one since. Anyway, the depth of field on this lens at 1.4 is so shallow that you can’t even see how shallow it is in your viewfinder. It is incredibly easy to miss your focus at that aperture.

I don’t usually go on and on about how sharp a lens is, but this is one of my sharpest lenses. Of course, like nearly all Nikkors, it needs to be stopped down at least two stops from wide open to get the sharpest image it’s capable of.

Just a note about sharpness: A lot of people make a really big deal about how sharp or not sharp lenses are. They’ll go back and forth flaming at each other proclaiming the superiority of one lens over another, or one brand over another, all the while forgetting that sharpness is just one element that contributes to a photograph. And sometimes it’s not even the slightest bit important in making a photograph great (see the Holga 120N page for proof of this). If the sharpness of your photograph is the only thing it has going for it you’re going to bore me to tears. I’m far more interested in the lighting, the composition, the drama... the story. So you will never catch me photographing a test chart or putting up side-by-side comparisons here. Unless a lens is one extreme or the other, I couldn’t really care less, and won’t mention it.

Moving on...

I like the 50mm focal length a lot when used on a digital body with a 1.5X crop. It becomes roughly equivalent to a 75mm lens, which is a good length for getting nice intimate shots without taking you out of the action the way a long zoom would. I haven’t used this lens on a film body that I can recall, so I’m not sure if I would find it just as useful or if it would prove to be too wide for my taste at that point...  maybe I’ll try that over the holidays this year.

In the next year or so I plan to buy a lineup of lenses strictly for my personal use. I’m thinking that I will probably opt for the cheaper 1.8 version of this lens. From everything I’ve read, the optical performance is nearly identical to the 1.4 version, so no loss there. And I don’t really need the slightly wider aperture of the more expensive model just for walking around on the street. 1.8 is plenty fast.