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Nikon’s Z 50mm f/1.2 rated!
The Nikon Z 50mm f/1.2 S is a properly fast prime for Nikon Z cameras, and it’s almost affordable, compared to the Noct!
There are two reasons you might want a Nikon Z 50mm f/1.2 S: faster shutter speeds and a tighter depth of field. For anything else, there’s no point lugging around a big, heavy chunk of glass that’s nearly three times the weight of the Nikon Z 50mm f/1.8 S and costs four to five times the price, depending on where in the world you live. Make no mistake, Nikon’s f/1.8 lens might look pretty basic, but it delivers superb sharpness, negligible colour fringing and distortion, and is a top performer in every manner. So, the question is, how much do you really need an extra 1.33 stops of aperture width?
Key features
The biggest selling point of this lens is unquestionably its f/1.2 rating. The optical path is quite complex for a standard prime, featuring no less than 17 elements. Of these, there are two ED (Extra-low Dispersion) elements and three aspherical elements. Overall, it’s a weighty lens that tips the scales at 1090g.
As with other up-market Nikon Z-mount lenses, fancy features include an OLED display built into the lens barrel along with a ‘DISP’ button that enables you to switch between either aperture setting or focus distance, the latter coming complete with digital depth of field markers.
Other typical features include a customizable Lens-function button and a separate control ring, in addition to the electronically coupled focus ring. We’ll come to those soon.
Build and handling
Handling is certainly enhanced and aided by the OLED display and the customizable L-FN button, especially as the latter can be assigned to any of a large number of functions, via the host camera’s custom settings menu. The control ring has a more limited range of custom options, but is particularly useful for applying stepless aperture control when you’re shooting movies. Alternative functions include exposure compensation and ISO setting. Both the focus ring and the control ring operate smoothly, with a good amount of tactile feedback.
As you’d expect from a modern lens at this price point, the 50mm f/1.2 is extensively weather-sealed and its overall build quality feels impressively robust. The barrel parts are plastic rather than metal, but they are still reassuringly solid without being cold to the touch when the temperatures drop during a shoot.
Performance
The unassuming little Z 50mm f/1.8 S sets the bar rather high when it comes to sharpness, but the f/1.2 lens beats it at pretty much all directly competing aperture settings. Even when shooting wide-open, the f/1.2 lens delivers incredible sharpness and contrast for such a ‘fast’ lens, with sharpness only really dropping off a bit at the extreme edges and corners of the picture frame. Even corner-sharpness picks
up very well by f/2.8 and remains excellent all the way through to f/16.
We’re used to seeing barely any lateral chromatic aberration in Nikon’s Z-mount lenses, but longitudinal chromatic aberration or ‘bokeh fringing’ can be slightly more problematic, especially with regards to very fast lenses at their widest apertures. That being said, this is controlled remarkably well, with negligible telltale fringing around high-contrast edges of objects that lie just in front of – or behind – the plane of focus.
There’s a slight touch of pincushion distortion, but nothing to cause any major concern. Vignetting is comparatively pronounced when shooting at or near the widest aperture, but this can actually enhance photographs when you’re trying to focus the attention on the central region of the frame. Either way, automatic in-camera corrections are available for both distortion and vignetting.
For an f/1.2 lens, the quality of bokeh can be even more important than the overall sharpness of said lens… Shooting at f/1.2, the bokeh of this lens is beautifully smooth and the transition between focus and defocused areas looks completely natural.
Our only slight criticism here is that bokeh discs (caused by defocused bright spots or lights) can tend to take on quite an irregular non-circular shape towards the edges and corners of the image frame. Bokeh discs also don’t stay very wellrounded when stopping down a little bit more, as the nine-blade aperture diaphragm turns them into pronounced nine-sided shapes at apertures of around f/1.8 and narrower.
On the plus side, there’s virtually no unsightly onion ring effect in defocused lights, which can often be a problem with faster lenses. Overall, the Z 50mm f/1.2 S delivers beautiful creamy-looking bokeh.
Shooting at a distance of 2m with a 50mm lens on a full-frame camera, an increase in aperture width from f/1.8 to f/1.2 gives a reduction in the overall depth of field from 17cm down to 11cm. If you feel that tighter depth of field and the ability to gain 1.33 stops in shutter speed under low lighting conditions are ‘must have’ features, you may be able to justify the extra expense of this lens over the still-excellent Nikon Z 50mm f/1.8 S. On the flip-side, the 50mm f/1.8 S is much more compact and lightweight, as well as being far less expensive, which will likely be one of the biggest factors when deciding whether or not you will want this lens in your kitbag.
The OLED display, L-FN button and additional customizable control ring are also nice additions, but still may not be enough to justify the high price tag.