I recently purchased a 50mm f1.8, or “nifty fifty” lens for my D90, having owned the canon equivalent for some time. I opted for the cheaper 1.8 rather than the more expensive 1.4, because, well, I just didn’t want to spend any more money than that at the time. When I first tried it out I was a bit underwhelmed by the lens which people rave about. However, I was shooting in poor light (and through snow) so it wasn’t a particularly fair test. Anyway, over the weekend I sat down and did some comparisons with my canon 50mm on my 5D.
I know some people will argue that it’s not a fair test as the D90 is a cropped camera and the 5D is a full frame etc. To be honest there’s no way to please everyone. I read somewhere on a forum recently some nerd giving out that the only way to accurately compare lenses from different manufacturers was to use a lens adaptor and shoot on the same camera. To which I say: If you’re going to be that anal about it you really need to get out more. Anyway, yes the framing is different, but it shows you how much of a crop is on the camera. On the D90 it’s roughly equivalent of a 80mm lens. Below is a 100% crop of the 5D and the D90 each using the corresponding manufacturer’s 50mm f1.8 lens. Both of these were shot using Aperture priority and on a tripod, who’s position I kept the same. I had to change the framing slightly so as to make sure a focus point would be over the same spot (as the layout of focus points in both cameras is slightly different)
(note: click on the image for full size)
The 5D is on the left and is definitely sharper at 1.8. (and no before someone decides to complain, it’s not just the 5D being inherently sharper. I have other lenses that produce much sharper results on the d90 and stopped down this is much sharper)
Stopped down to 5.6 and there is not much between them (D90 on the top) – in fact, if anything the Nikon is sharper:
Here’s the full pictures:
(above) Nikon D90, 50mm @ f5.6
(above) Canon 50mm @ f5.6
(If you click through to flickr I’ve put both up at 100% for your pixel peeping pleasure.
Finally, here’s a general Image taken with the D90 and the Nikon 50mm:
Again, click through to view larger.
So in conclusion, over all it’s a good lens, however at 1.8 it’s VERY soft. Much softer than the Canon equivalent (in my opinion) however stopped down a bit there’s little or nothing in the difference and it’s fairly sharp.
One of the down sides though is the crop factor. While it’s fine for portraits and such things it does give you a much tighter field of view, and so it’s not really a standard lens on a cropped sensor camera. (In terms of field of view). For that you really need a 35mm for which Nikon has kindly just released a new one !
(By the way, all of these were shot RAW and processed in Aperture, with the default settings and no adjustments)
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