Optical quality of MF/AF primes (Nikon)

[Teus]

I'm wondering, are there major differences in optical performance between the "normal" MF primes made 20-40 years ago, and current AF glass? Not taking aspherical/ED elements, cheapened optical designs or 200mm f/2 and the likes or into account.

On SLR I'm using Nikon, and I'm wondering if modern AF primes would be any better because of better coating and modern production. Nikon Ai/AiS lenses keep me happier since I dont need AF, they're built more nicely and are affordable. Some AiS lenses were still made until recently with "older" technology, like the 50mm f/1.2 AiS. Would the 50 1.4 AF be sharper or less flare resistant?

 

[Leighgion]

As I understand it, the primary difference you'd see would be from improved coatings since most of Nikon's optical designs for their classic primes are largely unchanged from the AIS era.

If you're happy with the AI/AIS prime lenses, I'd stick to them. I shoot with Nikon SLRs from an FE to a D300 and most of my lenses are AIS era. Quite happy with them and I can't say my 50mm f1.8 AF-D is any better optically than my my 50mm f1.4 AIS.

Zooms are a another matter.

 

[mfogiel]

Some today's zooms can be sharper than prime lenses from 20 years ago - but in most cases they are only f2.8 or even f3.5, so at f2.0 they actually don't work... If you want top quality glass for your Nikon, go with the Zeiss ZF line, most of these lenses are best (for)Nikon lenses ever made... I have tested the highly reputable Nikkor 50/1.4 against my Makro Planar 50 ZF, and the MP wide open, was as sharp as the Nikkor at f5.6... I remember Roger Hicks has tested these lenses too, you can check on his site www.rogerandfrances.com, then there's this site: www.diglloyd.com, where you will find some free tests and a paid for extensive review of all the ZF LINE. My favourite Nikon prime is the 45P - a Tessar design pancake lens, one of the best Tessars ever made...

 

[BillBingham2]

My gut tells me no as most of the engineering effort at Nikon of late has been in the zoom space. While some lenses might be better than their older counter parts (85/1.4 vs 85/1.8, 50/2.8 vs 50/3.5 macro) I'm not sure. Check over at Nikonians.org to see what they say.

B2 (;->

 

[rich815]

Unless you feel you are having issues with flare, or feel the older lenses are not contrasty enough I doubt you'd see any difference in real life situations (I guess maybe on a tripod shooting Air Force test charts....maybe).

Personally I bought a beautiful used FM2 recently just so I can use the older Nikkor glass. Picked up a 50/2 Nikkor-H and 105/2.8 Nikkor-P (Sonnar design!) for a song and am getting simply wonderful images from them.

 

[Glenn2]

Hi Teus... For Nikon lenses this site has a lot of information that may be valuable to you...
http://www.naturfotograf.com/lens_surv.html

Glenn

 

[awilder]

The 50/1.4 AIS Nikkor is optically identical to the AF-D version, the multicoating is the same too. The early 50/1.8 AI was probably better than the later AIS or AF-D even though the optical design has been unchanged. That's because the AI version had most or all it's elements multicoated. Now Nikon only multicoats one or two elements and uses single coating on the rest of the glass order to keep the price down on the AF version.

 

[Teus]

If you want top quality glass for your Nikon, go with the Zeiss ZF line, most of these lenses are best (for)Nikon lenses ever made... .

have you compared it with the ZF f/1.4?
I'm wondering if the Nikkor f/1.2, f/1.4 or the ZF gives best results at f/2-2.8. When it comes to build quality, the 1.4 AFD is no go. The ZF is modern and very pretty/solid, but quite expensive.

Hi Teus... For Nikon lenses this site has a lot of information that may be valuable to you...
http://www.naturfotograf.com/lens_surv.html

thanks. Bjorn is great, I rely on his reviews a lot. I should mail him to know what he thinks about this.

 

[kaiyen]

What do you mean that the build quality of the current 50 1.4 AFD is "no go?" Just curious. Mine seems pretty well built.

I had read once that they had to come up with new resolution charts when testing the ZF 50mm lens.

