Attar a rather long(ish) hiatus due to work and family situation, I am back with a new lens comparison. Today we are going to take a look at two, very different, yet pretty exciting in their own ways, 50mm lenses - the rangefinder classic (or arcaic depending on who you ask) Canon 50/1.2 LTM and Sony\'s modern 50/1.8 OS.
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Canon\'s RF lenses date back to 1950s, the golden era of rangefinders. Canon produced a total of 8 (!) different designs of the 50mm classic lens before exiting the rangefinder world in late 60s. The most notable designs include the fastest 50mm of its time 50/0.95, the pre-war Zeiss Sonnar copy 50/1.5 and the 50/1.2 - the lens people \'love to hate\'. I owned Canon LTM 50/1.2 for a brief period back in the ole film days but did not use it much and ultimately sold it along with the rest of my rangefinder gear. The popularity of this lens peaked around 70s and has been in the decline since then. These days the lens has become more of a niche play - there is a good reason for that: modern optics have far exceeded the capabilities of this glass, in pretty much every dimension. Then there\'s the obvious issue of the Internet noise - there\'s quite a large and very opinionated group of users which outright hate this lens, claiming that it is soft at wide apertures, has low contrast, produced significant glare, etc. etc. etc. All this obviously also deters the would-be users from trying out the Canon LTM - despite the niche designation (or perhaps because of it), Canon 50/1.2 has managed to retain its value over the years, with most \'decent\' quality copies selling for upwards of $600 these days. Add to that a LTM to M adapter and an M to NEX adapter (if you plan to use it on Sony NEX camera) and you\'re looking at an extra $100-$150 in expenses. Compare that to the modern Sony 50/1.8 OSS with the price of $275 - no woder that an average user would never even look twice at the Canon lens.
I picked up a copy of Canon 50/1.2 purely on a whim, not that I was thinking I\'d be using it more frequently this time around, but more because I wanted to compare it to a couple of other 50mm lenses. As I mentioned earlier, the prices for this lens are quite stable these days, so I did not expect to loose much money when I finally decided to sell it. The comparison with Sony E 50/1.8 OSS is also kind of random - I\'ve been using these two lenses side by side for a few weeks and just decided to write my observations. Ultimately though, I\'d want to compare the 50/1.2 to other rangefinder lenses, both modern and classic - if you have not done so already, take a look at the Alternative 50mm for NEX article to get an idea of what to expect down the road.
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