Introduction

When I shoot people, my objective is to make them look great. With the advent of high resolution camera sensors, we have to be very careful these days otherwise we easily obtain nasty 'digital’ looking images with too much sharpness, and too much post processing going on. I am influenced by paintings by Gainsborough - The Blue Boy, the work of Sir Joshua Reynolds and the influence that had to bring to life the fantastic Barry Lyndon.

Lenses are obviously a huge part of how we have the camera interpret the scene, after all the obvious givens such a light, subject, decisive moment. I found an affinity that never left me after picking up a mixture of 50mm primes from the Nikon D700 days, ala 2010. I have been shooting with these little lenses for well over a decade now on my DSRLS (yes I still use DSLRS too, despite owning Z equipment now). Many will say that optically they have been superseded (and yes, for certain applications, such as astrophotography, I would not specifically buy them for*). However, for portraiture, and the photography of “things” / “stuff” I find them very satisfying to use. For me, a 50mm is a lens that should be nice and light, and ready to go anywhere. I am not going to tell you that these lenses are optically the utter 'la crème de la crème, in terms of numbers and specifications, or lens MTF resolution, however they are able to produce beautiful images with a bit of practice, they are small, light and some quite inexpensive options for shooters wishing specific renderings that work well on Nikon’s DSLR F-Mount range of cameras.

The 50mm f/1.4G - Good for low light, and keeps bokeh balls round even stopped down. This was shot at f/1.4.

When shooting portraiture, generally I do not prioritise ultra sharp lenses. I find most, modern primes to be sufficiently sharp for this task, so this really is a lower priority on my list. I need to reiterate this basic point whilst we are talking about image sharpness, for me, even babies with perfect skin look better with a slightly softer lens that produces some level of spherical aberration at it’s widest apertures, essentially, to be shot with a lens that is tuned to being used for portraits. Spherical aberration is a biggie when it comes to portrait-tuned lenses; over correcting it in a lens design tends to affect bokeh and the focal plane transition. This aberration goes away as we stop down, so lenses that have high correction tend to be very sharp from their widest aperture, and conversely lenses that are a bit softer and have a glow wide open generally are under corrected. With the 50mm lenses that I own: I use them on both full and crop framed sensor cameras, giving either 50mm or 85mm equivalent views respectively.

It is important to consider, that your shooting likes and wants may not align with mine or the next photographer. I will admit to using a very mixed bag when it comes to lenses across different genres, and I have that luxury. At night, for my astro work, I would be using a completely different lens, compared to during the day shooting like I am in this blog post. This also might go for landscape too, however I have successfully used all of these 50’s for landscape shooting also. You might also prefer a very sharp portrait lens. There are situations where I have reached for my 35/1.4 Sigma Art lens because I wanted a bit more sharpness on my subject at the focal plane, and was less bothered about the resulting bokeh. I will not say the bokeh of the sigma is bad either, again it is different and altogether a subjective quality. I have shot plenty of what I feel are good pictures with the 35 1.4 art lens.

50mm is not always thought of a portrait focal length, however there is a lot one can do with a 50mm lens such as these, and it of course depends on your subject’s overall size. 50mm lenses spend more time on my camera bodies than any other prime lens. I think it is important to know the rules, then be able to break them when needed. (A portrait can be taken with any focal length). I like to have options (I’ll explain why soon), which is why I have two 50mm primes (I actually had three at one point). I currently have the 50mm 1.4G and the 50mm 1.8D. These are slightly different lenses which play differently. All of the Nikon 50mm lenses vignette quite a lot wide open, however this is a characteristic for this type of photography that I like to stamp on my images, with the caveat that it is totally adjustable later on anyway. The 1.4G has smoother bokeh, and is slightly more to the gaussian blur end of the spectrum in terms of backgrounds it can produce especially when at close range, alas:

Note that, with this lens, it can produce quite a smooth background bokeh in the right circumstances. For low light portraiture, I feel it works better than the 50mm 1.4D and 1.8D, and I very much like what it does in terms of focal plane transitions, here is a good example showing some good bokeh and beautiful focal plane transitions:

Now let me show you the much older 50mm 1.8D prime, which produces a much rougher background bokeh most of the time, but has absolutely zero distortion and produces, in the right circumstances, a great 3D effect. This can occur quite convincingly to the eye, if all the scene elements line up accordingly, the basics - like light, camera to subject distance, subject to background distance, the scene geometry etc. This is a topic I might explore in greater detail in time.

