Out in Jumeriah today, I ran across a little camera repair store that had a number of old and battered 35mm film cameras. Pentax, Minolta, Canon, Nikon – and those were just the brands I recognized. Being a Nikon guy, I was most interested in the Nikon camera bodies, but as I’ve never owned a film camera in my life, I wasn’t looking seriously. Until I saw the aperture label on the side of one of the 50mm lenses. f/1.2

Until today, I didn’t know that Nikon made a 50mm f/1.2.

So, I didn’t buy it. Decided to come home and try to figure out what it was. It’s a Nikkor 50mm Ai-S f/1.2 prime lens. There are differing opinions on how good the lens is – but it seems to be the general consensus that it’s damn hard to use, as it’s got a depth of field that is measured in inches when you’ve got it stopped down. And it’s manual focus, and art that is seemingly lost on myself and many of my photographer friends. When looking through a proper pentaprism on a full frame body, with the split focus dot, yeah, I can focus on anything that’s in the center of the image. But I’m lazy and rely on the excellent software that drives modern camera bodies. Until today, I’d been lusting after the new 50mm AF-S f/1.4 that Nikon announced at Photokina 2008, as it has the silent wave motor and extra non-reflective coatings to make it a ‘modern’ lens. $440 list, as far as I can tell. And now, this. The guy in the shop was asking about $120 USD for the f/1.2. Which, according to a 20 minute perusal of the internet, sounds low. So I’m going to have to go back to the shop and see if the lens is in good condition. From what I can tell, it will work just fine on my D200.

All of this has left me wondering something. What is it with 50mm prime lenses? I already have two 50mm prime lenses. An f/2.8 Sigma Macro, that gets very little use, as it’s slow to focus and very loud, and the front of the lens extends a crazy distance when you’re out at 1:1 territory. However, it does get used from time to time, mostly when I’m doing object photography. It’s very crisp, but I can’t stand it for moving subjects. Second – I’ve got my prized 50mm f/1.4 Nikkor AF lens, that I tend to slap on my camera when it gets dark. There are now two more 50mm prime lenses that I want very badly (the afore mentioned Nikkor AFS f/1.4 and the Ai-S f/1.2). I’ve also heard very nice things about the Ziess 50mm f/1.4, but I don’t really need it, already having a f/1.4 that gets high marks for sharpness and clarity. So what is it with me and 50mm primes? There is no other class of lens that I seem drawn to like this. I also, almost always, find it just a little bit to narrow for what I want. Maybe I need to move to full-frame?