 

[colyn]

One thing I have learned in over 40 years of being involved in photography is that most if not all lens evaluations are subjective. One person says this lens is a dog while others find it to be an excellent/outstanding optic.

I have used and still own most of the various focal length Nikon SLR lens from the Nikon F era to the newest Nikon digital lens including zooms and find all (except the first version Nikkor 43-86mm f/3.5) to be excellent lens in their own right.

 

[Ronald M]

I have duplicates of 24/35/50 Ais and autofocus. The major difference is the AF and new zooms are warmer colored. Same with my 80/200 4.0 zoom. Distortion is the same terrible quality and sharpness is about the same.

All have perfect clean clear glass.

 

[Monte920]

I have an AI 50mm f1.2, compared to AF 50mm f1.8D. I also have an AI-S 105mm f1.8, compared to AF Micro 105mm f2.8D.

Generally speaking, under the same apertures, these two AF-D lenses are slightly sharper, cooler, more contrasty, but with a "harder" feeling. On DSLR (mine is D200), I prefer the warmer and creamier feeling from the AI or AI-S lenses. However, on film cameras, I prefer the sharper and more contrasty images produced by AF-D lenses.

So, which ones are better? It depends on how you use them!! 🙂

 

[jonmanjiro]

I have duplicates of 24/35/50 Ais and autofocus. The major difference is the AF and new zooms are warmer colored.

Interesting comment on the warmer colour rendition! Nikon changed their multicoating from NIC (Nikon Integrated Coating) to SIC (Nikon Super Integrated Coating) around 2000-2001, so AIS lenses manufactured after that date have the warmer SIC coating.

BTW Nikon is still manufacturing nine manual focus AIS lenses, with the warmer SIC coating of course.

The nine manual focus AIS lenses still manufactured are:

AIS 20/2.8
AIS 24/2.8
AIS 28/2.8
AIS 35/1.4
AIS 50/1.4
AIS 50/1.2
AIS 55/2.8 Micro
PC 85/2.8
AIS 105/2.8 Micro

 

[gavinlg]

The current nikkor AF primes are definitely outdated. I own a nikkor 35 f2 and while it's certainly quite a sweet little optic, in comparison to say the canon 35 1.4L it's pretty lackluster. I've found in portraits on a DX camera, you must stop down to about f3.2 or so to get the edges sharp. This is pretty important when you position someone's head to the edge of the frame in a potrait. On a FX camera the problem would be worse.

 

[jonmanjiro]

The current nikkor AF primes are definitely outdated. I own a nikkor 35 f2 and while it's certainly quite a sweet little optic, in comparison to say the canon 35 1.4L it's pretty lackluster. I've found in portraits on a DX camera, you must stop down to about f3.2 or so to get the edges sharp. This is pretty important when you position someone's head to the edge of the frame in a potrait. On a FX camera the problem would be worse.

Just curious if you bought a new 35/2? Or an earlier secondhand version?

AFAIK the AF 35/2 has undergone several design tweaks since it was first released in March 1989. I purchased the latest version (50**** serial no.) last May and have been very happy with its edge performance wide open on a D200.

 

[Dfin]

jonmanjiro, I was under the impression Nikon ceased manufacturing manual focus lenses, in 2006 or 2007. Didn`t they grant Zeiss a licence to manufacture F mount manual focus lenses?

 

[jonmanjiro]

jonmanjiro, I was under the impression Nikon ceased manufacturing manual focus lenses, in 2006 or 2007. Didn`t they grant Zeiss a licence to manufacture F mount manual focus lenses?

Nikon ceased manufacturing MOST manual focus lenses in January 2006 (you can see the list of discontinued lenses on Nikon's website here). The announcement caused the "Nikon panic" (as its called here in Japan), and shop shelves were laid bare. However, the nine lenses I listed above started to reappear on shelves from about March 2006 with a new serial number series for each lens (except the PC 85/2.8). Check out Roland Vink's serial number website (link) for confirmation.

