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Nikkor AF-S 50mm f/1.4 G Review: Actually Usable Wide Open

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Posted by Patrick on Feb 1, 2009 in Lenses, Reviews

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Nikon recently updated their f/1.4 50mm prime, and one of the aims of the newer AF-S 50mm f/1.4 G was to improve that wide-open performance. In general, primes work best stopped down and few will bring their full capabilities at their widest aperture. So you get a f/1.4 lens, and you tend to shoot f/1.8 or f/2 because f/1.4 just isn’t as sharp. So how’s that work with the Nikkor AF-S 50mm f/1.4 G? Well the British Journal of Photography reviews the Nikkor AF-S 50mm f/1.4 G and:

Performance at f/1.4 is very slightly soft with a critically sharp ‘core’. Repositioning a centrally located distant target clock-face to each corner in turn, after locking manual focus, showed perfect parallelism and collimation.

Stopping down to f/1.6 cleaned up the slight glow totally, and this minimal 1/3-stop closure of the aperture seems to be enough to give a jump in contrast and sharpness. Further slight such gains were seen at f/1.8 and f/2, and from then on depth-of-field was most responsible for improved crispness to f/8.

-British Journal of Photography

So not a big difference, but typically you wouldn’t even use the 1.4 because the image would be so soft, so for some this will be a critical difference.

The Nikkor AF-S 50mm f/1.4 G is available at B&H Photo.

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