Lens Review:The nifty 50 Nikkor 50mm f/1.8
my my what a big eye you have!
Intro: This little hockey puck of a lens is a bit of an oddity. It dosn't really excel at anything but it stays well out of the "sucky" range as well. The Nikkor brand is always a solid performer but in this case it feels like it was designed, built and sold as a solid mediocre lens on purpose.
Initial Thoughts/Build:Nikkor's lens are always nice in hand. It doesn't have the "solid metal USSR tank build" like some of my Sigmas but that can be bothersome at times too. Its compact, light and fits easily in your gear bag. Lens swaps are easy, its very "door knob" like and easy to swivel on and off of your frame.(That being said, the sun shade was driving me bonkers. It's just the right size and the lens is just stubby enough that when I was twisting it into the mount on my D850 I kept accidentally swiveling off the shade.
This shade is a blessing and curse. It’s great for blocking the sun but can be a pain when swiveling or removing the lens
It felt almost comically small on my full frame body, but its a snappy lens that focused quickly and took very "true to life" pics. The 50mm angle is faaairly close to the human eye view. When you see something with your naked eye and then look through your viewfinder the image is pretty much identical. Is that a good or bad thing? I think that depends on the photographer and the look they are going for. It felt a bit bland to me. Not grandiose enough for sweeping landscapes and falling far short of anything needing even the smallest amount of reach. That being said, I am not a big portrait guy and I could see this lens shinning at half body and whole body portraits. I had some fun with it when taking pics of larger architecture as long as I had a subject in frame for scale.
with the shade flipped around and all capped off you can see how easily stashable this lens is. One of its main draws to me was portability
