Okay, did some quick shots yesterday when it was sunny outside. The shots are all Jpg and handheld, and my camera's sharpening etc is at lowest, so please bear in mind that there are a lot of variables here. But overall, I think I am still very happy with the lens' capabilities.
The first shot below is the comparison of the shot made wide open and at f/5.6, you can see that there is a significant improvement over sharpness and contrast, but since I was handholding it and shooting infinity, so there is a margin of error here.
The small picture on the left hand side is 100% crop of the original. The half-naked, middle aged man in black sunglasses and a chubby lady look clearer in the f/5.6 of course.
If you see from the wide open shot, you can sort of figure out why some people say that this lens has this 'dreamy effect' when wide open, it is less contrast and it gives smooth transition between focused and unfocused area (not shown in the picture). I understand why people love this lens for portrait works, it gives you this 'hazy' effect but still maintaining sharp focused area.
For budget conscious shooter you can just get a 50mm f/1.8 lens and apply a thin layer of vaseline around the lens and you can achieve this effect too.
The next 2 pictures below were also shot wide open, but this time the light was not as harsh as first one and it's not in infinity for landscape, so it's more in line of what people use this camera realistically. As you can see there is plenty of contrast even wide open and sharpness is pretty good too (remember my camera's sharpness is at lowest and these are jpgs)
But as in fast lenses, colour fringing wide open is something you can't really avoid. It still has some fringing, noticeable when you view the image at 100%, but I think it performs better than my 85mm 1.4 wide open (I might be wrong though).
But I think this lens is more designed for indoor or in places with less lighting, because they really shine in those situations. For shooting landscapes during daylight I think Nikon 17-35mm 2.8 is a much better lens for it.
Heck, you can even use the kit lens stopped down for that purpose but this lens is not for landscapes.
But for people, indoor, evening shots, etc.. it's hard to beat this lens. I think it will do great for flower pictures too due to the shallow DOF and smooth transition.
From the samples below you can see that it offers plenty of sharpness and contrast even wide open.
Bokeh wise, It is considerably better compared to other Nikon 50mms of course. But it's not as good as 85mm 1.4 in rendering round point of lights.
Overall the lens delivers what I expect from it, but with the price around 1.5 times of the price of newest Nikon 50mm 1.4 AFS, you really need to want the characteristics of the lens in order to justify one. With 50mm 1.4 AFS you get AFS and newest Nikon lens.
With this, you'll get excellent build quality, very buttery manual focusing, and better bokeh. So you really need to love working with manual focus lens and plan to shoot it mainly around f/1.2 to f/2.8 to justify this one over the newest Nikon.
Next week if I have the time maybe I'll try to do some night shots.
