Introduction

When released in 2008, the Nikon AF-S 50mm 1.4G was the first fast prime lens updated to the AF-S standard, adding an in-lens AF-S ring motor and ditching the aperture ring. Already back in the day this wasn’t exactly considered a high performance lens, so where does it stand today? Let’s find out in this review.

Sample Images

You can find many of the sample images in full resolution here.

Specifications / Version History

Over the years there have been a plethora of 50mm 1.4 lenses from Nikon. Despite having been released in 2008, this Nikon AF-S 50mm 1.4G was still the latest one until the end of 2024, when Nikon released the Nikon Z 50mm 1.4 – again not a high performance lens. It has the following specifications:

• • Diameter: 74 mm
  • Field of view: 46° (diagonally)
  • Length: 54 mm
  • Weight: 278g (without hood, without caps)
  • Filter Diameter: 58 mm
  • Number of Aperture Blades: 9 (rounded)
  • Elements/Groups: 8/7
    
  • Close Focusing Distance: 0.45 m
  • Maximum Magnification: 1:6.5 (measured)
  • Mount: Nikon F

buy from Amazon.com | Amazon.de | ebay.com | ebay.de | B&H (affiliate links) for $407 (new) or starting at $200 (used)

Handling/Build quality

This Nikon AF-S 50mm 1.4G is not part of  Nikon’s higher end f/1.4 lineup and also feels more like Nikon’s cheaper f/1.8 AF-S lenses.

The outer casing seems to be mostly made from high quality polycarbonate which is also true for the filter thread. There is a rubber gasket to be found at the bayonet.

The focus ring features a mechanical coupling to the helicoid (no focus by wire) and it takes about 180° from the minimum focus distance (0.45 m) to infinity.
The resistance of this sample is quite nice actually, I have seen worse from Nikon’s AF-S lenses.
Many Nikon AF-S G-lenses show some slack when changing the direction of rotation of the focus ring, luckily this is not the case here.

The lens ships with a plasticky bayonet-style lens hood that can be attached reversed for taking up less space.

Without having a very close look it is difficult to tell this 50mm 1.4G and the 50mm 1.8G apart, as they are almost the same size and look the same. The Nikon AF-S 58mm 1.4G on the other hand features a noticeably bigger casing and seems to be made from different materials.

AF performance

The Nikon AF-S 50mm 1.4G actually features a ring SWM motor leading to silent AF operation and slightly faster focusing speed compared to many of the other affordable AF-S primes. It is by no means as fast as the f/2.8 zooms though.

When the f/1.4 AF-S primes hit the market some people were put off by their AF speed, as usually – especially when directly comparing the AF-D lens to the newer  the newer AF-S lens – the latter actually focused slower than the older screwdriven one. Nikon at that time claimed the AF-S f/1.4 prime lenses are geared towards higher focus accuracy instead of speed.

I tried to focus on these cyclists passing by at f/1.4 via the FTZ II adapter on a Nikon Z6 and that actually worked out well, so I guess for most (non-Sports) applications the AF will be good enough.

Also on the Sony E-mount cameras this lens focuses surprisingly well in AF-C mode via the Monster LA-FE1 and LA-FE2 adapters (not in video mode though).

Vignetting

light falloff

In case you already had a look at Martin’s review of the older manual focus Nikon 50mm 1.4 Ai-s these values may look familiar to you, because they are almost the same. These values are also similar to what we are used to from compact (rangefinder) 50mm 1.4 lenses like the TTArtisan 50mm 1.4 or the Leica 50mm 1.4 Summilux-M FLE.

The Sigma 50mm 1.4 EX and the Nikon AF-S 58mm 1.4G both show almost 1 EV less vignetting at f/1.4, which is a very noticeable difference.

It is recommended to have a look at this article first to get an idea how this brightness graph works.

optical vignetting

Fast lenses usually show a noticeable amount of optical vignetting. Without going too much into technical details optical vignetting leads to the truncation of light circles towards the borders of the frame.
In the center of the frame almost every lens will render a perfect circle, but only lenses with very low optical vignetting will keep this shape in the corners.
So in the following comparison we move from the center (left) to the extreme corner (right) and see how the shape of the light circle changes.

I did shoot not shoot all three lenses side by side, so the size of the circles is not directly comparable.

This Nikon AF-S 50mm 1.4G definitely shows strong optical vignetting. The Voigtländer 58mm 1.4 SL actually shows even stronger one though. The Sigma 50mm 1.4 EX and Nikon AF-S 58mm 1.4G do better in this category as well. With those two onion ring structures may show up because of their aspherical elements though.

Sharpness

MTF-Graphs

These MTF graphs were measured for infinity, so in the field and shooting at different distances a noticeable variation may be visible.

