Ups and Downs of the FDn 50mm 1.4

The lens is very sharp when stopped down. Here's a shot I took a while back. I corrected the color and applied default sharpening. The focus is on the near headlight.





However, it's soft wide open. Worse (for my tastes, of course), it makes very odd-looking bokeh.





I think this lens in combination with a tilt/shift adapter would be good for landscape photography. For portraits, not so much, unless you are into rocky bokeh.

Like the vast majority of older fast primes, it's got some veiling flare wide open. It's not actually that soft -- but bloomy and diffuse. It's mostly gone by f/1.7, and fine at f/2. The bokeh wide open is a bit ring-shaped (brighter on the outside), but that, too, becomes neutral by f/2. Add to this the fact that in terms of actual light transmission the lens is optically only about a half stop slower at f/2 than it is at f/1.4, and it becomes clear that shooting this lens stopped down a little makes it stellar, with very few drawbacks.

In this regard, it's better than the majority of other legacy 50/1.4 primes (which are generally quite good, themselves). The Nikkor 50s have worse bokeh as you stop down, for example, and the Pentax has a weird spiky character at f/2 to f/2.8, which subsequently improves.

Every lens has some personality -- it's just the way it is. The 50/1.4 FDn, though, is one of the most neutral and inoffensive older primes I've ever used.

Isn't that what they call vibe/character? ;-) I kinda like it, and it isn't always so rocky, these could be a half or full down (f1.8/2) - some lense's bokeh improve stopped down a bit:













Alan

Wow! That funky bokeh is something I haven't seen before... so interesting!

I just received my FDn 50/1.4 a coupla days ago and haven't played with it much yet. After seeing the varied results folks get with this lens, I decided to keep my 1.8 too - just for variety. And as with many others here, too much "variety" can't be a bad thing, so I also ordered a Minolta Rokkor MC 58/1.4 for good measure

But yeah, I always thought the FDn 50/1.4 was a straight-laced performer, so, IMO, its something of a pleasant surprise to see that its capable of some character too.

I have mostly switched to the SEL50 for my main 50, but I thought the FDn 50/1.4 did pretty well on portraits in my very limited testing (and, I have no portrait taking skills, so don't just on lighting or whatever). But both of these are wide open and I think they are particularly sharp (note my son's eyelashes):

Use the lens from f2 down and you have THE 50mm that spanks the Leica ASPH and Olympus Macro--as well as every 50mm ever made. That's one heck of an upside for a $100 lens.

If you get a good copy the FD 50 1.4 is excellent, this is f/1.4 on an E-PL2.....(probably one of the sharpest 50's that I've used and I own about 8 different 50mm lenses)....



f/2 on a NEX 5N....