| Home | Gallery | Lenses | KnowHow | Legal Notice | |
|
My copy of the Nikon 50mm 2.0 Pre AI was produced between 1974 and 1977. The lens design goes back to 1964. But the lenses got some coatings in 1972. Even the successor the AI-version had no optical change. All in all Nikon sold more than two million lenses with this design.
|
Clicking on a crop loads the whole image in original size. A tip for Retina display users: Zoom in 1.5x or 2x. Otherwise you are not really in 1:1 mode.
Images are developed from RAW files in Ligtroom 5. All adjustments are Lightroom standard (sharpness: 25/1/25/0). |
Soft wide open as often.
Center and mid improved.
Not bad.
Almost the same. Edge improved a tad.
|
50mm f/2.0 is a typical kit lens, often bought together with the camera. For that the optical quality seems quite good. Center and mid-range is good. The edges don't get to the same sharpness level, but I could live with it. It's not really bad either. This is my opinion as long as I don't compare. When I compare it to the Minolta 50mm 1.4 things look different. The Minolta seems to be always one and a half stop ahead. E.g. the sharpness level of the Nikon at f/5.6 meets the Minolta at f/3.5. |
Of course it's unfair to compare a kit lens f/2.0 to an expensive f/1.4 one. Or at least it was expensive in its days. How would the Nikon f/1.4 or the Minolta f/2.0 fare? Any speculation about that would lead to wrong conclusions. Lenses are very different in many aspects, and neither do I have a copy of them. All I can tell is, regarding resolution and micro contrast, I prefer the Minolta 50mm 1.4. |