Already in 2008 these MTF graphs weren’t really something to write home about. When the cheaper Nikon AF-S 50mm 1.8G hit the market in 2011 they started to look seriously bad. This Nikon AF-S 50mm 1.4G uses a rather simple optical design without any special glass elements and it definitely shows. But let’s see how those graphs translate into this lens’ actual performance and especially how it performs at portrait distances – which it might actually have been optimized for.

Focus Shift

With some lenses the plane of optimal focus shifts on stopping down and this Nikon AF-S 50mm 1.4G is one of those lenses. Stopping down to f/2.0 is not an issue, but the depth of field clearly extends more to the back on stopping down to f/2.8. This is definitely something to watch out for at closer focus distances. Good news are, that this lens focuses at working aperture when used via an FTZ adapter on a Z camera, so here this won’t be an issue.

infinity (42mp Sony A7rII)

Well, I certainly can’t say the MTF graphs lied to us. I see a lot of spherical aberration at f/1.4 (and still some at f/2.0) as even the center looks soft, not to mention the midframe and the corners.

Good news is that the lens certainly sharpens up on stopping down. The center starts to actually look good at f/4.0, the midframe at f/5.6 to f/8.0 and the corners at f/8.0 to f/11.

The Nikon 50mm 1.4 Ai-s with its design from 1982 hardly performs worse in this category and the expensive Nikon AF-S 58mm 1.4G hardly better. The Sigma 50mm 1.4 EX looks better in the center but also needs to be stopped down for good across frame performance. The cheaper Nikon AF-S 50mm 1.8G does not have that softness at wider apertures and looks really good everywhere in the frame already at f/4.0.

Some of the latest high performance 50mm 1.2 and 50mm 1.4 lenses show a better performance at their maximum aperture than this lens does at any aperture setting – they usually come at a price though.

portrait distance (1.5 m, 42mp Sony A7rII)

For portraiture it isn’t so important how flat the field is, it is more interesting to see what the sharpness is like when focused at different parts of the frame to take field curvature out of the equation.

This is what I did here, I refocused for every shot and aperture to get the best possible result at different locations in the frame (center, inner midframe and outer midframe).
Focus distance was roughly 1.5 m and the circle of the dollar bill is more or less the size of a human eye.

f/1.4 <————> f/2.0

I would expect that a fast 50mm unit focus lens like this is optimized for portrait distances, so – compared to infinity – I would expect a better performance here.

The performance at f/1.4, I would call it good, because astigmatism is low, but things are still a bit soft.

The Sigma 50mm 1.4 EX is definitely less soft at f/1.4. The Nikon AF-S 58mm 1.4G is even softer though. Here the Nikon AF-S 50mm 1.8G looks slightly worse at f/1.8 compared to this lens stopped down to f/2.0 to me.

close (0.45 m, 1:6.5, 42mp Sony A7rII)

A typical performance for a double gauss 50mm 1.4 unit focus design: soft at f/1.4, soft at f/2.0, much better from f/2.8.

Flare resistance

As always evaluating flare is a complex matter since you can get any lens to look bad if you push it hard enough and a slight change of scenario can affect results a lot.

But here the situation is pretty clear. This lens does not do well in backlit scenarios and it also doesn’t like stray light.

At f/1.4 this lens creates huge artefacts with a strong light source inside the frame and also veiling flare can be an issue – whether you are using the hood or not.

Looking at the series above, I can’t say the situation improved stopped down.

In the picture on top, the sun was far from the frame and it still led to huge veiling flare on the right side.

If you like to incorporate veiling flare in your backlit portrait pictures, this lens is for you.

Also here this lens performs just like the Nikon 50mm 1.4 Ai-s from 1982. The Sigma 50mm 1.4 EX and the Nikon AF-S 58mm 1.4G do a bit better here, they also have issues with veiling flare, but they don’t produce those huge artefacts. And the cheap Nikon AF-S 50mm 1.8G is not only the cheapest of them, it also performs best in this category.

Coma

We already know that the corner sharpness doesn’t look good and with fast lenses often Coma contributes to that and this is clearly the case here.

We see a big artefacts at f/1.4 and f/2.0 and it really takes stopping down to f/4.0 for the corners to clean up. The sad thing is, that the Nikon 50mm 1.4 Ai-s from 1982 performed just the same, so there was no progress here.

The expensive Nikon AF-S 58mm 1.4G and the Sigma 50mm 1.4 EX (released around the same time as this Nikon lens) create slightly smaller artefacts at f/1.4 and also the cheap Nikon AF-S 50mm 1.8G corrects this aberration better.

If you are looking for a fast 50mm lens that corrects this aberration very well, have a look at the Sigma 50mm 1.4 Art HSM or one of the latest mirrorless lenses. The Sony FE 50mm 1.2 GM for example corrects this aberration better at f/1.2 than this Nikon lens at f/2.8.

