The Phoblographer

Photography: Think Simpler

Where Is the Nikon 50mm F/1.2 II?

with 8 comments

According to Nikon Rumors, a new 50mm F/1.8 may be coming soon. That’s cool: but what about something for more of the higher end and professional crowds? Where is their update to the 50mm F/1.2?

When I was in a meeting with some Nikon reps previously, they were very proud that their finally completed their trio of F/1.4 lenses with the 50mm, 35mm and 85mm. But in the back of my head I couldn’t help but think, “Hmmmm, so where are you F/1.2 lenses, huh? Canon has theirs.”

If you head over to Flickr and check out this user’s profile, you’ll see that a lot of the photos were shot with the Nikon 50mm F/1.2 lens. There is even a really large Flickr group dedicated to this lens. But it still begs the question: where is the new one? Will it take longer with the earthquake that happened?

Let us know your thoughts: would you buy a new 50mm F/1.2? If not, what lens would you buy?

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  1. Field Tests: Zeiss 50mm F1.4, 50mm F2 Macro, 18mm F3.5, on the 5D Mk II
  2. Quick and Forgotten Tips For 50mm Lens Users
  3. Nifty At 50: How A 50mm F1.8 Prime Lens Changed My Shooting
  4. The Dream Team: The Right Nikon Lens For You
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Written by Chris Gampat

April 21st, 2011 at 11:33 am

Posted in Lenses

Tagged with , , , , , ,

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  • http://twitter.com/ahalbert Alexandre Albert

    I have the feeling that there is no intention to renew this lens. Maybe monney is behind tge decision. For sure I’ll not use it without AF.

    • Chris Gampat

      I’m not totally so sure about that one.

  • Gary Smith

    With a lens such as that, I’d expect a heavy price tag to go with it – likely >£1500 (~$2500). Would there be many sales at that cost for the difference between f/1.4 and f/1.2? It’d have to be *very* good.

  • Neil

    I don’t really get why they’re releasing the 50 1.8, unless it’s DX which would kinda make sense but if not why would you buy it when you can get the 50 1.4 for relatively cheap? The 50 1.4 AF-S isn’t in the same league as the 85, 24 and 35 which is disappointing, they really should have upped the ante on this lens to make it fall more naturally inline with those models, like Canon do with the L lenses.

    • http://www.bigelowphoto.com Rory

      The AF-S 50mm 1.4G will be in no-man’s land. The 1.8G coming out, I see around $179 street price once supply and demand for Nikon has settled. The 1.4G is too expensive for that market, and not really a focal length or performance that pros desire. It’s a good lens. But the pricepoint to performance ratio doesn’t add up.

  • Larry Colen

    I don’t have the link handy, but I recently read that digital sensors are not nearly as sensitive to light that hits the sensor at angles further from perpendicular, and as such once you start getting to the faster glass, a lot of the theoretical gain in speed is lost. In short, an f/1.2 lens, especially a sharp one, may cost more than twice as much to make as an f/1.4 lens, but will be less than the theoretical 2/3 of a stop faster.

    Also, sensors are progressing in quality so quickly, it isn’t as economically feasible to invest in exotically fast glass as it was in the film era. For less than the cost of what a 50/1.2 would cost, I bought a K5, which in comparison to my K20 gave me about three stops of speed improvement for the same quality at the high sensitivity portion of the performance curve. ISO 12,800 on the K-5 is better than ISO 1200 was on the K20. I’m confident the D7000 shows the same improvement over three year old mid level Nikon bodies, and probably rivals the twice as expensive D700.

    The lenses that I’d like to have, with quality on a par with my 31/1.8 or 77/1.8 would be:
    30/1.4 I realize that it’s a similar angle of incidence issue as with the 50/1.2 but it’s a much more usable focal length, and I often need that 2/3 stop over my 31/1.8.

    85/1.4 There are two options in this range for my Pentax, both of which are supposed to have decent performance for the price. My 77/1.8 is my goto lens for photographing musicians in clubs, but I’d often like a bit more length and a bit more speed.

    100/2.0 Sure, I’d love even faster, but I’m keeping my requests economically feasible, and something I could use without a monopod in reasonable light.

    Frankly, I’d like any sharp lens, with good bokeh, f/1.4 or faster anywhere between 30 and 85mm. My pfa50/1.4 is sharp enough wide open that the added speed more than makes up for the loss of optical sharpness, when I need the speed, but it’s an economical workhorse, but not in the same league as my 31 or 77.

    I’d love faster wider glass too, but with the registration distance based on the 35mm film camera and retrofocus issues, I don’t see a lot likely to happen. My sigma 20/1.8 is reasonably sharp, reasonably, and reasonably priced, but the manual focus on it feels like crap, and the sharpness wide open leaves a lot to be desired.

    Of course, I’d love all of those lenses in DA* format for the weatherproofing and the quickshift focus.

    • Anonymous

      Well said Larry. While I personally agree with what you said, I was at a workshop of Seth Resnik’s recently; one of the advisors to Adobe for Lightroom and Photoshop. And he says, “Don’t believe what Canon and Nikon say, ISO 1200 is still noisy.”

      There are still photographers that don’t like shooting above ISO 800, and I’m shocked when I hear this.

      Also, the theoretical light loss is more than true when you consider the fact that F/stops and T/stops aren’t the same. Just take a look at DXo Mark and you’ll see that an F/1.8 lens is more like an F/2.1. With that said, if it can deliver more light to you, I’d take it.

      Your requests, however, are more than reasonable and I believe that any photographer would agree.

      Thanks for the comment :)

    • http://www.bigelowphoto.com Rory

      A Pentax A50 1.2 can be found for $600. M & K for less. Congrats on finding a K-5 for less than that.

      Pentax seems to be moving further away from “fast” lenses, and more towards “sharp from wide open”. While admittedly and entry level lens, the DA35 2.4 is a prime example of this. They seem to be going for sharp lenses, and relying on speed of sensors.

      We’ll see what they have down the road; howevevr, I was weary for wanting, and didn’t wish to wait anymore. Off to the Darkside I went.