GEAR 50MMPRIME LENSES
THE OLD-SCHOOL AF LENS
“The redeeming factor is the quality of the images” a reasonable 160̊ but the resistance and feel is awful. It’s hard to get the focus in the right place, and you need to rely on focus aids like an external monitor to get it right. Setting the aperture is also a pain, as you don’t turn the aperture ring but the lever on the adapter. It’s fiddly, and becomes really fiddly on large cinema cameras where access can be more awkward. The redeeming factor is the quality of the images, especially if you close down the aperture a stop or two. By f/5.6, the Nikon performs incredibly well with biting sharpness and contrast with no lateral chromatic aberration – not far behind the performance of the pricey Sigma or Zeiss Loxia. The colours are very slightly warm, although this can be dialled out in post-processing. There is some tiny barrel distortion and vignetting, but only in line with the Samyang and Zeiss rivals. And a bit of purple fringing can happen, too. But when you shoot the lens wide open, it all starts to fall apart. Sharpness really does drop off, especially at the corners, and the bokeh becomes distinctly odd- coloured. There’s also quite heavy vignetting, which disappears by around f/2.8. And it can flare a lot if there’s a bright light source in the frame. Some people might call that ‘character’ but most would just say it’s typical of an old lens design. But if you keep tomiddle apertures and can put up with its handling quirks, then you get a bitingly sharp lens for not a huge amount of money.
LEFT The AF-D Nikon lens is relatively cheap and plentiful, and gives great results, especially when stopped down. BELOW LEFT To fit the Nikon to Sony needs an adapter. It's dwarfed by the Super35 camera.
If you’ve ever owned an SLR – film or digital – then chances are you have owned a 50mmprime to go with it. And with Canon and Nikon ruling the market for decades, there’s a good chance it was from one of those brands. There are loads out there on the market used, but they also have new versions on sale. While Canon has had electronic aperture control on all its autofocus lenses for many years, Nikon stuck with a manual aperture ring for a long time, gradually updating its F-mount range to the aperture ring- less versions. That’s good news for filmmakers, as some of the old-school lenses are still officially current and on sale new, like the AF-Nikkor 50mm f/1.4D. Costing £269/$299 although often on sale for quite a bit less, the Nikon was introduced in 1995 although the optical design dates back to the manual focus 50mm f/1.4 AI lens of 1977. You can actually still buy the manual focus version of that lens brand new today if you hunt around, at more than twice the price of the AF version, so it moves it to the realmof the newer Zeiss Loxia, cost-wise.
The 50mmAF-D lens features seven elements in six groups with no fancy aspherical elements. To fit the Nikon to our Sony test cameras, we used a £139/$99Metabones adapter which allows you to control the aperture with its own lever, making the aperture clickless and more suitable for video use. The downside is you don’t knowwhat aperture you are setting, and there’s no information relayed to the camera to tell you. So it’s a bit of guesswork. Nikons have always had a great reputation for image quality and also build, but this bulletproof legacy was largely abandoned when the firm started tomake AF lenses. This lens is solid withmetal used in the mount but the body is plastic, and there is a see-through plastic panel to check the focusing distance. As you focus, the entire assembly moves forward and back so focus breathing can be a real issue, too. At least the 52mm filter thread doesn’t rotate during focusing, so it’s OK to fit ND filters and the like. In use, the lens handles exactly like what it is – a lens designed for an autofocus SLR. Usedmanually, the lens throw for focusingmay be
BELOW If you don't mind a bit of artistic flare, then the Nikon still delivers sharp and contrasty images.
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PRO MOVIEMAKER SPRING 2018
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