Nikkor 58mm f/1.4

Ade

It's not a typo, and the DxO findings actually match what Roger Cicala found in his tests linked a few posts above.

Basically, the 58mm is sharp in the center & corners, but very soft in the middle-frame (to the point it is "a bit out of focus" according to Roger Cicala). You can see Roger's graph here, which illustrates the problem well.

@PitchBlack in addition to the individual elements, the final DxOMark score also considers the uniformity of the lens. Having a soft middle is what brought down the score.

In real life, having a soft mid-frame may or may not be an issue for you, depending on your style of shooting, choice of subjects, etc. For $1,700 -- it's tough to make this tradeoff between poor uniformity vs. great bokeh and aberration control when shooting wide open.

donaldejose

Doesn't look worth the price to me unless you need it to shoot city lights at night.

Symphotic

With the money I'll save I might get the Df after all.

Symphotic

In stock at B and H.

WestEndBoy

It seems that Nikon made a tradeoff between field curvature, coma elimination, bokeh etc. to keep the price down. I wish they didn't make the tradeoff. I would pay a few hundred more to nail that.

When shooting bokeh, one can argue that it is fine, even pleasing, if it is soft on the corners and edges. But sharp in the corners and soft at the mid-point between the edge and centre. That just seems weird.

Ade

Many/most rental houses will not ship to hotels, but often they will ship to nearby UPS or FedEx pickup locations. It's best to contact the rental company directly to see what they're willing to do.

Ade

If you already know which hotel you'll be staying at, it might be worth checking where the nearest FedEx pickup or UPS Store location is. In NYC chances are good that there will be one or the other within a few blocks of your hotel.

spraynpray

The Carl Zeiss Distagon T* Otus 1,4/55 ZF.2 lens is quite something according to DxO Mark. The comparison with the Nikon 58/1.4 is an OMG.

Golf007sd

@spraynpray: I knew the Otus was going to kick ass...but so its the price, weight and size...for most. If I was to ever going to get a Zeiss lens, this would be it...Period!

Looking forward to have a chance of renting one, in the near future, to really see if it fits my style of shooting. Beside, at this price, I would have much better use for the 300 2.8 VR II. :P

Lastly, I find the results on the 58 1.4G on DxO questionable...they must of done something wrong.

shawnino

The more I look at the Zeiss lineup, the more the "more extreme" focal lengths call my name... 15mm f/2.8, 100mm f/2. Around 50mm, I want something smaller--but I'm really glad Zeiss is developing the optics. Looks like an amazing piece of glass. This won't be the last Otus.

Now back to my campaign about how bad the Nikkor 58mm f/1.4 stinks, to make that rebate juicier. Holy mackerel that 58mm f/1.4 is an absolute piece of crap. Oil spots, left focusing issue don't you know.

Golf007sd

...Sigma saying...."we are upgrading all of our lenses"....I can afford the Zeiss, but I have an up-tempo style of shooting and I just don't want to think about focusing.

Thus I wait.

+1 I'm on the same boat as you, expect, I find that this focal length very pleasing. I must admit that I do not shot my 50mm wide open...usually @ f/2.0 or up. If I want to compress the background and isolate my subject, the 85, 105 or 70-200 come out...the 85 being my go to lens for isolation of 1-2 ppl.

Should Sigma come out with a new 50mm 1.4 inline with the 35 1.4 Art, I will be more than happy to place my money down.

It is nice to see all these new 50mm coming out \:D/ \:D/ \:D/

Ironheart

@PitchBlack you can walk into Adorama or B&H (or about 100 other camera stores in NYC) and rent gear on the spot. If you reserve in advance, you can be sure of getting what you want:
http://www.adoramarentals.com/

WestEndBoy

I would be interested in where you think it is soft Pitchblack. All over? The corners? The part between the centre and corners? The centre - hopefully not?

WestEndBoy

Is the bokeh better than my 85?

shawnino

Was summoned to a local shop with a mysterious "Get in here!" phone call this morning. Arrived: unboxing of the store copy of the 58mm f/1.4 with two more boxed up, surely one of which they knew I'd buy. Unfortunately my summoning was so mysterious I didn't think to bring my own body, and was offered the chance to test it on some crummy, bulky 16MP camera, a D4.

I have never properly used a D4 before and that surely added to what was the worst testing session ever: mostly handheld, store lighting. I cranked out 40 shots and we loaded the card and viewed on a 21" monitor. Softish at 1.4 to 1.8 (never stopped down, don't care what it does at f/4), bokeh seemed very good, and in a couple shots the AF missed what I thought it was focusing on. Would have brought the card home but I don't have a reader and the images were nothing special.

