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Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a deep dive review of the premium 50mm lens for Nikon Z - the Nikkor Z 50mm F1.2 S. Is it still worth buying in 2026? | Read the Text Review: | Purchase the Nikkor Z 50mm F1.2 S @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/3UL0psf | Adorama https://prf.hn/l/Oq2Pgly/ | Amazon https://amzn.to/4syW3Dg | Camera Canada https://tidd.ly/4rSTZ92 | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/47jxzWe | Amazon UK https://tidd.ly/4rSTZ92 | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/3N7wo5u
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Table of Contents:
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0:00 - Intro and Concept
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0:00
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you my review of the Nikkor Z 50mm F1.2S
0:17
one of the earlier of their premium F1.2S line lenses. So why am I reviewing a lens in 2026 that
0:24
was released in 2020 in large part is because I am quite late to the Nikon party and didn't start
0:31
looking at the platform until 2024. What I'm trying to do is to work back through at least
0:36
some of the primary lenses in their catalog and so that I have a well-established sense of what
0:42
the benchmark has been when other lenses are released in these categories moving ahead. And so
0:47
it also gives me an opportunity to bring some fresh eyes to a lens that has been now around for over
0:52
five years and to see if it is still holding up and still worth your money in 2026 as new
0:58
alternatives have come into play. I do want to start by giving a big thank you to the good
1:03
people over at Nikon Canada who are helping me in my quest to kind of catch up on the platform
1:09
They sent me the loaner of the lens. However, they have had no input in this review
1:13
nor will they see it before you do. So without further ado, let's dive in and let's take a look
1:17
at the build and handling of the lens. All right, the first thing you'll probably notice is that this
1:22
is a bit of a beast, as are all of Nikon's F1.2 S line lenses. Price here is MSRP is $2,250. It is
1:32
currently on sale for right around $2,000, and so that makes it the cheapest of the first-party
1:37
options. The Canon comes in at $2,600. There's a Sony G Master F1.2 that's $2,300, and then Sigma
1:46
has one for E-mount and then also L-mount that is $1,550, providing the best bargain here
1:55
But amongst the first party, this is priced reasonably, but it is also easily the biggest
2:00
of the 50mm f1.2 options. It is 89.5mm in diameter or 3.5 inches, but a whopping 150mm
2:09
almost 6 inches long. And so to give you a comparison, both the Canon and the Sony lenses
2:14
are a complete 42 millimeters shorter. I mean, you're cutting off a big chunk of lens to get
2:21
back to that. And so it is the rare 50 millimeter lens that manages to make the Viltrox Pro 50
2:28
millimeter F1.4 look small. And of course it also outweighs it by nearly 300 grams
2:35
The weight here is right under 1100 grams, 1090 grams or 2.4 pounds. That's 312 grams heavier than
2:43
what the sony g master is up front we have an 82 millimeter front filter thread which again is the
2:49
largest of any of these competing lenses so it is definitely big and heavy but it is also a very
2:56
nicely made lens it feels professional grade feels top tier good materials as a part of it
3:02
it does have a thorough weather sealing gasket at the rear mount flooring coating on the front and
3:06
then seal points throughout at the rings the buttons and switches and so all of that is good
3:12
as per usual with the position of these AF-MF switches on the Nikkor lenses I don't love the
3:20
placement it's too close to the lens the camera body and in the case of a camera like my Z8 there
3:26
are two different things that are kind of interfering with accessing it and so I would
3:30
wish they would move it up to this tier here where we have the customer function button because that
3:36
would be much easier ergonomically to access we do have that custom button and so that can be
3:41
program from within the camera. And then also here we have got a display button for the top
3:47
mounted OLED screen. So in the case of the OLED, you basically have two options for what it
3:52
displays. It can either function as a distance window or it can function showing you your
3:58
currently selected aperture value. And so obviously as you change the various functions
4:04
that's going to show up from within there. My one complaint about the OLED is that I found out in
4:08
bright sunny conditions, it washed out and I couldn't see it. I had to rely on the top mounted
4:13
LCD screen on my Z8 body instead, so it kind of defeats the purpose of having that. I will say
4:20
that the Viltrox Lab series, it's more useful OLED. More information is displayed there. You can do
4:25
more with it. This is, you know, it's pretty basic and I think that's why in the newer lenses that
4:31
Nikkor is moving away from having those. Customizable control ring is one of the typical
