Nikkor 50/1.4 SC

[Airy]

If I am not mistaken, there is no thread dedicated to that lens. The recent one dedicated to the 50/1.4 K was the trigger.

My copy is a near-mint one, given by a colleague who bought it around 1974 when he first delved into photography. It came with the original cylindrical "container". Lucky me.
This lens is a bit peculiar, starting with the MFD at around 0.6m.

Sharpness is in fact pretty good at f/1.4, but the impression of sharpness is lowered by a considerable "glow", owing to spherical, rather than chromatic, aberration. Indeed, the glow is much less disturbing than the one provided by the 50/1.4 AIS (blueish, which makes the lens difficult to use wide open for color shots).

Here is a series of one of my standard test shots, f/1.4 to f/4.0 in full stops (there are no half-stop clicks). The glow is quite apparent on the organ pipes at f/1.4, and all but gone at f/2.0. On the other hand, at f/2.0, some pink hue appears on the front pipes, evoking a possible focus shift to the rear plus LoCA. Longitudinal CA is anyway low, which makes me happy. From f/2.8, the pics can be considered "clean".

[Airy]

Now let us compare a bit with the 50/1.4 AIS and 50/1.2 AIS: all shots taken at f/1.4, not the same day (but with similar lighting conditions); 100% crops.

[Jack Dahlgren]

The whole discussion about the K made me buy a 50 S.C.
Supposed to be delivered today.

I’m not really sure why since I have a number of 50mm lenses already (E, 1.8G, 55mm micro, 55mm 1.2) and I rarely use that length, but the images and discussions here are oddly compelling and at the price for these things it is hard to not try it out.

[Airy]

Indeed. The SC is an excellent portrait lens around f/2.8-f/4.0, and generally speaking a decent performer. Wide open, you'll also get "crazy bokeh" on bright backgrounds (not shown here yet).

Back to the initial comparisons, you'll easily notice that the 50/1.2 trumps everybody else, but because of its better contrast maybe, it also shows that even at that shooting distance (30m ?), there is a hint of LoCA - the left side is closer with pink edges, the right one is further away with green edges. Sounds incredible - am I fooling myself here?

The other two exhibit such fringes that LoCA, if any, is not noticeable.
The 50/1.4 AIS looks a tad sharper, though.

[Airy]

At f/2.8...

[Akira]

Airy, thank you for opening a dedicated thread for a seemingly ubiquitous but actually not very known standard lens.

Apparently the potential CA and LoCA are nicely camouflaged by the flare (or the spherical aberration).  Ironically, the lenses that are supposed to perform better for the color images (although they are originally designed for the films) shows "harsher" color-related aberration.

I know there is a well serviced sample somewhere in Tokyo...

[Fons Baerken]

At f/2.8...

Lovely!

[richardHaw]

kind of confused if the K1 belongs here but here it goes.

i was shooting some samples for an upcoming article and i find that the K1 (should be identical to SC) is about a full stop worse than the K2 when it came to aberration correction.

the K2 is indeed a huge improvement

the other thing is, my sample is kind of terrible but it some of the things that I found out should hold true regardless of the sample.

the field curvature is worse, spherical aberration and chromatic aberration is present at 1.4, spherical aberration goes away by 2 but chromatic aberration doesn't really go away until f/2.8 and resolution at f/2 is probably at similar-looking but the K2 is obviously superior. I am not counting lines, my method has always been to shoot hair. if the strands look clear then it's good and when shooting straps if the patterns look well-defined then it's good. nothing "scientific".