• Members 360 posts
    June 5, 2023, 4:33 p.m.

    The lens could be called Nikkon´s Z "Nifty fifty of the Canon".

    Design/quality: This is "el cheapo" piece, or at least it feels a bit that way on every step, in few aspects. Thin plastic feel, light weight, plastic bayonet. For what it is, it should not exactly offend anyone, though metal bayonet would be much appreciated. Speed of f/2 is nice though, compared to many f/2.8 offerings. That one stop can help a lot at times. Focus ring works smoothly, and about as expected. While focusing by wire, it is little less than ideal for manual focusing, it doesn´t cause any real issues though. At least quiet focusing and internal focusing mechanism adds somewhat to the feel of quality, so I would certainly classify it above the nifty of Canon.

    Image quality: Given the reviews, I purchased it immediately with my Nikon Z (jumped from Canon), and I had high expectations. These were not exactly met though. For my eye and taste, it draws quite weirdly, mushy, fuzzy, and more so wide open and close up, which is "outright tragedy" by today´s standards, although still somewhat usable and not a real world tragedy. Maybe I am overreacting, but something feels off. That is quite a dissapointment, and I am thinking already, what to do about it (try different piece, that is unlikely to be better, or just swich for something else). This lens can provide very nice and sharp images, but rather from around f/4-f/5.6 and not close up. Little AF tuning actually helped, as the lens clearly front focused a bit.

    Hopefully someone with experience can chime in and point me to the direction, reaffirm, or whatever. Otherwise this might end as less than positive review. I would be happier if it wasn´t so. Test images to describe what´s up, will be added.

    //Here is closeup box shot with some text on it. Left crop is f/2.0, right one is f/5.6. Same camera and Lightroom settings (except for exposure time)

    Comparison02.jpg

    I have tried enabling and disabling IBIS, I have tried different shutter speeds, I have tried manual focus, I have tried shooting from hands, from table and from quite sturdy tripod, and I have tried lens tuning.
    While I got slightly different results on each setup, the general issue persists rather strongly, without much change.
    It is rather hazy, and closer to f/2 and closer to closeup (less than 1m) the worse it is.

    Comparison02.jpg

    JPG, 353.7 KB, uploaded by CrashpcCZ on June 5, 2023.