No sale. That said, they're open Sundays through Xmas, after which I've invited myself back for a sunday morning test inside and outside an empty store with my own gear. Really looking forward to it. I want to love this lens, and left to use it properly, I hope I will.

The only conclusion I have to report is that sales for this lens may suffer because in a quick-test scenario, this lens will not blow the prospective customer away. Can I tell it apart from my 50 1.4D? For sure. Can I make an on-the-spot decision that it's worth 5x the money? I claim no one can. This lens does not have enough of a "Wow!" factor to sell itself instore in 20 minutes.

I'm not one of these people who gets off shooting brick walls and test patterns. That said, I wish I'd shot a brick wall this morning. My test was a gong show, and unfair to the lens. Looking forward to Round 2 and some quality time. Hoping it'll talk me into buying it

Photobug

Any chance you can use two identical bodies and the 58mm 1.4 on one DSLR and a 50mm 1.4 on the other? Then you could put both images on the screen and explore the sharpness in more detail.

Isn't it nice to have that working relationship with the camera store? I am jealous.

shawnino

Great idea. In fact I now want nothing else.

The camera shop and I used to hate each other because I got the feeling they thought I was a complete fool not worthy of their time. On their end, they thought I was a complete fool not worthy of their time. Now, one of my former math students works there and since then we're all friends again. It's very much who-you-know around here, not what-you-know.

donaldejose

Looks sharp enough at f8 buy why buy an f1.4 lens to shoot at f8? No sale for me. The softness at f1.6 above kills it for me.

WestEndBoy

Yes, when I tried it on the DF as well, the colours really popped, enough to make my wife say "wow". I am not what it is about lens design that makes that difference and did not know if it was real. But, this lens has no coma and low chromatic abberation.

donaldejose

I thought the basic point of this lens design was to replace the old noct Nikon designed to keep spots of light (such as street lights at night) from smearing. For that use it may be supreme.

Colors: Yes, some lenses do seem to produce more pleasing colors than others but color preference differs among people and you do have Picture Controls plus post processing to adjust the colors to your taste.

Sharpness: It should be sharper wide open than you found. Other reviewers have found it sharp but many have commented it is not sharp.
"This 58mm f/1.4 G is just about perfect. It's super sharp and contrasty on a 36 MP FX D800E at every aperture. Only the far corners are a tiny bit softer at f/1.4, but they are still sharp. The corners get a little better as stopped down, but no matter what you do, this 58mm is almost as sharp as a macro lens. Your biggest impediments to sharpness will be a lack of perfect focus, diffraction if you stop down too much, or camera or subject motion." KR

"Sharpness is a little low wide open but it is a desirable trait for certain genres, particularly portraiture, where this lens will serve double duty as a short tele on a DX (APS-C) body. Stopped down this lens is very sharp centrally, but at $1,700, it’s a huge premium to pay over the firm’s existing AF-S Nikkor 50mm f1.4 G." DxOMark

"On the D800, sharpness isn't especially high wide open, but this is entirely to be expected from a fast prime. Central sharpness increases rapidly on stopping down, but the edges lag behind significantly. This likely reflects curvature of field as much as anything else (these tests use a flat chart focused for the highest central sharpness). The edges continue to sharpen up at smaller apertures, and by F11 come close to matching the centre. In all other respects the 58m performs extremely well. Lateral chromatic aberration is very low, and unlikely to be problematic in normal use, even without correction." DPReview

"Optically, it has excellent resolution. It’s a bit better than the 50mm f/1.4 G. I’m not saying the 58mm is overpriced; it’s about the same price as the 85mm or 35mm f/1.4G lenses. I am saying that this test makes the 50mm f/1.4 G look like quite a bargain." lensrentals Roger Cicala

"When not shot wide open on a full-frame camera, the Nikon 58mm ƒ/1.4G is a pretty sharp lens in the center. Unfortunately, at ƒ/1.4, it's quite soft and shows somewhat of an "upside-down sombrero" shape on our blur index chart. The center is somewhat sharp, but not overly so, a surrounding region out from the center is softer, followed by slightly sharper edges. On a sub-frame camera, it's not as soft relative to the rest of the frame at ƒ/1.4, but still not as sharp as we'd like to see from a $1,700 lens." SLRGearReview

A good review to read. http://www.samhurdphotography.com/2013/gear-reviews/nikon-58mm-f1-4-lens-review-and-comparison-with-detailed-sample-images

donaldejose

Color: Ken says "The color rendition is the same as my other Nikkor AF lenses." Apparently he cannot see what you see. But then again he jacks his in camera color settings so high that one has to wonder if his eyesight is color deficient!

