Going Old School and Reviewing a Lens that I Can't (Won't) get Rid Of. Right.

 

I'm writing today about a miraculous lens that I've used on and off for, well, decades. Not always the same one but the same model. It's the Canon FD 50mm f1.4 and it's wonderful. I've adapted it to work on a number of cameras and since the dawn of the mirrorless age its value to me has only grown. In fact, an earlier Canon 50mm FD lens, the f1.8 version, is probably to "blame" for my long term addiction to the 50mm focal length on a full frame or 24x36mm sensor or film frame. It's just so right for the way I see. 

The 50mm f1.4 FD lens (breech mount) is the "chrome nose" version and not labelled as a "SSC" (Super Spectra Coating) version but both variants have the same 7 element, 6 group construction and it's widely believed that after the first version the coatings stayed the same but Canon just chose to drop the SSC on the front ring. The chrome nose weighs 13 ounces, is made of glass, brass and complementary metals. It feels dense and even though my current one is at least 40 years old it operates as smoothly as they did when brand new. The aperture works perfectly as well. The lens focuses as close as 1.5 feet but close focusing wasn't really a big selling point for fast 50mm lenses from the 1970s.

While there are many newer lenses and some improvements in glass formulae by the mid-1970s the very, very popular 50mm f1.4 lenses from all the major camera makers were considered the flagships of their lens lines and were, by this point, very mature and well tested designs. Most improvements since then have focused on fixing that last 2% of unsharpness in the far corners when modern lenses are used at their max apertures. But, and this is significant point for me, from f4.0 down to f11 the best of the premium 50s from the 1970s deliver performances that are indistinguishable from the results from contemporary standard lenses. And those older lenses accomplished this very high level of achievement completely without the aid of in camera software. 

That being the case I was pleased to find that Adobe has a lens profile for the Canon 50mm f1.8 FD lens in Lightroom and it brings this lens even closer to the performance of more modern lenses. 

I like using this lens on a high resolution camera like the Leica SL2. It's such a solid platform and the in body image stabilization works well with legacy lenses like the Canon. Set the focal length in the camera menu and it fine tunes the IBIS to match. 

Obviously, a lens from 1970 is completely manual focusing. Another plus point for the mirrorless revolution is that one can "punch in" to a high magnification in the EVF of the camera and fine focus with an accuracy that would have been like science fiction in the film days. That alone is probably responsible for the good performance of the lens --- even on a camera that provides nearly 50 megapixels of sensor resolution!!! 

Since the lens was designed with mechanical linkages for an old Canon film camera it's also obvious that the lens in no way communicates with a new digital camera from a different camera company. Especially so when used with the necessary adapter to mount it on the body.

I find the lens to be good wide open if your basic photography goal is great portraits. It's sharper at f2.0 and really, really good by f2.8. From f4.0 onward you are in a zone in which there are many rivals but few clearly superior performers. Yes, you could see a difference in super fine detail if you locked your camera down on a tripod but most of us have become acculturated to shooting our fast lenses without the addition of tripods and that small but real drop in quality from camera vibration and human unsteady-ness quickly equalizes the big differences between a modern lens and this older classic. 

I mounted the lens onto the Leica SL2 body and dialed in the focal length in the lens profile menu. The Urth adapter I'm using has a dial close in towards the body of the camera that allows me to focus at the widest aperture and then turn the dial and close the lens down to a preset aperture for shooting. That goes a long way toward getting sharp focus and deep of field to cover any focus shift. The adapter was less than $50. This copy of the lens came on the front of an FTb I bought from Camera West for a grand total of $125. I put a 50mm f1.8 lens on the FTb and gave it to a swim coach friend who had just recently graduated from UT Austin and wanted to try his hand at film photography. I kept the 50mm lens because that's what I was after all along.

The 50mm f1.4 fits well with the heavier SL2 body and the nearly 6 million dot EVF makes manual focusing, even un-magnified, a snap. The only thing that hints at the age of the lens is a tendency to flare differently when  strong light sources are in the frame. A bigger flare than a modern lens but the parts of the image that are outside the "splash zone" of the flare patch are usually very useable and have enough contrast. 

Using an older, non-coupled lens is slower but there are few things we shoot around here that require lightning fast responses and light speed focusing. There is a sureness to the older tech that reminds you that you are less dependent on the algorithms of the camera's processor and more in tune with you as the actual operator. 

I really like the lens and have no intention of letting it go. 

Here are images I made with this lens and the SL2 on a walk through UT Austin this morning: We show our work to prove our points... 

f2.8

f5.6

Outdoor seating at Dirty Martin's, home of the KumBak burger.

each table comes with a bottle of "presidential sauce." 

the temporary bar at Dirty's...

No clue what these towers (in progress) are for. They looked odd...

My photography has been awarded a "thumbs up." 

The saint of gas meters everywhere....

Sulphurita Dioxidita. Matron saint of odorants.

But, can my "fancy" lens do Monochrome? You betcha.

Couple hours walking and photographing makes one hungry for lunch.

Old school was good school. Now available for next to nothing...