Since getting the NEX-5N, I've been busy trying to decide my next lens purchase. I've been reading all the reviews by Steve Huff, Ken Rockwell and of course, this forum and more. My favs have been the Zeiss ZMs, Contax G and watching carefully the discussion on the CV 15.
Then I realized, I have this old Pentax ME Super with the subject lens on the camera sitting as a display on my bookshelf. I have read little of this lens on a NEX and some have reviewed it as a sharp lens stopped down. So, what the heck, I picked a fotodiox adapter which arrived today and put it through some casual tests. So, I'm curious what you pixel peepers think.
Below is my target subject shot at f/5.6. The 100% crops were shot at f/1.7, 2.0, 2.8. I'll also post some crops at f/4, 5.6, 8 and 11.
BTW - this lens is listed on ebay for just over $100 'Buy it Now'. Not a bad deal for a 50mm on the Sony NEX.
Looks pretty good! Only a touch of low contrast at 1.7 ~ 2.8
But that's not saying a lot for a 50/1.7 really. Of the 6 or 8 1.7 and 1.8 50's on my shelf they're all pretty much the same like this. Bokeh varies among them. Also the amount of CA (like bright sky through dark leaves) varies some. Sharpness seems to be about the same across the lot tho - about like this one. The prices of these lenses ($25 ~ $50) makes them a really good buy if you don't need the flatness of a 1.2 or 1.4 and even then 1.7 or 1.8 at a meter or two shows some nice OOF backgrounds - and that's about the right distance/aperture/focal-length for portraits IMO.
I still want to check out bokeh and things like CA but what surprised me the most was the sharpness of this lens on the NEX-5N. I've been shooting Zeiss ZM and Contax G and the sharpness of this 'kit' lens is right up there.
