> Only when the background is far away. Near backgrounds are fine.
Yes. I sold mine, so I'm now running on memory, but there are certain
distances that the lens is wonderful at, but others that make you scratch
your head.
>> this lens can get downright classical in nature and punches way above its
weight.
> I never know quite what you mean when you talk this way. Oh well.
When I say "classical in nature", I'm referring to the traditional bokeh
ballooning aspect that is more common with a symmetrical lens (where the
apparant opening is the same size whether you are looking through the front
or the back of the lens), and one that uses lens extension instead of
internal focusing. OOF subjects ahead of or behind the plane of focus have
about the same characteristic and don't color shift in the fringes, nor have
differing size expansion depending on which side of the plane of focus it
is. Inotherwords, a subject that is five inches closer to the camera from
the plane of focus will look remarkably the same as one that is five inches
farther than the plane of focus. Most lenses--especially modern, IF lenses
that either are zoom lenses or mimic zoom lenses to accomplish
close-focusing characteristics, will greatly differ in how they render
objects either side of the plane of focus.
As to the "punching way above its weight" comment. That's a somewhat archiac
statement from the boxing world, which means that the lens performs much
better than its size, specifications and price may indicate. To use another
American saying, it's a sleeper.
> I found it to be a wonderful flat field macro lens that also works fine as
a normal 50. I've never seen any advantage to
> using it over the 'normal' 50s at normal focal distances, while the
normals ones have advantages from their greater speed.
I have found that the 50/3.5 is highly corrected for flat-art work. It's a
fantastic copy lens. But not at a working distance of two meters. You can
shoot it close or shoot it far, but at the one to two meter distance, the
distortion kicks in and there is a rather complex moustache distortion in
play.
AG
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