4:37
Nikon Z-mount features. In this case, it is always going to be de-clicked. You can use it for various
4:44
functions, including for aperture. You can do pretty smooth aperture racks as a part of that
4:50
as you can see here. The one thing I will say about the customizable control ring is that for
4:56
controlling aperture in stills type settings in particular, I find that there's a bit of lag and
5:02
also it moves too fast, even when I've tried to slow it down. And so it can be a little bit hard
5:07
to actually nail the aperture value that you want through that. So I don't always love that
5:12
implementation. I prefer the filling of the manual focus ring here, which does have a decent amount
5:17
of damping, moves with good precision. All of that is fine. Aperture Iris itself has nine blades
5:25
They are rounded. However, you'll see that fairly quickly you start to see some of the shape of the
5:31
aperture blades. And so it doesn't keep a perfectly circular shape as you stop the lens on down
5:36
The included lens hood is pretty typical for Nikon lenses. It's fairly flexible plastics and so it's not quite as high end as what I would like
5:46
We do have a locking button and some grip sections to help in mounting and unmounting it Finally the minimum focus distance here is 45 centimeters about typical for a lens like this and the maximum magnification is 0 times which is very average for a 50
6:02
millimeter lens. And so all told, a nicely built lens, but it is definitely huge. And so you're
6:09
going to have to make a determination as to whether or not you can tolerate a 50 millimeter prime
6:14
that is this size and weight. Well, I'm filming today in the middle of an ice storm, and in fact
6:19
I am filming all these outdoor segments on the 50mm F1.2, and while you can't see my feet in the moment
6:25
they are dug in about a foot and a half down through a crust of ice down into the snow underneath
6:32
So once again, appreciate the fact I am suffering for you. We're taking a look at autofocus here, and while in newer lenses, Nikkor started to move towards a VCM focus motor
6:43
In fact, they're silky smooth VCM focus motors. But in their older lenses like this, they continue to rely on dual STM or stepping motors in the design
6:54
So obviously this isn't necessarily the most sophisticated of designs. But as per usual, what I do find is that while the autofocus system isn't top tier
7:04
Nikon manages to get more out of it than what you might expect. And so newer lenses like Viltrox's, for example, do have VCM focus motors
7:12
However, while they have more thrust and maybe a more sophisticated focus system, they don't always get the most out of them because of not having access to those first-party focus algorithms
7:21
In this case, kind of the opposite is true. We've got less on the hardware side, maybe more on the software side
7:26
And so the focus motor is reasonably fast, though not exceptionally so
7:30
You can see it moves back and forth with fairly good speed, but not great speed
7:36
What I did notice, however, in those tests is that there is a fair bit of focus noise
7:40
kind of a whirring buzzing as you go back and forth that you're not going to find in those newer
7:44
more sophisticated motors at the same time however there was a number of shots where i was actually
7:50
surprised that i got the shot moments where for example you know i was going to take a picture of
7:55
nala and she just kind of stepped up and kind of moved really quickly toward me and by the time i
7:59
got the camera up i completely thought it was this shot was going to be a throwaway turns out it was
8:03
accurately focused and so in situations like that where the lens actually surprises me and so in
8:08
In terms of focus accuracy, I did have good results, and that was true whether shooting in portrait sessions where I just had my wife taking portraits of me at f1.2
8:17
or then was working off camera at like f2.5. And so in both of those cases, everything was well focused, so no complaints on that front
8:25
And so autofocus isn't as sophisticated as what I would like, but I do think that Nikon is maximizing the hardware through the software side of things
8:34
and giving us good results, even if the focus motor itself isn't anything amazing
8:39
So no real complaints on that front. On the video side of things, it's mostly a good report with one exception
8:46
and that is that as I begin to do my focus pull test back and forth
8:51
that's a touch-to-focus situation. What I find, unfortunately, is a fairly common thing on Nikon
8:55
is that sometimes you get a bit of a rack in the wrong direction that is going to kind of take you out of the whole cinematic experience
9:02
And that certainly happens here. On the plus side, focused breathing is quite low from the lens
9:07
And so that makes it a plus for video work. And I did find in terms of just, you know, for example, just raw tracking like these shots of Nala
9:15
that even shooting at f1.2, it's good precision. It's beautiful looking footage
9:20
