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My Biggest Giveaway Yet + New Website!!!

25/8/2012

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To celebrate my new website, vintagelensesforvideo.com, I’m doing a biggest lens giveaway so far, giving away 6 lenses, so the chance of winning is better than ever!

The lenses I’m giving away are Helios 58mm f/2 primes. They are great for low light and archiving a very nice, shallow depth of field and beautiful, dreamy flares.  I’ve tested these lenses and I was really impressed with the performance, in fact it’s currently one of my favourite budget lenses. You can check out the test videos on my youtube channel if you haven’t done it already.

To find out more about more and enter the giveaway, visit just clear here or head over to vintagelensesforvideo.com

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Pentax SMC 200mm f/2.5 Lens

22/5/2012

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The Pentax SMC 200mm f/2.5 is quite a unique lens.  The most impressive feature that jumps into your eyes straight away is a really fast aperture of f2.5. When you take the lens into your hand, you can tell it a serious one. Large, heavy, built like a tank, great long through smooth focusing ring, this lens is a pleasure to use. However non of this matters if optics can’t deliver. The SMC 200mm definitely delivers nice images; no wonder it’s still popular and quite expensive for a vintage lens.  These are going for over £400/$700 on eBay, so not what you would call an absolute bargain. While it’s nice and sharp, is it really worth paying so much over, let’s say a very nicely performing and really cheap Tokina 80-200mm f/2.8 ?

Well,  YES and NO, it really depends on what is your priority. Pentax produces really sharp images even wide open and doesn’t really need to be stepped down by a stop like Tokina to get a decent sharpness. Contrast, clarity and colours are also really good. On a downside of course is a higher price, no flexibility of a fast zoom lens. There is also quite a lot of red chromatic aberration in many lighting situations, stepping down the lens helps, but you have to be at f/5.6 to get rid of it almost completely, which is less than perfect. And at the end of the day, how much difference does actually f2.5 makes comparing to f2.8. Well not that much really, it’s only a third of a stop and while it does affect the brightness and bokeh a little bit as you’ve probably seen in the test above, alone it’s not worth paying the extra $400 and should not be the reason for choosing it over f2.8 lenses, unless you want to show off.

I don’t need and can’t afford to keep both Tokina 80-200mm f2.8 and Pantax 200 f2.5, so I decided to sell one. Which I’m keeping?  Tokina wins for me. Much more flexibility, still really fast at f2.8, it produces very beautiful images and it’s really cheap making it a great value for money lens, which is what I value a lot. One other reason why Pantax had to go, is because it also focuses the same way Nikon lenses do. Most of my lenses focus in the same direction as Canon, so I’m used to such workflow when shooting gorilla style and even more importantly with a follow focus. Pantax could be a great choice for Nikkor lens user and while it’s a bit expensive in my option, comparing to modern lenses, it offers a lot of the money. Like most vintage lenses it’s much more suitable for video work than most modern lenses: great, long through focus ring with hard stops, manual aperture adjustment ( can be adapted to most cameras with a simple, cheap adapter).

While I’m not keeping mine, there is a place for this lens and if you find one for under £400/$700 it might be worth giving it a good closer look.
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Click to view this item on eBay
Pentax SMC 200mm f2.5 on eBay

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TOKINA AT-X 80-200mm f/2.8 LENS TEST | Vintage Lenses for video DSLRs