Notice the less smooth, (rougher) background blur here. I am closer, different light, different day, different aperture, different lens. however despite all that I can tell you from years of shooting with these lenses that this 1.8D just draws differently. I like this look. During the day, I really like using the 1.8D lens, because it imprints something unique onto the picture. In fact, as you probably guessed, this is what this blog post is about - all three of these lenses draw very differently and it all depends what you want from your picture. Here is the smoother 1.4G again:

But what about the f/1.4D you ask? Well I used this lens for a good while about six years ago. This lens is similar to the 1.4G, but it has a softer look wide open, with much less contrast which adds to this. Again, not a bad thing - these things must align with your shooting style and objectives for your picture. The 1.4G improved upon wide open sharpness and contrast in it’s design, and definitely has less chromatic aberration. It also benefits from some coating magic, that the older 1.4D does not have. This means that there is a distinct glow and loss of contrast when using it wide open due to it having bags of spherical aberration. However, as I said it is not necessarily bad news, and it can produce quite a painterly image, notice the glow effect to the subject’s face because I have used it wide open at f/1.4:

The 50mm f/1.4G is the clear leader out of these 50mm lenses in terms of focus speed. It is blisteringly fast, another huge plus point to owning one. There are of course, other differences. Both of the older D designs are a little more blue shifted in their final outputs. The 1.4G lens is a hint shifted towards a yellower output in the resulting RAW. The D lenses both have much sharper sunstars. So if you want to use the lens at night stopped down on city lights, or during the day to make beautiful spikes off of hard point light sources, these do much better. The older D lenses, definitely have more out of control aberrations going on wide open, most which improve on stopped down. In a very real sense, you get a dual personality lens, as long as you like the wide open look, stopping down quickly takes out the glow, and brings in super levels of sharpness right up until f/8. I rarely use this aperture, unless doing school studio style portraits though. Generally the biggest difference I see is, the 1.4G is sharper wide open, and more contrasty than the 1.4D, however it is soft compared to modern primes. Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing. I’ve been creating with these lenses for years and I can tell you people like how they look in the pictures, and I don’t have to spend days prepping them with blur filters etc. People want to look like movie stars, they don’t want to see all the lines on their face. The flattest, least distorting is the 50mm 1.8D which has basically zero, which has it’s applications on it’s own. I find the 1.8D is sharp very close to maximum aperture and I use it during the day a great deal, even wide open as I love the look it produces.

Both the D lenses produce a more pronounced flare pattern. Sometimes it can be a red / yellow defined area, sometimes a ring around the image (I actually oddly like it sometimes) but we really have to expose the front element to serious levels of off axis sunlight to get this:

The 1.4G lens flares less than both D lenses, but it can still occur with this lens too. None of this bothers me too much - I like a bit of flare in my images sometimes, depending on the scene and subject it can be okay to leave in. In the above image, it would involve some complex photoshop work to remove.

Here is a picture with the 50mm 1.4D at night. It produces a softer, more painterly feel to the final result. You can see, the bokeh in the background is rougher than the new G lens at night, which I showed above and does outline the bokeh balls a little (called onion bokeh, or soap bubble bokeh):

Here is the 1.4D with a stopped down aperture on a bright spring day. Notice the backgrounds I am showing with the 1.4D compared to the newer G. The G is smoother, but I still like the effect of the older D lens. Sometimes I feel this rougher background helps to trick a type of 3D pop effect to the resulting image:

Here is another using the 50mm f/1.4D prime lens, now in a wedding scenario. Notice that the background bokeh is definitely a little more rough. Some may not like this: we are tuned to prefer gaussian blur type bokeh in the photography community. However, I think it is very characterful, and helps produce, when other supporting elements are within the frame, a 3D effect to the resulting picture:

Here is the slightly smoother 1.4G. I have tried to show a similar subject to background / lighting situation here. You can see that the 1.4G has smoother backgrounds, generally speaking. It does have a nice focus transition too. Closer up, the 1.4G has smoother, more modern style bokeh.

All the nikon 50’s (and mostly all fast lenses), produce a bit of cats eye bokeh, especially with close up subjects to varying degrees. I quite like the overall look most of the 1.4G lens for pictures such as these. I will add some more low light ambient shots like this later when I have time to dig through the archive more:

Which Lens?

There are some obvious differentiators here. All of the D lenses without focus motors are noiser than their more silent G counterparts when shooting. The first difference can be price and size. If money matters, the 50mm 1.8D can be had for a song. Easily the cheapest. It is quite well built considering, and even has a metal mount and a sort of in built lens hood that works well. This lens is also easily the smallest nikon 50, and can easily fit in the pocket. The 50mm 1.8D is very sharp stopped down just slightly. It has the least distortion and by f/2.2-2.8 it is very contrasty. Even wide open I find it so pleasing, even in hard light during the day. It has a strong 3D effect to the files when everything measures up in the scene, including the light. Stopping down causes stop sign bokeh, there is zero weather sealing. A great, lightweight day shooting lens.