And so all of that is great. When it comes to something like my hand test, that actually went fairly well with good sophistication and moving back and forth
9:28
And again, the low focus breathing, it does help on that front. and you know in terms of overall tracking of my face in these outdoor segments obviously as you
9:36
would expect at this point iaf tracking is does such a great job and and so has no problem locking
9:42
in on that and so outside of it being maybe a little bit louder than what i would like though
9:47
i will note in video mode they've kind of detuned the focus motors a bit and so you don't get that
9:52
same kind of focus noise that i did when shooting stills and so it does work it reduces the noise
9:57
down makes the whole experience a little bit smoother and more cinematic and so you know
10:01
outside of that i think that you know overall focus is good and solid and it's pretty much par
10:06
for the course of what i would expect from a nikon lens at this point all right we'll start by taking
10:11
a look at the optical design here we have a rather complex 17 elements in 15 groups you can see
10:17
there's lots of glass elements in there that does include two ed elements the yellow here and then
10:24
we have three asperical lenses as a part of the design shown by the blue taking a look at the mtf
10:31
chart frankly for a lens this big this is a little bit underwhelming by 2026 standards we can see
10:38
that we actually get a little bit sharper just slightly off axis in the center but at the best
10:45
we're at like the 82 percent maybe 83 percent threshold and the corners you know drop not to
10:51
drastic level but certainly i see better mtfs than this and and the most recent viltrox 50mm f1.4
10:59
definitely better than this now if we start to look at some of the other metrics we find that
11:03
there is definitely some heavy vignette though very low distortion you could go without correcting
11:08
the distortion very easily it's a tiny tiny bit of a pin cushion distortion i dialed in a minus one
11:15
here but frankly it doesn't make much of a difference vignette is a whole other story however
11:19
I have maxed out the sliders at plus 100, and you can still see it could probably use a little bit more vignette correction in the corners
11:27
Frankly, for the lens being so big, I'm surprised by that. I'm also surprised because with a lens like the Plena 135mm, they basically eliminated vignette altogether
11:38
And so I'm kind of surprised that we got this heavy of a result in such a big lens
11:43
I also somewhat underwhelmed by the control of the fringing particularly since they kind of hype that it well controlled in the marketing but you can see there is some fringing before and after if we move
11:55
to a three-dimensional more high contrast object we can definitely see the both purple and green
12:01
fringing here on the guitar and if I look at my dad's old SLR that I use as a test for this we
12:07
can definitely see at f1.2 some fringing that shows up in some of the shiny bits here and so a
12:14
little bit disappointing on that front a little bit of fringing in the bokeh or uh you know
12:19
specular highlights there but not too bad now as far as the geometry it's really not too bad as far
12:24
as the there's a bit of a lemon shape but it's still fairly round and then by f2 we've got nice
12:30
you know round-ish circles across the frame however you can already start to see the nine
12:36
aperture blades and then by f2.8 those are already becoming you know more noticeable to where we
12:42
we don't really have quite a circular shape any longer. So I don't necessarily love the geometry
12:47
It's probably why they moved up to more aperture blades later on. Now on the lateral style chromatic aberration
12:53
we definitely see a great result here. Very clean transitions from black to white
12:58
All right, so how about resolution and contrast? So I'm going to be showing you results from a 45 megapixel sensor
13:03
Nikon Z8, and this is shown at 200% level of magnification to highlight all the flaws
13:09
Wide open, we can see good resolution in the center of the frame contrast is good but not exceptionally so i certainly have seen higher
13:17
contrast results mid-frame looking good here but you can definitely see a fade from here to here
13:23
where that drop is starting to occur and as we pop down here we can see that by the corners you know
13:30
they're they're not terrible but they're not certainly not exceptional either and definitely
13:35
a drop off from here to here looking up on the other side we can again see it looks okay
13:40
and continuing to soften as we get closer to the corner. So shooting in a real world situation and showing at 100% magnification
13:48
you can see, again, detail is good, like the chart suggests, but I wouldn't say that contrast is off the charts there
13:55
This shot here, I would say contrast holds up a little bit better, but you can just see that the textures
14:00
they lose just a little bit of contrast in the kind of bright situation
14:05
As far as a portrait shot goes here, if I look in here, I mean, there is good detail, but you can also see that there is a little bit of loss of contrast
