Nikon F-Mount 50mm lens comparisons by Cary Jordan:
There are many “normal” 50mm prime lenses available for the Nikon F-mount. So many, that it can be difficult deciding for yourself which lens is right for you. Differences in performance as well as price are abound. Our goal in this article is to compare the 7 most common 50mm prime lenses from Nikon and well known third-party manufacturers.
These lenses are all excellent in their own rights. In most cases, it really comes down to how you’ll employ the lens. What’s important to a landscape photographer is not usually important to a portrait photographer, unless the lens will serve as a multi-purpose lens. Each photographer will have different needs and thus be looking for different qualities in a 50mm prime. By the end of this article, we hope you’ll have a better understanding of what each of these lenses has to offer and which is the best value for you.
Because each lens was designed to be used on FX DSLR and 35mm film SLR bodies, this test was performed on a 12.1MP Nikon D700 FX (Full-Frame) DSLR camera. This is to show each lens’ true performance, corner-to-corner. If you’re shooting on a DX (APS-C) body, you’re using the “sweet spot” of the lens. The DX sensor crop will show less vignette and more corner sharpness due to said sensor crop of the image circle. Note for DX users: Due to a 1.5x crop of the image circle, a 50mm lens is actually 75mm in FX equivalency. This means a 50mm lens is no longer a “normal” prime and is now in the short telephoto range.
To keep article size as small as possible and easy to follow, we will only go over basic qualities in the “Size/Ergonomics/Build Quality” category. Focusing instead on the performance aspects of each lens. We’ll close the article with a summary and rating of the lenses according to their performance, as well as offer our own favorite picks.
Lenses tested:
