Short review of FDn 50mm F/2
Nov 19, 2017
2
So I got myself an old FDN 50mm F/2 from a Japanse seller in ebay to go with my M10. The EF and EF-M F2 lenses are a bit too expensive for me so the legacy lens was a bargain at about 68 USD including shipping! Few dust particles inside but otherwise optics and exterior were very clean. I chose it over FD 1.8 lenses because of the SSC coating newer lenses come with.
Kept it at F/2 and tried it out yesterday at an evening party and I'm impressed. This is is my first F2 lens and manual focus lens so there's a learning curve but I like the shots I got so far. It's great for photography in indoor lighting. I shot in Tv mode with 1/100 shutter speed and auto ISO. The camera chose a low enough ISO most of the time so photos didn't have a lot of noise even after lifting shadows and some other editing. The sharpness is quite good and I get enough detail in shots for them to remain sharp after editing and cropping too. A little bit soft at F/2 but it's a subtle, pleasing kind of softness especially for portraits so I don't mind. Great bokeh at F/2 too. Great for people shots because of no distortion but to get a upper body shot I had to stand about 6 feet away. LOL.
The focus ring is quite nice and much better than the focus by wire mechanisms of modern lenses. It really is a pleasure to use. I ended up not getting some photos in focus because of lack of experience but it's not very hard to master. It was easier to focus without focus peaking for me because the colour overlay makes it hard to judge what is in focus.
Overall it is a very good lens and well worth the money I paid for it. I'm going to have a lot of fun with this lens. If you are considering buying a legacy lens I can totally recommend this. Be sure to buy from a highly rated seller and check descriptions and photos of the lens carefully.