14:13
So it's not quite as crisp around the eyes as what it could be. We'll take a look at a couple others here
14:19
So the eyes don't pop quite as much as what I would like from a very big, very expensive lens like this
14:25
Now, if I put a little bit more light here, kind of looking intentionally towards the light
14:30
and allowing a little more natural fill light, contrast improves a bit
14:33
But it just shows you that the contrast is not exceptional kind of natively in the lens
14:38
So you're going to need to put it in good situations. The bokeh, however, is very, very soft and the background very nicely defocused
14:46
So all of that is good. So stopping down to f1.4, and I'm going to give you a little bit, just one quick comparison
14:52
point to show you that, you know, standards have changed since 2020
14:56
And so this lens was exceptional in 2020. We have the much less expensive Viltrox Pro AF 50mm F1.4 that is now available in Z mount
15:04
With it also at F1.4, you can see that in the center of the frame, you know, contrast
15:09
It very much favors the Viltrox. Everything is deeper, richer. In the mid frame, it's like blowing it away, the Viltrox, in terms of that overall quality
15:20
In the corners, it's, you know, there is more resolution from the Viltrox, but it's not like a night and day difference
15:27
But, you know, it is different and better basically all across the frame
15:32
So, unfortunately, that gives us a little perspective as how this lens has aged into the more modern era
15:39
Now, if we stop down to f2 and then f2.8 on the right
15:42
you can see that there's not necessarily a huge jump in the center of the frame by f2
15:47
However, by f2.8, we're starting to see some further progress. And so I really start to notice that in the mid-frame, which is looking quite crisp
15:56
and then into the corners, you can tell there's a significant improvement
15:59
in the corners by f2.8. If we jump back to a portrait style shot here
16:04
this is actually at f2.5, not f2.8. You can see that what I was looking for
16:10
and lacking a bit at f1.2 is definitely present now at f2.5
16:15
Very, very strong contrast, making the eyes pop a little bit more
16:18
and just giving a little bit more detail in that area. If we move on to a landscape style result
16:23
and compare at f1.2 and then at f5.6 you can see looking at the images globally they don't
16:29
necessarily look radically different though the f5.6 result does have better contrast you can see
16:34
just bigger punch between the darks and the light areas however if we zoom into a pixel level in the
16:40
center of the frame you can see that the at f1.2 it's looking good but by f5.6 every that contrast
16:47
has jumped to where all of those textures look much much better and so if we pull over to the side
16:52
that difference is even more stark here you can see that you know this is a little bit mushy
16:58
looking where at f 5.6 it's all that those kind of wild branches going here and there they're very
17:04
very crisply delineated it all looks like it's got lots of punch in here whereas here it's a
17:09
little bit mushy so definitely it by the years by the time you're shooting at landscape apertures
17:13
like f4 f5.6 f8 the lens is awesome lots of punch lots of detail but wide open contrast
17:20
eh, it's okay. Now by f11, diffraction is going to start to creep in
17:25
and then at minimum aperture of f16, it's affecting the image a bit more as you can see
17:30
However, in both of these cases, I don't find diffraction to be a major deterrent
17:34
It feels like the lens is continuing to sharpen up as you stop it down enough
17:38
that it offsetting diffraction a bit here And so I wouldn hesitate to shoot at these apertures because if we jump back to 100 magnification you can see that that still looking very very crisp
17:49
now while the maximum magnification isn't exceptional the lens actually does fairly
17:53
good up close detail is good here again contrast doesn't like jump off the page however it's it's
17:59
a very very usable result and that kind of lends us towards the bokeh here and I think that that's
18:05
obviously a strength for the lens the overall rendering is nice and so in this case fringing
18:09
even though it's shiny surfaces isn't really marring the image and you can see that both before
18:14
and after the plane of focus really really nice defocus very very soft this shot here you know
18:20
you can see good detail on Nala's face but look at how just kind of smooth all the background is
18:26
allowing her face to kind of just really pop out of that scene a very simple shot of my wife's cup
18:32
of tea here but you can just see it looks really crisp and kind of just pristine looking with
18:37
everything nicely defocused this is at f1.2 and so you can see number one a really great pop in
18:44
terms of just the kind of the look of the image and then a nice transition towards defocus to where
18:49
though there's you know hard edges all throughout here they mostly look you know quite soft and
18:54
