The 50 1.4 in London, watch you don't cut yourself!

[paulhillion]

Took the 50 1.4 & my 20D with me on a day trip to London yesterday. Man is this lens sharp! On the whole it proved great as a compact, easy to pack in your bag, walkabout lens but on more than one occasion I found myself wishing I had bought the 24-70 along instead.

Here's an example of just how good (I think so anyway) this lens is. I've included 100% crops from the top, middle & bottom. All images are just converted from raw & resized for web, otherwise untouched. Shot handheld @ f/5.6

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v116/hillion/LondonEye.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v116/hillion/LondonEye2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v116/hillion/LondonEye1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v116/hillion/LondonEye3.jpg

[MDJAK]

Those are very nice shots indeed. I recently tried out that very lens while shopping at B&H. I played with that and the 135 F2. I forced myself to be a good boy and not buy either one. I want a 17" powerbook instead.

[tim]

The first shot's nice, but are you sure they're 100% crops? The crops look quite soft to me.

[condyk]

I agree ... first shot is nice but the crops are very disappointing.

[raylks]

Seems that the crop is not 100% but 150% or 200%.

[paulhillion]

Hmmm! It seems that when I converted from Raw (using PS CS) I had the settings wrong in that I was enlarging the image on the max setting (6144 x 4096). And then of course I was cropping in way to much & not 100% at all! So I've processed it again & this time I've done what I think are correct 100% crops....

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v116/hillion/LodonEye8.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v116/hillion/LodonEye9.jpg

Do you think these are any better? Here's another shot again with a crop sample, straight from the camera.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v116/hillion/sign10.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v116/hillion/sign20.jpg

[condyk]

The signs are much sharper for sure. I'm not sure I'd upgrade my 50mm II 1.8 tho', but I would at least consider the 1.4 if I didn't have the 1.8 already. I think my 1.8 is a particularly decent one. Definately easy and practical to carry around these two.

[ecobo]

The signs are much sharper for sure. I'm not sure I'd upgrade my 50mm II 1.8 tho', but I would consider the 1.4 if I didn't have the 1.8 already. I think my 1.8 is a particularly decent one. Definately easy and practical to carry around these two.
The 50/1.8 II is better than the 50/1.4. It is sharper and has a barrel distortion of 0(zer0) while the 1.4 version has some. The only thing I find worse on the 1.8II is that it has 5-blades diaphragm that produces a nasty bokeh, especially compared to the 1.4 version. If I'm going for a good 50mm lens now, I will never spend the extra bucks for a 1.4.