9/5/2012

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Tokina AT-X 80-200mm is one of the most exciting vintage lenses I have in my current collection. I was really keen to try to since I bought it a few months ago. My lens has a Minolta MD mount, which requires an adapter with additional lens for it to work properly with Canon EOS DSLRs, so I didn’t bother with it initially (I think it comes in different mounts too, which are more easily adaptable to Canon DSLRs). So in the end I decided to try out the lens with my Sony NEX 5N, which keeps impressing me every time I’m using it; such a powerful, fully featured camera in such a small body with a very affordable price tag too.  I bought a cheap MD to NEX adapter on eBay, without any additional glass that could affect the performance and it works as good as one could wish for.  Being quite a heavy lens at 1.2kg, the Tokina 80-200 really benefits from having a sturdy, metal tripod ring mount, especially when used with such a tiny camera like 5n. For the test shoot, the lens was supporting the camera, rather than other way round.  It really helped with the stability and there was no problem with the lens being front heavy. The lens itself is all metal too, except the clip-on lens hood, which is plastic (I have no problem with that).  If my info is current the AT-X is the professional Tokina range (something like L to Canon) and it definitely feels like it’s built for professional use.  This is a very solid lens with a really nice, wide, smooth focusing ring, perfect for manual focusing. The lens does extend ever so slightly when focusing, but not much. The front 77mm multicoated element looks very impressive too, but what is really special about this lens is it’s constant aperture of f/2.8 throughout the focal range. It puts this lens up against the big boys like Canon’s 70-200mm f/2.8 and Nikon’s 80-200mm f/2.8. These lenses are very expensive comparing to Tokina (up to 10 times more expensive!), but they are excellent and certainly worth their price, but what if one can’t afford a Canon or Nikon? Should they go for a cheaper, slower version like Canon’s 70-200mm f/4? I believe that this Tokina offers much than a slower modern equivalent by one of the leading brands. It’s still about 4 times cheaper even that Canon 70-200mm f/4, so I believe this is one of the cheapest fast alternatives to Canon and Nikon fast, long zooms. At the time of writing there are 4 Tokina AT-X 80-200mm lenses on eBay, one going at "buy ti now" price of under $200 and another about $250, which is an absolute bargain, considering that the lens performs well and I hope you’ll agree with me that it does produce some very lovely images. I was mostly testing it at 200mm because this is what makes it special; not really the 80mm or 100mm at f/2.8, but 200mm at f/2.8. I’m very impressed with the bokeh it producing even at f/5.6, but I would say the sweet spot for the lens is f/4. Like most lenses it certainly benefits from being stepped down by a stop or two.  The f/2.8 is definitely usable is the situations that demand for it (low light scene for example) but there is plenty of shallow depth of field at f/4, so that is where I’ll mostly stay.

I haven’t used neither the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 or Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8, so I can’t comment on how well they perform wide open, but like I said, most of the lenses benefit from being stepped down a bit and there is nothing wrong with that, especially if your not paying thousands of $/£ for a lens.

Anything I don’t like about the lens, or the images it produces? Well, I’m not too keen on the pull-push zoom design, which makes it almost impossible to zoom in or out smoothly during the recording. With DSLRs I don’t tend to do that anyway, so not a big problem. A bigger problem for me is the presence for the chromatic aberration, definitely not as much as in some other lenses I’ve tested, but it’s almost always there, mostly in out-of-focus highlights and extreme light spots of the image. The bad thing is that it doesn’t really go away completely even when the lens is stepped down to something like f/5.6, so that is my biggest problem.

Nevertheless at this price the images are still mind blowing and this is one of these great lenses that are only cheap because majority are not aware of their existence and this is exactly what the budgetfilmmkaer.co.uk mentality is about; it’s about finding good stuff that is affordable and is good value for money, not about crap stuff that is cheap to buy or even worse, expensive, so I highly recommend this lens, just make sure you buy the one which compatible with your camera, preferably without any adapters that contain glass in them because it’s likely to affect the performance of the lens, softening the image at very least, which would make the whole thing a bit pointless.

Hope this info is useful to you guys and  it will help save you some money on your future lenses. Stay tuned for many more lens tests and my future lens giveaways.
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Click to view this item on eBay
Tokina 80-200mm f/2.8 on eBay

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WIN 1 of 4 HELIOS 58mm f/2 Prime Lenses | Lens Giveaway

29/3/2012

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It’s time of a new lens giveaway and as promised this time I’m giving away 4 lenses, so more of you guys will have a chance of winning. 

The lenses I’m giving away are Helios 58mm f/2 primes. They are great for low light and archiving a very nice, shallow depth of field.  I’ve tested these lenses and I was really impressed with the performance. You can check out my test videos on my youtube channel.