that's i think a huge advantage another shot here where we do have some hard edges here and you know
19:00
they're they're not melting away completely but a really nice soft transition towards defocus
19:05
very nice here's an interior shot here and again this is the kind of thing that i i really love a
19:12
50 millimeter f1.2 for it just it it just gives you a really great look here and so we got nice
19:17
detail um on the old slr but then as we transition towards the background it just all just kind of
19:24
disappears uh it's starring yet again here and again in a simple scene i just threw it onto our
19:30
bed, took a picture of it and, you know, threw a quick color preset on there, but you can see how
19:36
just great everything looks. That's the joy of a lens like this. We'll kind of combine the defocus
19:43
transition to defocus with a beginning look at flare resistance here. Now this lens does not have
19:48
the newest coatings that Nikkor has. And so it's not as good as the 35 millimeter F1.2, but for a
19:54
very large aperture lens, it's still quite good. And so we can see here in that transition towards
19:59
defocus nice but more importantly we have a really bright light source here and it's not
20:04
marring the image at all looking here you can see there is a little bit of a ghosting pattern
20:10
that's showing up here and in this composition there is some of it down here but you can barely
20:15
see that as we stop down not looking too bad however in this particular angle stop down to
20:21
f11 it's a little bit more obvious as we pan back and forth you can see wide open there's a couple
20:28
of spots where you get a little bit of ghosting, but not too bad. Stopping down that can be a little
20:32
bit more definite. Though there probably won't be a ton of cases where you're shooting at as small as
20:37
f11 and shooting right into the sun or a bright light like this. However, just to be aware of that
20:43
Final metric we'll evaluate is when it comes to shooting the night sky. Anytime you have a lens
20:47
with a maximum aperture of f1.2, it's going to be a tempting option. And frankly, I would go ahead
20:52
and use it. It's not perfect. You'd see a little bit of chromatic aberration around some of these
20:57
really bright star points as we get towards the corners there is some coma effect you can see what
21:03
looks like birds flying out of the the frame and that's you know the effects of coma but at the
21:08
same time it's not terrible and being able to suck in all that light at f1.2 is useful though i will
21:15
note the very heavy vignette does reduce that a little bit more look at all of the various asteroids
21:21
that are shooting through this frame. Very interesting. Anyway, I would use it if you own it
21:26
but it's not what I would consider a top pick for Astrowork
21:30
So what's my conclusion? Well, obviously, I think that the standard has changed in 2026
21:36
And that is a change in terms of, you know, kind of the expected resolution standard
21:40
It's also changed in terms of the competition on the market. And a new lens like the Viltrox Pro 50mm f1.4
21:48
while it doesn't share that maximum aperture of f1.2, It is the sharper lens of the two, and there's no question about that
21:55
And so, obviously, that does maybe dim some of the enthusiasm for such a big and expensive lens
22:00
if it is no longer necessarily the pinnacle of performance. At the same time, it remains the sole autofocusing F1.2 lens at 50mm on the platform
22:10
I think that's going to change here in 2026, maybe from a couple of fronts
22:14
but at the same time for the moment if you want kind of the top tier f1.2 option on the platform
22:21
that remains the 50 millimeter f1.2s and the fact that the price has been discounted a bit not to
22:27
mention the fact that there are at this stage plenty of used examples on the market that make
22:31
it much more affordable it might make some people say you know what i can tolerate the size and the
22:36
weight you know getting such a high performing 50 millimeter lens at a decent price i would say
22:40
that this still makes the most sense for those of you that are portrait photographers, maybe wedding
22:45
photographers, and you want that unique cutout look of f1.2 and the beautifully smooth
22:51
bokeh you can get from it. It still remains an appealing option for that. And I would say while
22:56
it optically has more vignette and more fringing than what I would like from a lens that is this
23:02
big, seems like when it's this big, they could have corrected those things maybe a little bit
23:06
better optically as opposed to trying to do that through software corrections
23:10
At the same time, however, I do really like the look of the images that I get off of it
23:15
both for stills and videos. So I think it still remains an appealing option
23:20
particularly, I think, if you can get it at a reasonable price. Now, if you want more information, you can check out my full text review
23:26
that's linked in the description down below. As always, thanks for watching. Have a great day, and let the light in