Red, this one is easy. Hands down, the 50MP and Nikon, provided you can deal with camera stillness - MUP, etc.
Technically (i.e. macro/micro contrast, detail definition, MTF) it's better at f2 but neither of these are great there, to be expected. By f4 the 50MP is a veritable powerhouse, many believe it is the sharpest 50mm made, I am of this view also, until the 55mm Distagon steals the crown. It's very well behaved out to 15mm IH.
It is also a beautifully clinical lens, and has much less distortion than the M equivalent you mention, around half the level of distortion in fact. It is the only ZF lens I would find a use for (Contax guy), and it's quite versatile, fine for objects as well as landscapes. Bokeh is personal but you see many great examples from the MP.
Overall its best aperture performance is around that of the 21mm Distagon. These can both crunch with the best of them ;-) It's the kind of lens large format shooters treasure, if I can put it that way. Your 50/3.5 may not seem so phenomenal if you get one.
It is such a good lens a lot of people dislike it. For reasons that remain a mystery despite their arguments. I believe some lenses are held to higher standards than others. What type of film do you have in mind might matter, this is a very high contrast lens...more difficulty with tonal control unless B&W.
philip_pj wrote:
It is such a good lens a lot of people dislike it. For reasons that remain a mystery despite their arguments.
No mystery:
- The extreme corners wide open are utter junk. Dark, smudgy, unattractive.
- The boke is very iffy on occasion, nervous.
- It handles specular highlights ungracefully too frequently for my taste.
- It has "fat" depth of field. This is strictly speaking not a negative, but it isn't always what people look for.
- It doesn't really have a look, it is quite clinical. I might make an exception for portraits, where it shines.
- The "feature" which leads to the junk wide-open corners is dramatic field curvature, which can lead to in-focus far away stuff in the corners. Very annoying.
Zeiss should have made the optics of this lens 5% larger and had a fantastic lens with no compromises (except the rendering style).
The 50P:
- It is soft and a bit hazy until f/2.8-f/4. From f/5.6 it may be sharper than the 50MP.
- The look is gorgeous.
- The boke is very graceful.
- It handles sparkly highlights nicer more often.
I own both and am not planning to sell either, but the 50P is clearly my favorite.
iffy, nervous, ungraceful... sounds like a perfect lens for me. especially since I know it's wickedly sharp in the center which works for rangefinder guys like me.
for closeups I will be using the same metal Bogen tripod+head I use for my Sinar and film is going to be 100 speed b&w which I develop myself. I just shoot digital for color so being able to put this on some of them seems fine.
gonna miss the M2 a lot tho =[ still as film production winds down it's probably better to have my limited budget in lenses.
Carsten this might be a big ask but is there any way you could take some direct comparisons? Doesnt matter if theyre on different cameras. Boring subjects you find around are fine, what Im really interested in is seeing how the transition to OoF differs and how severe the rendering in the plane of focus is. anything you could do in the f2-f4 range below 3 meters would be spectacular.
I do have some other options... crons, maybe the 35/2 biogon? could keep the body and sell only the lens in those cases.
I can't offer you much for your trouble, but if you find yourself in Texas I could buy you a beer or two.
Carsten I found your comparison between the slr 50P and the 50MP which was very informative, but I don't have the SLR version of the 50P. I have the ZM 50. Did you also do a comparison between those earlier in the thread?
There are lots of 50P shots in the following thread, and my opinion is better in that one; ignore what I wrote in this thread and read what I wrote in that thread; I must be in a bad mood now or something; the 50MP is obviously a great lens, but there are definitely very valid reasons for preferring the 50P. Even Philip agreed with that back then