3 of the lenses are Helios 44M which are older, more common 9 aperture blade version and 1 of the lenses is Helios 44M-4, which is virtually the same, but slightly newer, 6 aperture blade version.

All of the lenses come with both lens caps and are still in great optical condition. A couple have slightly stiff focus rings, which is common for these lenses, but still work fine. I will post these anywhere in the world for free, so don’t let you location stop you from entering; my last lens was won by someone in Algeria.

Since I’m giving away 4 lenses rather than 1, I hope that there will be more entries, so I decided to try out the raffle website called rafflecopter.com to help me track all the entries and make things cleaner.

Entering is very simple as before, all you need to do is complete 1 of 6 steps below. At first I made 3 mandatory, but then decided that I don't want to restrict people from entering just because they don't have a Tweeter or Facebook account, so yo qualify for 1 entree you only need to complete 1 point, but completing all 6 will give you higher chance of winner. Please note, that the winner will NOT be chosen by the amount of point. The extra points will just give extra entries: 1 point = 1 entree, 2 points = 2 entries , 3 points + 3 entries, etc.

To earn yourself extra entries you can also tweet the message shown in the widget below once every day, just make sure that you do it through rafflecopter widget below. Any entries made in any other way will not be entered into competition, only the ones processed through rafflecopter.

Good luck to everyone entering and the winners will be announced in 2 weeks time, once the competition is over.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

As you may know, I don’t have any sponsors and I fund all my giveaways myself. I giveaway what I can and as often as I can. If you like my giveaways and would like to help me fund my future giveaway, please consider donating anything that could go towards new prizes. If you can’t spare anything, you can still help, by spreading the word about www.budgetfilmmaker.co.uk. All your help is greatly appreciated  

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Olympus Zuiko 50mm f/1.4 vs Helios 44M 58mm f/2 TEST

29/3/2012

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I’ve tested both of these lenses before, so the individual write-ups and opinions can be found here (for Olympus) and here (for Helios).

Someone on the website asked me what was better just considering the image quality Olympus Zuiko 50mm f/1.4 or Helios 44m 58mm f/2, so I decided to do this quick test with my Olympus and the Helios I’ve used in my previous test.

I think the results in the video are quite obvious, Olympus performs much better at f/2, which means it’s already slightly stepped down and you are getting more out of it than the Helios, which at f/2 is wide open. To get more out of your lens you generally want to step it down a little bit. It is really hard to judge the sharpness from a video anyway and in the video mode lenses are much more forgiving, so to get a better idea about sharpness I’ve also included some photos. Again with all the compression the video goes through you can’t judge the sharpness that well.  So have a looks at some side by side crops below.

I think in the video I didn’t used the best Helios photos I actually managed to take during the test.  Maybe the focus was just slightly out, which introduced a lot of glow and some chromatic aberration around the highlights. So below you can see these close ups again (click to enlarge). I found that the second badge of Helios test shots was much better than the first and in this one even at f/2 there is very little difference between these 2 lenses. If anything I think Helios produces better results, with lens less chromatic aberration and ghosting around the highlights that can be seen in Olympus crop. Absolutely amazing considering the price of this lens.

Both lenses definitely benefit from being stepped down to f/2.8 and you are getting a really nice image from both at this f-stop. In the video test, Olympus still looked better, but the close-ups below are virtually identical and Helios has virtually no chromatic aberration around highlights where Olympus still has some red/pink ghosting around the edges.

At f/5.6 I think Helios is sharper, but Olympus performs quite nicely too.  I perform the warmer look of Helios too, although there is nothing wrong with Olympus.

I think the very crucial thing with these lenses is to get the focus right. The difference between the Helios close-ups that were maybe just a bit out and the ones that were spot on is massive, not only in sharpness levels, but also chromatic aberration and ghosting.

