Well, I've shot both, and currently own the 50/1.2S, and strongly disagree. If I had any use for the 58G, I would have bought it, but it didn't pass muster, so to speak.
I don't judge lenses from other peoples images online - that doesn't work for me. I actually shoot them. Rare concept in these days where everyone wants to be an expert from looking at compressed jpegs with who-knows-what post processing applied on a site somewhere, but that's me.
That's not to say some folks might prefer the 58G though.
Here's my take, longer....
Both lenses are "statement" designs from their respective designer, so neither was a casual effort or something rushed out. Both designers are senior, and these may be their last "big" designs. I haven't seen either Sato (58G) or Harada (50/1.2S) on any patents as the primary designer since those lenses, which is telling. Neither are youngsters.
In lens design, there are always tradeoffs, and there is aberration balancing going on as the designer might be "tuning" the lens towards specific tasks. Both of these lenses definitely have "portrait tuning" in them, which in basic terms means that high frequency MTF structure resolution (very very fine detail) is held back, on purpose, in the closer portrait distance ranges. At distance, this behavior does not occur. So what that means is a few things: the lenses won't be the winner of the test chart battle since test charts are often done in closer distances, yet the lenses will often be quite nice for portraiture use. A tradeoff was made in the design to sacrifice one thing to gain another, and it's often in the handling of how spherical aberration is corrected, although that's too simplistic - it's a bunch of things in the aberration balancing that cause "the look".
So within that concept, we have to remember the era of the resolution of the bodies at the time the lens was designed. This is IMO important, because it means that a lens that is finely tuned/balanced in a medium resolution era (the 58G) might *not* be a perfect match for a higher resolution body in some things. The 50/1.2S was designed within the current era, and thus IMO is a better match for the higher resolution bodies. We can't discount this - the more a lens deviates from a strictly engineering "make it sharp" without tuning towards a task, the more important the matching/marriage to the resolution of the body might be for some users. I personally think that most folks who really fall for the 58F fall into the category of portrait shooters whose image quality standards don't lend to larger prints, who shoot medium resolution bodies (A DF or a 24mp body or some sort), and who don't shoot studio or anything where rendition of textures and hair most accurately is important. And that's a whole lot of photographers, possibly including you. But at the same time, some of us (myself included) want a lens whose balancing, even in the portrait tuning end of things, works better with a D850 or Z8, and the 58G falls a bit short. In other words, it's tuning was perhaps "right" for a DF or Z6, but not for a Z8.
The 50/1.2S has
- Better front bokeh, reasonably equivalent back bokeh
- Equal OOF transitions
- While still being portrait tuned, it's more acceptable on higher rez bodies
- Far less CA, which means images are more natural, and skin looks more real because the subtle color change from the impact of axial CA as you drift out of focus is less.
- Better performance at distance - even though the 58G is quite good at distance, the 50/1.2S is *reference* quality at distance.
I can see some folks liking the flaws of the 58G, and I get it - if I shot more video, I could see owning the lens for some things, but overall I'm getting tired of the look - I think the 58G is a one-trick-pony look and I've seen it too much now. Might be a very "good" luck and a well done look, but I'm beyond it. I value honesty and natural representation of the subject quite highly, and personally prefer lenses with excellent CA control, so it's no surprise I don't care for the 58G much for what I do.
But I get it - some folks might. I just can't universally recommend it, particularly if I don't know if the person is primarily a portrait shooter or not.
