Originally posted by axl Curiosity is getting better of me and the fact that FA series has faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaast AF....
I can confirm that the FA 50/1.4 AF is very fast.
Regarding its performance below f/2.8 it is no secret that it produces soft images. Have you seen the
Dpreview test of the FA 50/1.4? It features crops of f/1.4 shots compared to other aperture settings.
Blende8 has argued that the softness is mainly a loss of contrast and that resolution is retained to a large extent. I'm not sure what to make of that. The FA 50/1.4's optical design is rather straightforward and spherical aberrations just go out of hand close to wide open. The 50/1.7 has better performance in the f/1.7-f/2.8 region but its bokeh isn't as nice. The DA* 55/1.4, as you know, improves much on the FA 50/1.4 when it comes to sharpness wide open, in the centre and in particular in the corners.
I'd still prefer the FA 50/1.4 over the DA* 55/1.4 because in my experience FA 50/1.4 images shot at f/2.8 or stopped down further look excellent and have more of an FA Ltd touch than the DA* 55/1.4. This is my subjective opinion which a) everyone is welcome to differ from and b) may be based on too few comparisons (however, I'm quite certain I've seen enough shots from both lenses).
I don't shoot the FA 50/1.4 much below f/2.8 because then it does not only loses "bite" in the in-focus areas, its bokeh also becomes less appealing. Every time I try to exploit f/1.4 the resulting bokeh becomes distracting, IMHO. I'm sure one can exploit that for clever and cool bokeh effects, but below f/2.8 the FA 50/1.4's bokeh becomes less and less useful to create a non-distracting background.
Originally posted by RioRico Actually it IS quite sharp. It's just sharp in a very very thin field, especially when the lens-subject distance is close.
Getting the focus right is a challenge, but that's not the main issue with the FA 50/1.4 wide open. It simply isn't that sharp even if the focus is bang on. Several professional tests have confirmed it and it becomes apparent in comparison to more modern lenses that are sharper at f/1.4 like the DA* 55/1.4 or the Sigma 50/1.4.
Originally posted by RickyFromVegas Anyways, auto-focus at "how Starbucks saved.." book on a tripod @1.4
Please note that AF "points" are not points but rather large
areas. It is impossible to unambiguously focus at exactly "how Starbucks saved..". You'll have to be prepared that the camera will settle on something adjacent to lock focus. As a matter of fact, in your latter shots, the books in front of the one you intended to focus on are in sharper focus. It could obviously be an FF issue but, again, with such a target you cannot be sure what exactly the camera went for.
Peter, I have f/1.4 shots from my FA 50/1.4 but have a look at the Dpreview review I linked to and let us know if you need to know more. As you probably know, Dpreview also tested the DA* 55/1.4 (requiring multiple attempts to get a good copy and even the last one they used wasn't a 100% OK) and you may use that test to compare against the FA 50/1.4 test. Since you know the performance of the DA* 55/1.4, this should give you a good feel for the FA 50/1.4.