I think both of these lenses offer great value for money. Olympus is one of the cheaper 50mm f/1.4 and performs great and Helios is just incredible value for money, being one of the cheapest lenses you can buy, the results it produces are amazing. If you are stuck with your plasticky, slow kit lens, go and get one of these babies. At f/2 it is quite a fast lens and it well be a great lens for your mid to close people shots. At this price you can’t go wrong.

If you still can’t be bothered to buy one, then stay tuned, because I will be giving away a few of my Helios lenses very soon. 
Picture
Click to enlarge
Both lenses definitely benefit from being stepped down to f/2.8 and you are getting a really nice image from both at this f-stop. In the video test, Olympus still looked better, but the close-ups below are virtually identical and Helios has virtually no chromatic aberration around highlights where Olympus still has some red/pink ghosting around the edges.
Picture
Click to enlarge
At f/5.6 Helios is sharper, but Olympus performs quite nicely too. There isn't much between them at this stage and in video mode you couldn't tell the difference.
Picture
Click to enlarge
I think the very crucial thing with these lenses is to get the focus right. The difference between the Helios close-ups that were maybe just a bit out and the ones that were spot on is massive, not only in sharpness levels, but also chromatic aberration and ghosting.

I think both of these lenses offer great value for money. Olympus is one of the cheaper 50mm f/1.4 and performs great and Helios is just incredible value for money, being one of the cheapest lenses you can buy, the results it produces are amazing. If you are stuck with your plasticky, slow kit lens, go and get one of these babies. At f/2 it is quite a fast lens and it well be a great lens for your mid to close people shots. At this price you can’t go wrong.

If you still can’t be bothered to buy one, then stay tuned, because I will be giving away a few of my Helios lenses very soon.

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Olympus Zuiko 50mm f/1.4 on eBay  

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Helios 44m 58mm f/2 Lens on eBay

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WIN a Helios 44-2 58mm f/2 Lens

26/2/2012

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If you read my post on my Helios 44-2 58mm f/2 lens, you will know that I decided to giveaway this lens.  It’s a great little prime. It is a really old lens, so cosmetic condition is not great, but optically it's still fine and performs just great. It has both lens caps and a very easily adaptable M42 mount.

It’s is not an expensive lens and might not be a highly desirable prize, but it’s very simple to enter and it will only take a few minutes of your time.

There are 3 ways: YouTube, Facebook & Tweeter.

Youtube:
  • You must be subscribed to my page: www.youtube.com/user/alanbesedin
  • You need to Like and Favorite this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBKz9EA7EAM
  • Once the above steps are complete you need to post a comment on the video above to confirm your entry.  From that, I will be able to take your username and put it into the raffle.
Facebook:
  • You need to like the BudgetFilmmaker page: http://www.facebook.com/BudgetFilmmaker
  • You also need to like the actual post about this competition. Again from that, I will be able to take your username and put it into the raffle.
Tweeter:
  • You must be following Budgetfilmmaker there: https://twitter.com/#!/BudgetFilmmaker
  • You will also need to tweet this message from your profile: Please RT, Great Change to win a Helios 44-2 58mm f/2 prime lens.  Check out the details here: http://www.budgetfilmmaker.co.uk/1/post/2012/02/win-a-helios-44-2-58mm-f2-lens.html #Heliosgiveaway1
  • I will be able to track you down by the hash-tag and add you to the raffle.
You don’t have to enter in all 3 platforms, you can use only 1, but if you enter in all 3 your chances will of course increase. It makes sense to do that anyway, because you most likely have different profile user names on each site anyway and you could cheat this way anyway and enter 3 times. Even if you have exactly the same names on all 3 sites, you name will still be counted 3 times.

Please no cheating though, just one entry from each platform. If I see that the profile was created just few days ago and it’s empty,  I’ll have to ignore such entry, as such page would like the profile was just created to enter and might be one of a few my the same person.

I will be happy to send this lens anywhere in the world for free, so no restrictions in that sense.

You can enter until the midnight on Sunday, the 4th of March. I will announce the winner on Monday, the 5th.