Distortion

The Nikon AF-S 50mm 1.4G shows a low amount of barrel distortion. A correction profile is available e.g. in Lightroom. If you are using this lens via the FTZ adapter the profile will automatically be applied in Lightroom and cannot be turned off.

Bokeh

Back in the day when I was a Nikon DSLR shooter the general consensus was, that the Nikon AF-S 50mm 1.8G is the better of Nikon’s two 50mm lenses and draws a nicer bokeh, so I never laid my hand on this 50mm 1.4G until 2024 and if you want to save yourself reading this section: people were absolutely right.

Generally this 50mm lens draws a busy/nervous bokeh with a lot of outlining and double edged structures, meaning this lens is most likely overcorrected for spherical aberration. Overcorrection of spherical aberration helps making lenses sharper, but as you will see here that certainly comes at a price.

As you can see from the comparison above: stopping down to f/2.0 doesn’t really make a big difference and at f/2.8 it still is a bit on the busy side.

Close distance

At closer distances things are mostly fine, because the outlining is usually not visible.

Mid distance

At mid distances the situation changes, and the bokeh looks more like that created by a vintage lens from the 1970s or 1980s.

Long distance

Regular readers have already guessed it: the situation does not get any better at longer focus distances.

I often found this lens to create busy and distracting backgrounds and personally I try to avoid such lenses and in the F-mount world I would much rather use the Nikon AF-S 50mm 1.8G or the Sigma 50mm 1.4 EX which can often be found for less money even.

These days on the internet you can find a fan of everything though, so if you like this kind of rendering, this is a cheap option with autofocus to get you there.

Sunstars

When it comes to 9 rounded aperture blades I have already seen good and bad sunstars from Nikon. While their later F-mount lenses (like the Nikon AF-S 28mm 1.4E) do pretty good some of the earlier ones don’t.
This Nikon AF-S 50mm 1.4G is also one of the earlier ones and it hardly creates distinct sunstars at all.
If you want to learn more about this topic have a look at this article.

Chromatic aberration

lateral

I see a low amount of lateral CA here which are easily corrected by just one click in a good raw converter. If you are using a Nikon DSLR from the D300/D3 era or later or a Z-mount camera these are also automatically corrected for Jpegs in camera.

We see a high amount of green and magenta fringing in out ot focus areas. Even stopping down to f/2.8 is not enough to get rid of it.

• f/1.4
• f/2.0
• f/2.8

• 
• 
• 

Sony A7rII | Nikon AF-S 50mm 1.4G | 100% crops

When it comes to purple fringing the situation is also far from good at f/1.4. Luckily this aberration is mostly gone by f/2.0.

• overview uncorrected
• corrected
• 100% crop uncorrected
• corrected

• 
• 
• 
• 

Nikon Z6 | FTZ II | Nikon AF-S 50mm 1.4G | f/1.4

This is a pretty extreme example so I tried to fix the fringing in Lightroom which worked reasonably well, but not always this will be case.

Conclusion

good sharpness at portrait distances low distortion build quality size/weight

average vignetting

not good correction of longitudinal CA coma correction (f/1.4 to f/2.8) flare resistance focus shift slow AF

This Nikon AF-S 50mm 1.4G never had a particularly great reputation. The Sigma 50mm 1.4 EX was released at roughly the same time and apart from AF inaccuracies – that drove several DSLR users mad – it was clearly the better lens. Things got worse, when Nikon released the Nikon AF-S 50mm 1.8G four years after: it was half the price, but thanks to its aspherical element it perfomed noticeably better in almost every category.

Martin already reviewed the manual focus Nikon 50mm 1.4 Ai-s from 1982 and honestly, this Nikon AF-S 50mm 1.4G from 2008 performs just the same. Unfortunately the manual focus version is way nicer made.

It is really difficult for me to come up with a use case I could recommend this Nikon AF-S 50mm 1.4G for. If you are looking for the vintage rendering of a 50mm lens from 1970s to 1980s – yet you definitely need (slow) AF – this one might be worth a closer look, but that’s about it.

buy from Amazon.com | Amazon.de | ebay.com | ebay.de | B&H (affiliate links) for $407 (new) or starting at $200 (used)

Sample Images

You can find many of the sample images in full resolution here.

Further Reading

• Guide to 50mm lenses for Sony E-mount cameras
• All Lens Reviews
• Review: Voigtländer VM 50mm 1.0 Nokton – The Actually Fastest M-mount lens
• Review: Canon EF 50mm 1.2L USM
• Technical Knowledge

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BastianK

My name is Bastian and I am your expert here when it comes to ultra wide angle lenses, super fast portrait lenses (ranging from a 50mm f/0.95 to a 200mm f/1.8) and I also have reviewed way too many 35mm lenses. Don't ask me anything about macro or wildlife shooting though.

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