The 50mm 1.4D is more expensive still. Not always a great choice at night, as it produces smearing over light sources and has the most chromatic aberration of the three, but of course it can be stopped down slightly to massively improve this. During the day, it produces nice painterly pictures, but has very low contrast effect wide open (again, this effect is easily cleaned up by f/2). This lens has by far the most chromatic aberration of the three. In certain circumstance it can be tough to correct because it can cause very thick purple transitions at backlit focal planes on the subject in certain situations. It has a good 3D look to the files. Stopping down causes stop sign bokeh, and there is zero weather sealing. I like it’s overall look despite these optical flaws / characteristics.

The 50mm 1.4G is the sharpest wide open, and the most contrasty, however it is important to reconcile that it is no where near the levels of sharpenss obtained by even more recent lens designs. It’s bokeh is smoother than both of the others, and when stopping down, the bokeh balls stay rounded, and it probably has the best focus transitions of the three. It has a good 3D look to the files in my opinion. It is the most expensive. It has a rubber gasket, which I feel more confident using it in inclement weather. The 50mm 1.4G has the least outlining on bokeh behind subjects out of all of these lenses (sometimes known as onion skin bokeh). I recommend the 50mm 1.4G for low light, especially if shooting stopped down slightly, because the bokek balls stay round due to it’s 9 bladed aperture. I have owned it for 14 years and never had an issue in this regard. A huge boon for this lens, is that if you own a body without a built in focus motor, it will still autofocus. The 1.8D lenses above, require a body that plugs into the lens and controls autofocus. You can check if your camera has this ability, otherwise you will be using manual focus with the 1.4D and 1.8D lenses. Note that thte 1.4G is slower to autofocus than the D lenses. (Nikon try to lie about this and state things like ‘faster, more precise autofocus with the G lenses’), however the facts speak for themselves. Owning all of these lenses, easily reveals to me that the 50mm 1.4D focuses the fastest out of all of them, and by quite a margin.

Whichever you choose, I stress that these lenses are great for people and stuff / things. They are quite characterful, not perfect optically, however produce beautiful, sometimes painterly results. The most important thing I consider is the overall render of a lens of this type. Do I like the type of picture it provides? Your milage is going to vary on this, and you may find that neither three are right for you. This said, I wanted to touch on some of the differences between them here. This is clearly not a scientific test, but my thoughts of what I have seen with using these three over many years.

Nikon Z 8, 50mm 1.4G @ f/3.5 on a star tracker mount, March 2024

*For Astrophotography work (as shown above, a single tracked frame from a huge mosaic image - see my astro landscape gallery), although I wouldn’t tell anyone to go and buy these lenses specifically, especially for wide open work (they are not well corrected for the task), the irony is I regularly use the 50mm 1.4G at 2.8-3.5 on a star tracker, with acceptable results. I am considering what to buy in the future to allow me to shoot around f/1.8-2.5, at night. It is important to note, that all three of these Nikon 50’s have severe astigmatism if shot wide open at night. This will make the stars in the corners look like little seagulls, rather than points of light. This affect takes a few stops to dissipate, which is why you don’t see it on the above image, shot at f/3.5.

Final Thought

Remember that owning one of these AF-D lenses which does not have a focus motor built-in, means their longevity is going to greatly surpass any G lens that has an onboard autofocus motor. Moving parts eventually wear out. The more complex the design, the more likely this happens quicker. Lenses such as the 50mm 1.4D and other classics such as the 85mm f/1.4D, will long surpass their G level counterparts. While it might seem like an antiquated technology to have the camera body physically plug into a little socket on the lens to turn the helicoid, in order to move the lens elements to focus the image; it just works. I also ask you this, does it really matter how a lens focuses to you? Generally speaking, I do not see them to be any less accurate than the G lenses in terms of focus precision, another flat out lie that Nikon marketing tell us about the new G lenses. Also, further to this as mentioned earlier in this article, most of the G lenses are actually slower to focus than the D versions. As you can probably tell; I’ve written this article as a photographer who likes to obtain a certain look from lenses. Make sure your views align with mine before taking my advice and spending the money.

Let’s leave this with a couple of drinks, because I seem to have a shot a lot of them with this lens…

Steve

Blog

Nikon 50mm 1.4G, 50mm 1.4D and 50mm 1.8D

Introduction

Which Lens?

Final Thought