Good luck to everyone entering. If you don’t win this time there will be many more opportunities in future. I’m not rich, but I will try to do 1 giveaway each month, so stay tuned.
Comments

Helios 44-2 58mm f/2 Test Footage | Shot on Sony NEX-5n

25/2/2012

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Above you can see some test footage which I shot with a Helios 44-2 58mm f/2 lens.  In my opinion this vintage Russian lens is very special. It has a very nice look to it and when shooting into the sun it creates very interesting flares that add a lot of character to the footage. It’s not suitable for every scenario, but I think it definitely adds a very cool oldschool film look the footage shot with it.  I personally really like the result I was able to achieve with this lens and it’s not just about the flares. The lens is really sharp and close focusing ability makes it a really good lens for close-ups (see 0:49 of the video). The colors are really good too and the maximum aperture of f/2 is great for low light shots. One of the nicest things about this lens though is the fluid aperture adjustment.  This not something that is usually found in photo lenses. It lets you adjust the aperture in a smooth way, so you can easily fine-tune your aperture while recording without a sudden change of brightness. This feature was very handy when I was filming the BMX riders coming into the bright daylight and back under the roof where it was much darker. I was able to adjust the aperture very easily and smoothly without it being obvious in the shot. This a feature that is usually reserved to Cine lenses, so it is so nice to see it in this budget lens. The focus ring on my copy is really smooth and has long through, which meant I was able make really smooth, subtle focusing adjustments, which is what you would usually want from a lens used for video.

A lot of modern auto-focusing lenses have a very short through, which helps the autofocus motors achieve the focus quicker for photography needs, however for video this is actually a big downside, so good old manual lenses are so much better for manual focusing. They also have hard stops, which are important if you use a follow focus and focusing marks. Again, some modern lenses, Canon EF in particular don’t have any hard stops.

I keep telling people that the reason why modern lenses are so much more expensive that the old glass is not only because they have great optics, but also because they have great, fast auto focusing motors, which obviously makes a massive impact on the price. After all, these are photography lenses made for modern sophisticate cameras with fancy auto focusing systems. I said it before and I’ll say it again: if you are only doing video work with you DSLR then there is really no need to buy modern Canon, Nikon, Panasonic, etc glass. You can get so much more for your money if you invest into manual lenses and they don’t have to be as cheap as this Helios. Even very popular manual Nikon and Zeiss lenses will cost so much less that a modern equivalent which will not necessarily be better for video work.

If you are on a tight budget though, I highly recommend this Helios 44-2 58mm lens. It is a great mid/close up lens and it is so cheap that anyone can afford it.

I have 2 of them and I will be giving away one shortly. Stay tune for more details.

Picture
Click to view this item on eBay
Helios 44-2 58mm lens on eBay

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Chinon 200mm Giveaway WINNER ANNOUNCEMENT

6/1/2012

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_
Thank you to everyone entering the competition. Unfortunately there can be only one winner.

As I suspected there weren't many entries in my first even giveaway, just 26 entries across 3 platforms from around 10-15 people.  To all of you who didn't win, make sure that you enter into my future giveaways. I will do the next one at the end of January 2012, so only a few weeks to go until the next one. I'm sure there won't be many more entries into the next one so make sure that you enter the next one too for a great chance one of my lenses.

To make sure that you don't miss the future competition SUBSCRIBE on YouTube and follow BF on Tweeter
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WIN a LENS From My Recent Lens Test.

30/12/2011

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_ If you read my post on my 200mm lens test, you will know that I decided to giveaway the lens, that I think performed the best in that test and also is the best built. In my opinion it is the Chinon 200mm f/3.5. It’s a great little prime; very solid (no plastic parts here), quit heavy, with a very nice and smooth long through focusing ring.  The lens is still in excellent condition cosmetically and optically. It comes with both lens caps and has a very easily adaptable M42 mount.

It’s is not an expensive lens and might not be a highly desirable prize, but it’s very simple to enter and it will only take a few minutes of your time.

There are 3 ways: YouTube, Facebook & Tweeter.