I have an AIS 24/2.8 purchased new in March 2006, and an AIS 50/1.2 purchased new in August 2006 that have serial numbers in the new range. The list of AIS lenses currenty available at Yodobashi Camera is here (link). Looks pretty similar to my list above 😉

I'm not sure about the availability of these lenses outside Japan, but they are most definitely still being manufactured, and can be bought "off the shelf" at most stores in Japan.

(Edited to add: I'm not 100% sure of the details so the following is really just speculation on my part)

Not sure about the agreement between Zeiss and Nikon, but I was under the impression that the patent had expired on the basic Nikon F-mount thus allowing Zeiss to do what they please. I'm fairly certain that additions to the Nikon F-mount for metering and autofocus are covered by newer yet to expire patents. Maybe that's the reason Zeiss only offers manual focus F-mount lenses !?

 

[gavinlg]

Just curious if you bought a new 35/2? Or an earlier secondhand version?

AFAIK the AF 35/2 has undergone several design tweaks since it was first released in March 1989. I purchased the latest version (50**** serial no.) last May and have been very happy with its edge performance wide open on a D200.

Brand new this month. It's certainly not a bad lens at all but considering nikon have nothing (at least at the moment) better in a 35mm prime, the canon 35 1.4L beats the pants off it.
Similarly I had a play with the famous nikkor AF 85 1.4 a few weeks ago. It's built nicely but the AF can be a little imprecise, it's fairly soft wide open and the corners aren't sharp until about f2.8 on DX. By comparison the canon 85 1.2L II also beats the pants off it.

I'm not a canon fan boy or whatever, but I love having high quality, fast primes, and nikon have barely updated theirs since god knows when.
I'm hoping nikon bring out some new AF-S primes this year. It's one area they really need to improve.

 

[pvdhaar]

<MODE=RANT>
There are primes in the Nikon lineup that haven't changed their optical formula a bit between MF and AF. Case in point: the 50/1.8 shares the same optics from series-E to AF (with focus window), AFn (without focus window), AFD.

But in my experience, the optical performance dropped when they went from E to AF, then again when from AF to AFn, and slightly (but only very slightly) recovered in the AFD. Mind you, it went from single coated MF to multi-coated AF along the way to no avail..

I have the impression that the play that the lens barrel has is to blame. Even though the E wasn't Nikon's masterpiece of mechanical engineering, the barrel sat solid when focussing. But the AF, and especially the AFn were so loose, that you could see the image wobble when autofocussing. MTF charts notwithstanding, that's no good!

The AFD is slightly stiffer than the AFn, and wobbles less. Something that coincides with it's slightly better sharpness..

Interestingly, the 35-70/2.8 which has a completely metal barrel is loads sharper wide open than the 50/1.8 stopped down..

My conclusion: sloppy build yields sloppy pictures..
</MODE>

 

[gavinlg]

<MODE=RANT>
There are primes in the Nikon lineup that haven't changed their optical formula a bit between MF and AF. Case in point: the 50/1.8 shares the same optics from series-E to AF (with focus window), AFn (without focus window), AFD.

But in my experience, the optical performance dropped when they went from E to AF, then again when from AF to AFn, and slightly (but only very slightly) recovered in the AFD. Mind you, it went from single coated MF to multi-coated AF along the way to no avail..

I have the impression that the play that the lens barrel has is to blame. Even though the E wasn't Nikon's masterpiece of mechanical engineering, the barrel sat solid when focussing. But the AF, and especially the AFn were so loose, that you could see the image wobble when autofocussing. MTF charts notwithstanding, that's no good!

The AFD is slightly stiffer than the AFn, and wobbles less. Something that coincides with it's slightly better sharpness..

Interestingly, the 35-70/2.8 which has a completely metal barrel is loads sharper wide open than the 50/1.8 stopped down..

My conclusion: sloppy build yields sloppy pictures..
</MODE>

I know what you mean - I hate picking up lenses worth $700 and feeling the barrel, whilst fully extended jiggle from side to side. Part of the reason why I LOVE internal focussing on zooms.

Interestingly my nikkor 35 f2 AFd is pretty decently built for how much it cost.... no barrel wobble whatsoever.