Conclusion
Pros
- Excellent build quality with great control haptics
- Fast and accurate autofocus
- Truly exceptional sharpness, straight from f/1.4
- Very pleasing bokeh
- Excellent control of chromatic aberration
- Low distortion
- Very good flare control
- Outstanding color and contrast
Cons
- Expensive
- Large and Heavy
The cons list is short, and show really the only two things that are bad about the lens: it’s quite big, and it’s quite expensive. If you can get past those, there’s absolutely nothing left to worry about. Optically, this is the finest 50mm lens I’ve ever used, and is among the finest lenses of any focal length I’ve ever used. It’s exceptionally sharp across the entire frame right from f/1.4, and somehow gets even a bit sharper at smaller apertures. The bokeh is excellent and it controls almost all aberrations extremely well. The lens handily outperforms the already rather exceptional FE 55mm f/1.8: extremely impressive.
While I will likely stick with the 55mm f/1.8 for my personal shooting, as I value the smaller size and lighter weight, if you don’t want to compromise on image quality, the FE 50mm f/1.4 is the lens to get. A spectacular effort from Sony and Zeiss.
Image Samples
Click on an image to enlarge.
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