AF-S NIKKOR 58mm f/1.4G

I just finished my fourth 3-hour portrait photoshoot using my D850 with this 58mm, 1.4 lens - Love It!! Perfect Bokeh, Sharpness/Clarity, Weight, Size, and Feel in your hands. I still like and use my 50mm, 1.4 but it doesn't come close in comparison to the 58mm. Buy It!! :)

I photograph many masterpieces inside museums around the world. The focal length, aperture, and optics of this lens are ideal for what I do. Many museums have extremely low light, but this lens, coupled with the latest light sensitive Nikon DSLR full frame camera bodies, make reproduction quite effortless.

I was super skeptical about this lens. I owned the 50 f/1.8 for a few hundred bucks, why pay $1,300 more for 8mm more and 1/3 stop more light? It took 6-months to pull the trigger but the people who said there´s just something about this lens beyond those two points (which weren´t convincing), were right. I felt sick when I bought it and questioned the purchase until the first time I shot with it. Now, I have no doubt I made the right choice. This lens is unreal. It just has something about it. One of those lenses that has a personality and is truly something special. I can´t explain it but you´ll know the second you shoot with it. The photos below are not the first I´ve shot with it but some of the ones I love the most.

A truly amazing lens, sharper than expected at 1.4, beautiful out-of-focus rendition, colours and reasonably fast and accurate autofocus. Not cheap but still a good value considering the unique quality of pictures that it produces. This is the artist of the family of Nikon lenses.

I´ve been using it on my D800 for about 2 weeks, 500 photos. The reason I chose it was that I shot 85% of the photos in this focal range in the past two years. The 50mm/1.4g just doesn´t have the perfect bokeh.

The low light photos from the 58mm are noticeably clearer than those from the 50mm; the bokeh is noticeably smoother than the 50mm. The color-rendering is much better. It handles portraitures a bit more conveniently than the 50mm. As long as the photos are precisely focused, they are just stunning.

In general, I am very satisfied with it. Actually I wanted to give it 4.5 stars. The reason - I have to put in a AF fine tune on the camera. The value for my 50/1.4g is only .

If your copy is not tack-sharp, try the AF fine tune on the camera first. If your camera body can´t do AF fine tune, you better figure out how to fine-tune the lens before making the purchase.

Just received mine, took some 200 shots, compared to my beloved Noct Nikkor 58mm 1.2, and can tell you the new lens over delivers on my D800E across the board.

Better focus, better micro contrast, OOF is as good as it gets, and autofocus is a plus on a camera that is not as well fitted as the D700 for manual focus.

Am loving mine, and think was great decision making on the Nikon people to launch this one !

Even though I´m writing this review having received my new 58mm 1.4G less than 48 hours ago, I did have the opportunity to shoot with it already for a couple of hours yesterday using both my D4 and D800E bodies. During this relatively brief period, I´ve already sensed that this is a special lens. The magic comes in the beautiful out-of-focus rendering (bokeh), and I suspect this feature will become the hallmark of this lens. I own several other high end Nikkor lenses, to include new models and older classics, and thus far I feel that this new 58mm will rank with the best of them. In addition to very pleasant bokeh characteristics, the overall image quality provided by this lens is first rate as well. It is sharp (even wide open), displays very pleasing colors, great contrast, and very good micro-contrast. I would have provided more image samples, but at the time of this review the upload utility on the site was ´finicky´ and I had to make several attempts to just get the one image loaded. I think this this new 58mm lens will be spending a great deal of time attached to my D4!

I am in the process of replacing my 100% use of the ´´dream team´´ (2.8) zoom lenses with prime lenses and when I saw that Nikon was coming out with a 58MM, I wanted to get one. That said, I was kind of nervous spending that kind of money on a lens that was not reviewed heavily by my photo idols. In any case, I just took delivery of my 58MM f/1.4G lens so I had to take it out for a quick spin on my D800E. I am extremely pleased with the performance. The Bokeh is like butter. The lens is truly sharp from edge to edge. The focus is fast, like lightening fast. This lens manufactures light. I know it is a lot of money to spend and there are other great lenses out there from Nikon, but so far, this appears to be one worth spending the money on.