Youtube:
  • You must be subscribed to my page: www.youtube.com/user/alanbesedin
  • You need to Like and Favourite this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMLhjlrzcmI
  • Once the above steps are complete you need to post a comment on the video above to confirm your entry.  From that, I will be able to take your username and put it into the raffle.
Facebook:
  • You need to like the BudgetFilmmaker page: http://www.facebook.com/BudgetFilmmaker
  • You also need to like the actual post about this competition. Again from that, I will be able to take your username and put it into the raffle.
Tweeter:
  • You must be following Budgetfilmmaker there: https://twitter.com/#!/BudgetFilmmaker
  • You will also need to tweet this little message from your profile:  Great Chance to Win a Lens, Chinon 200mm prime. Check out the details here: http://www.budgetfilmmaker.co.uk/1/post/2011/12/post-title-click-and-type-to-edit1.html #Chinon200giveaway
  • I will be able to track you down by the hash-tag and add you to the raffle.
You don’t have to enter in all 3 platforms, you can use only 1, but if you enter in all 3 your chances will of course increase. It makes sense to do that anyway, because you most likely have different profile user names on each site anyway and you could cheat this way anyway and enter 3 times. Even if you have exactly the same names on all 3 sites, you name will still be counted 3 times.

Please no cheating though, just one entry from each platform. If I see that the profile was created just few days ago and it’s empty,  I’ll have to ignore such entry, as such page would like the profile was just created to enter and might be one of a few my the same person.

I will be happy to send this lens anywhere in the world, so no restrictions in that sense.

You can enter until the midnight on Thursday, the 5th of January. It will then give me enough time to announce the winner on Friday, the 6th.

Good luck to everyone entering. If you don’t win this time there will be many more opportunities in future. I’m not rich, but I will try to do 1 giveaway each month, so stay tuned.
Comments

First Nikon Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 Test and Overview

29/12/2011

Comments

 
_ I don’t usually use Nikon lenses, because I prefer to keep my setup clear, especially when using a follow focus, which I use a lot. Nikon and Canon lenses focus in different direction and to me it is confusing when trying to focus quickly and precisely , so I usually use lenses that focus anticlockwise from foreground to infinity, unlike Nikon which focus clockwise.

Saying that, I still decided to get hold of a decent Nikon lens to see what the whole fuss is about.

Well, to start with, the lens is really nicely built.  Weird thing is that my lens doesn’t look the same as all the other Nikon 50mm f/1.4s I found on internet. My one has 3 lines on the focus ring, just like Nikon 50mm 1.2 and unlike all the other 50mm f/1.4s I’ve seen, which have 2 (see the pictures below). Very weird, if someone could demystify this, that would be great.  My 50mm actually looks nicer than the other Nikon 50mm f/1.4s I found (not in my picture though, so I’m not 100% the build quality and the optics are exactly the same. If I had too much money I would buy another 50mm and compare them, but I’ll just go with the copy I have. The focus ring on this lens feels really nice, it is smooth and easy to turn, but not loose.
Picture
_Optically this lens is really nice, at least from my first little test I’ve done. Images are sharp, great contrast and colors. Bokeh is also one as would be expected from a f/1.4 lens.  I decided to use it in a low light situation, with a combination of a small LED light on top of the camera. By no means this was a scientific test, just sort of real like user experience and I did enjoy filming with this lens a lot. I might do another a bit calmer test video for this lens with a bit more emphases on resolution and it’s performance in natural lighting or external evening street lighting.

If you are already a Nikon lens user and you don’t have a 50mm yet, this lens is definitely worth looking at.  It is nowhere as cheap as some other lenses I already tested, but it is f/1.4 and it’s Nikon which pushes the price even higher.

At this point I would give it 4.5 out of 5, just because of it’s price, which is not incredible value for money.  Otherwise it would be a 5, especially if you are a Nikon lens user.

If you are going to use it on a Canon DSLR, make sure to buy a decent adapter, because the cheap one I bought on Ebay has play and ruins the good feel of this lens.
Picture
Click to find this item on Ebay
Nikon Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 on Ebay

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