I suspect many people are evaluating this lens for a use which was not the primary design criteria. It was to replace the noct Nikkor 58mm f1.2. "The Noct-NIKKOR is especially well suited to photographing points of light against dark backgrounds, be they streetlights at night, stars, or tracking space-based weapons platforms over large visual fields as seen from Earth." KR But people are not shooting it and evaluating it in that specific contest. People are evaluating it as a general purpose 50mm f1.4 type lens or even more specifically as a 58mm counterpart to the 85mm f1.4 portrait lens. I don't think that was the design criteria for this lens. The lens may be well worth its price when you need a lens to shoot points of light in the dark but may not be worth its price when you are looking for a fast 50mm general purpose lens.

Look at the first example in the comparison below I would say the colors produced by the 58mm f1.2 are fantastic. http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/comparisons/58mm-bokeh/ As an aside, these four examples to me disprove Ken's statement above that the colors are the same as his other Nikkor AF lenses.

PitchBlack: What are the usual PictureControl settings you use as your baseline?

WestEndBoy

KR also shoots JPEGS, which is why he likes the Canon 5D Mk III with its custom setting and thinks the D800 is a second rate camera. I suspect that Pitchblack shoots in Raw and adjusts colour in processing, so picture control is irrelevant. Perhaps I should not speak for Pitchblack, but I imagine that most professionals shoot in raw and work in Lightroom / Photoshop with raw files.

This makes me curious what the benefit to using picture controls would be if you shoot raw. I know that the picture control information is embedded in the raw file and the Nikon software can read it. Not sure if Photoshop or Lightroom can? Perhaps this is off topic and there is a thread somewhere that talks about this? Anybody know of one?

Golf007sd

@PitchBlack: Thank you for your feedback. I'm behind you 100% on the color performance of a given lens. Seeing how well the 58 1.4 renders colors is very welcoming news. As for sharpness, I'm not as demanding as you are; that is to say, not being able to see every eyelash is acceptable by me. And this is "where the rubber meets the road." Those that may consider getting this lens, have to find out what is acceptable to their style of photography and their clients or their own, acceptable levels. So far, I find this lens worth heavy consideration...for what I would use it for. Yet, time is on my side and I'm willing to wait for a good deal...if you know what I mean.

Photobug

Color: Ken says "The color rendition is the same as my other Nikkor AF lenses." Apparently he cannot see what you see. But then again he jacks his in camera color settings so high that one has to wonder if his eyesight is color deficient!

Agree, what he does with saturation and sharpening is crazy. There are times you want to push color Saturday but he does it for 100% of his work. When I take pictures I try to duplicate what I saw, not an over extracted color rendition to make my pictures pop off the page. But then again, that is why there are options.

KR is deficient in many ways. The only good thing I use his site for is to find out when a certain lens or body was made and to get the specifications.

WestEndBoy

I would like to add some comments to Photobugs comments re: KR

I believe that KR makes one important error that can be dangerous for a photographer that is not aware of it. Namely, he has his own style of shooting and dispenses advice based on that style without really disclosing his bias. There is nothing wrong with these biases, as we all have them. However, a newbie often does not appreciate the sheer variety in photography (which is why I never tire of it) and takes what someone like KR says for gospel applicable to every situation, not KR's narrow perspective.

KR likes JPEGS and therefore picture control and the ability to flip back and forth between picture control presets is important to him. This is why he likes the Canon 5D MkIII. However, if you shoot raw, this is totally irrelevant. He hates tripods, but it seems he just dispenses advice not to buy a tripod without considering that the newbie might be trying to do self portraits.

That said, I spent a lot of time on KR's site before I bought my D800. While I don't agree with everything he says, he makes a lot of great points and really made me think carefully before I went out and spent $10,000 plus. For example, his general comments on lens sharpness have alot of merit I believe. He also explains well why it is the photographer that matters and not the equipment. Even though he hates tripods, his comments made me think carefully about the type of shooting that I am doing and what I need for it. My UPStrap is based on his direct advice. He made me sure of my decision to shun zooms except for the 14-24 2.8G. Not saying KR shuns zooms, but some of the information and opinions that influenced me were in his website. Basically, I was going to buy a D4 with the holy trinity and after doing a lot of research including buying the Coolpix A and shooting it in Yellowstone for a week, researching numerous websites including Nikon Rumours, shooting 1,000 "educational" photos with my F80 with its crappy 28-200mm 3.5-5.6 AND reading most of KR's site, I ended up with what you see in my signature and only really regret buying a few minor accessories and two Billingham bags (the 550 is a heavy sucker when it is filled up and is only really practical to lug a pile of equipment from point A to point B and keep my stuff organized nicely at home).

So I think that I probably owe KR something. Perhaps I will go on one of his photo excursions. On the other hand, the bias that I have noted above is a critical one as I am sure that many newbies have been knowingly or unknowingly led astray and spent unnecessary money.