I’ve been thinking about putting
more of my thoughts together on my new Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 AI-S manual focus lens for a couple of weeks already, but I wanted to provide a good number of sample shots along with it. I believe I have enough material now. A collection of photographs taken with this lens can be viewed in the posts tagged with
50mm f/1.2 tag.
The Feel
The first big surprise with this lens to me was its weight. My old Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D lens used to weight 156 grams. This one weights 360. When you take it out of the box you realize right away that you are holding something special.
The lens which was in production since 1981 is still made of all metal — black enamel over black anodized aluminum and stainless steel. All the markings on the lens are engraved and filled with paint. When you look through the lens at wide open you see a lot of glass and very thin lens walls. It’s an illusion caused by optics. It’s not really as thin as it appears.
Focusing ring is rubber covered metal. Each lens has a serial number engraved on the front of the focusing element. Numbers after 400,000 denote lenses produced after 2006. They are still made in Japan.
Manual Focus
This is the fastest lens that Nikon currently makes and the only available version is a manual focus one. There is no auto-focus. This makes it a specialty lens. Majority of people most probably are better of going with the latest 50mm f/1.4G lens or a very good and cheap 50mm f/1.8G or f/1.8D lenses.
I wasn’t sure how manual focus would work out for me as I never had a lens specifically made for focusing manually. I had very little luck focusing my old 50mm f/1.8D lens by hand. This lens’ focusing ring however can’t compare to any of the lenses made for AF. Even my $2,000 Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G lens’ focusing ring feels extremely cheap compared to this retro manual marvel.
The focusing ring movement is very smooth. The ring provides a very pleasant tactile feedback-resistance. When you rotate the ring fully you get a nice distinct ding sound and a dead stop of the ring — no play whatsoever. All this gives you an ability to be very precise and at f/1.2 it means everything.
However the best part for somebody as inexperienced with manual focusing as I am is the fact that D700 light meters and focus confirms through this lens just fine. What that means is that when I get the lens in focus it will show me a green dot on the LCD screen. If it’s not in focus it will show an arrow pointing left or right, telling me which direction to rotate the focusing ring in. And from experience it seems to be pretty accurate.
Having said all that it is close to impossible to use on fast moving targets like kids and animals. Nor Aroshka nor Shublik are photographable with this lens in most situations. Although with a little bit of practice now I do manage to catch Arosha’s eye in focus in time on some occasions. Also one must keep in mind that at minimal focusing distance of 50cm at f/1.2 the depth of field is under 7mm. So even if you do get focus confirmation, but you or your subject moves you will lose focus.
Overall it came out to be much less “scary” than I thought it would be and the lens is very much usable and fairly easy at that. And it will only get better with practice.
Performance, Rendering & Bokeh
The quality of bokeh and general image rendering is a very subjective topic and you should make that determination yourself by looking at the
sample photographs. As for myself — I am pleased with the results.
Alёna was doubting my decision to buy a manual lens, but after looking at the results I can’t tell you how many times she has said that the photographs taken with it are top notch.
As for sharpness of the lens — I did not do any sciencific tests. Just by reaching f/2 lens seems to be alreading performing at its peak. Having said that I will say that I am very happy with the results starting right from f/1.2. A lot, if not majority, of my shots were taken wide open.
The only negative is the amount of purple fringing that the lens is producing wide open. It’s easy to fix in post-production, but some basic proficiency with Photoshop is required. Left uncorrected fringing will surely ruin the shot.
Conclusion
I’m very happy with my purchase. I’ve already taken several great photographs with it that I added to my portfolio. The fact that you have to manually focus the lens makes you think more about the composition which in turn makes you better with the craft of photography, instead of just pointing and shooting.
For most people one of the AF versions of 50mm will work better, but the artistic possibilities that this lens opens the door to are vast.
Article Illustrations
Most of the shots for this article were taken with my old (t)rusty Nikon D70. The LCD shots were taken directly through the viewfinder of D700, hence the “awesomeness” of the quality.
This is another experiment with green beans. I have to say that I still like the simplest salad the most, but one can get tired of the same thing over and over. I mixed together some green beans, zucchini shaved with vegetable peeler, “massaged” kale, fresh cantaloupe, roasted almonds, garlic, olive oil, red wine vinegar, cayenne pepper and some salt. Danya did not care for it, but I enjoyed it — even more, considering how healthy it is!
Trying to pretend that we are not in New York. On a marsh trail at 
Trying a new place in Bayridge with Maruks and Misha at 
On a hike with papa, Alёna and Mike at 
Standing in line to board Norwegian Gem at 
June 2, 2011 @ 09:07
Regarding TV Series – try to watch “Breaking Bad” and “Shield”. I liked them, especially first one.
June 2, 2011 @ 11:27
Are they both over? We can’t watch shows that are still running. We end up watching everything that’s out, then by the time a new season comes out we don’t remember anything.
June 2, 2011 @ 11:36
“The Shield” is over (7 seasons), “Breaking Bad” is not. Btw, “Mad Men” is not over as well – 5th season will be shot in 2012.
I have the same problem with completely forgetting previous seasons by the time new season is available. That’s why I prefer series where seasons are loosely connected – like 24 for example. You can start watching it from any season.
June 2, 2011 @ 11:57
I read about “Breaking Bad” somewhere — people seem to like it. I think we’ll probably wait a bit on this one though for the reason that Danya has mentioned.
Yeah, we know that the “Mad Men” is not over. I guess, we did not know what else to watch, so we decided to give it a try regardless.
June 2, 2011 @ 12:09
Two more TV series that I liked a lot are “The Big Bang Theory” and “The Office”. They are both sitcoms so there is no problem with forgetting previous seasons
June 2, 2011 @ 12:59
I tried watching The Office and I just don’t get it.
June 3, 2011 @ 10:57
I tried watching “The Wire”, but couldn’t get past second episode. Alan says it’s one of the best series out there, but apparently you only realize how good the show is after you finish watching all the seasons.
We also started watching Mad Men, only about 3 episodes so far. We are both confused as to whether we like it or not.
June 3, 2011 @ 12:50
Like Alёna said, even though watching The Wire isn’t bad I wouldn’t want to watch it again, or buy it for our video collection. Just not exactly our type of thing.
And funny you should say that about Mad Men. We are watching 2nd season now and have pretty much the same feeling still.
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