Now that many people have several months of experience with the 50mm 1.2L, does this lens provide ANY benefit over a 50 1.4 at f/4 to f/11 ? Does it demonstrate in use any improved sharpness? contrast? How do people feel about the build now? Does anybody feel this lens is worth the price?
What about the focus issues? My understanding was that focus issues only occur near wide open apertures.
Improved sharpness: no. Improved color, contrast, bokeh, build quality, IQ, etc: yes. Worth the price: depends on your needs. My 50 1.2 has been to Canon twice and come back with the same quirks, which I have learned to work around. Focus issues for me fall at between f/2.8 to f/5.6 when shooting at close distances (less than 6-8 ft) -- both wide open and stopped down performance are great. The problem is that it shifts the plane of focus very slightly and the result is apparent misfocus while in those certain conditions. Using focal points rather than focus-recompose technique significantly will improve outcome -- you are dealing with very fine depths of field.
For me, I shoot concerts and clubs in ultra-low-light conditions. I routinely shoot at 1.2 to 2.0. Performance of my old 50 1.4 was OK, but did not compare at those apertures... otherwise, it was a fantastic lens and could almost hold its own against the 50L. Again... color, contrast, and bokeh, build quality, etc withstanding.
Hope that helps! I'm not sure if it will, but I do find the new 50L a very useful tool in my bag.. enough so for my purposes that I sold my otherwise excellent copy of the 50 1.4.
I have a love and hate relationship with the lens. It's not any sharper than the 1.4, but it looks so much better as stated before. The one thing that's really annoying is the focus shift at close range, i.e. inaccurate autofocus, which is very frustrating. But I am trying to learn with it, and enjoy the images that work out
For me the issue with the F1.4 was always low contrast at the fast stops. That problem was solved by the F1.2 but for quite a cost. Not sure about the focus issues yet.
jcbenner wrote:
Now that many people have several months of experience with the 50mm 1.2L, does this lens provide ANY benefit over a 50 1.4 at f/4 to f/11 ? Does it demonstrate in use any improved sharpness? contrast? How do people feel about the build now? Does anybody feel this lens is worth the price?
What about the focus issues? My understanding was that focus issues only occur near wide open apertures.
The reviews I've seen don't indicate a significant difference between the two lenses image quality wise stopped down in the f/4 and greater range. I bought the 50L to shoot wide open to about f/2.8. I think the 50L does have advantages in this range.
Unfortunately it also has the focus shift issue, which has been talked about extensively here. You can look up most of those threads by doing a search on "50L".
