Nikon 50mm f/1.4 NIKKOR Ai-S Manual Focus Lens

Description

7 straight blades.

Stops down to f/16.

Aperture Ring            top

Yes.

Metal.

Full-stop clicks.

Close Focus            top

1.5 feet.

0.45 meters.

Maximum Reproduction Ratio            top

1:6.8.

Angle of View        top

46° diagonal on FX and 35mm.

31.5° diagonal on small-format DX.

Focal Length        top

50mm.

On a small-format DX camera, this lens makes pictures that see an angle-of-view similar to what a 75mm lens would see on a full-frame camera.

Hard Infinity Focus Stop?            top

Yes.

This is great for astronomy; just turn to the stop and you have fixed laboratory-perfect focus all night.

Focus Scale            top

Yes.

Depth-of-Field Scale            top

Yes, colored lines corresponding to the colored f/stops on the aperture ring.

Infra-Red Focus Index            top

Yes: red dot in depth-of-field scale.

Filter Thread            top

52mm, metal.

Does not rotate.

Size            top

Nikon specifies 1.57″ (40mm) extension from flange (1.99″ or 50.5mm overall) by 2.48″ (63mm) diameter.

Weight            top

8.780 oz. (248.9 g), measured.

Nikon specifies 8.8 oz. (250g).

Hood            top

HR-1 rubber.

HS-9 snap-in metal.

HN-7.

Quality         top

Made in Japan.

Teleconverters            top

TC-200/201 and TC-14A.

Price, USA

About $150 used or $470 new, April 2013.

Performance         top

Intro   Specs   Performance   Compared   Usage   Recommendations   More

Overall

It’s softer from spherical aberration wide-open, and built like a tank for a lifetime of great pictures.

Sharpness

f/1.4: Spherical aberration lowers contrast. A lot of coma in the corners making them quite soft. Falloff.

f/2: Much better. Falloff much less.

f/2.8: Quite good, falloff and coma gone. Sharp all over.

Distortion

It has the typical mild to moderate barrel distortion of all of Nikon’s 50mm f/1.4 manual-focus lenses.

Plug these figures into Photoshop’s lens distortion filter to correct the distortion. These aren’t facts or specifications, they are the results of my research that requires a lot of data collection and computation.

FX and Film

DX

at infinity

+1.4

+0.5