The likelihood that most of that is accurate is very low.
Lensrentals has consistently shown that there is very little correlation between price and sample variation. The Canon 50mm STM is cheap as hell and one of the most consistent lenses they've ever tested. The 50mm 1.8 G from Nikon didn't test particularly badly anyway : https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2015/07/variation-measurement-for-50mm-slr-lenses/
(these are older graphs and shouldn't be compared to current ones from the website).
The 50mm S design is impossible to make on the F mount given its design (large element close to the sensor) and I have serious doubts that Nikon would be able to match that lens in every way, including price and size, on the F mount.
The 35mm 1.8 F is nowhere near as good as the Z, particularly for anything related to off centre correction (the 35 Z is corrected off centre in a way that no f1.8 wide angle from Nikon matches, including more expensive ones such as the 24mm f.18 - you'll have to reach for very expensive lenses like the 28mm 1.4 E for that), colour correction or out of focus areas.
Correlation is not causality, so that's a rather pointless statement, as is brushing stuff off with "the likelihood that most of this is accurate is low". But let's focus on the the F-mount 50mm as an example, as I have come to like it but I am all too familiar with Nikon's slapdash quality control on this specific product. I've used three different 50 f/1.8G lenses. They all were horribly decentered out of the box. #1 I had taken too long to return, and a few months later I tried two further ones from a different dealer just to see if it really was that bad. Yep. They all were, and pretty much in the same way. And I have to assume this is the experience a great many customers are having with this lens.
Still, I couldn't just take this lying down because it stuck in my craw to still be using my ancient, pre-D, Series-E-derived f1.8 when I'd spent $200 on a new one, and after three attempts at trying to get Nikon to do right by this under warranty with no success, I finally convinced them it was decentered (simply pointing out that it was blurred on the left hand side wider than f2.8 didn't do any good, but using the magic word "decentered" and pointing this out on a Siemens chart got them to spring into action), and they adjusted accordingly, and it was a wonderful improvement. The plane of focus is still a little, shall we say, idiosyncratic -- imagine a very subtle pattern that's a tribute act to a sombrero hanging on the wall -- but in a way I expected from reviews. But overall it now has the "pop" that I expect in practice, it is excellent wide open at longer distances, and as long as you just need your subject sharp and not an entire frame-wide parallel plane of focus, it's very good wide open at short distances too. Not as good as the Z-product because it's not going to deliver center-standard sharpness in the corners like the Z, but still, for just seven elements almost needlessly squashed into the space of little more than a centimeter and for as narrow a design as it is, really quite impressive.
The Z-product spreads that glass out over eight centimeters with almost twice the number of elements, within a 62mm rather than 58mm front accessory ring. Unlike with the mid-range zooms, where they really do seem to be depending heavily on the extra space the mount provides to deliver better results, that's not designing to the mount nearly as much as it is designing to a higher price point and a different set of goals. The F-mount 50mm f/1.8 is designed for low cost. The Z-mount version is designed to pull out the stops. And Nikon can improve that F version if they wish.
Jun 10, 2019 at 08:00 AM
Previous versions of Daniel Bliss's message #14877758 « Nikon 24-70/2.8 S image thread »
