Nikon Z 50mm f/1.8 S Review

Focusing Performance

The Nikon Z 50mm f/1.8 S autofocus quickly, quietly, and accurately. We’ve long been impressed by the accurate and precise autofocus of Nikon Z lenses, and that remains true here. Even the autofocus speed of the Nikon Z 50mm f/1.8 S is quite good – enough to track fast-moving subjects in low light, such as the dance at a wedding, without a problem.

The focus-by-wire system may initially annoy some photographers for manual focus, but to Nikon’s credit, they have substantially improved this system with firmware updates over the years. All of our previous complaints about manual focus on the Z system no longer apply; the camera can now recall the focus position after turning it off/on, and you can set the lens to linear manual focus so that the speed at which you turn the focusing ring does not matter.

Finally, the close-focusing performance of the Nikon Z 50mm f/1.8 S is acceptable, but not great. You can get a maximum magnification of 1:6.7 with this lens (also written as 0.15× magnification), which is enough to fill the frame with a subject that is approximately 24 centimeters, or 9.5 inches, wide. That’s not really enough for close-up photos of a wedding ring, for example, although it works fine for still-life photos and moderately small subjects like flowers or food.

Distortion

Some Nikon Z lenses rely heavily upon software corrections to eliminate high levels of distortion in the photo. The Nikon Z 50mm f/1.8 S does not follow this trend. In fact, it has hardly any distortion at all, totaling just 0.57% pincushion distortion. This is so minimal that even if your subject has a lot of straight lines, you may be able to leave distortion corrections turned off in your post-processing software.

Vignetting

Wide open at f/1.8, vignetting on the Nikon Z 50mm f/1.8 S lens is noticeable but not obtrusive. It maxes out at 1.65 stops at infinity (worst case scenario), which is on par with vignetting seen on both the Nikon 50mm f/1.8G (1.55 stops) and Sigma 50mm f/1.4 Art (1.66 stops). Here’s the chart of vignetting performance, with “CF” indicating close focus and “IF” indicating infinity focus:

There are no real surprises in these numbers. As a 50mm f/1.8 prime, the 50mm f/1.8 S does not face as difficult a task as lenses with wider focal lengths or brighter maximum apertures. And its performance, though nothing unusual, is certainly respectable. By stopping down to f/2.8 and narrower, vignetting essentially disappears on this lens.

Lateral Chromatic Aberration

The Nikon Z 50mm f/1.8 S has very low levels of lateral chromatic aberration, measuring less than 1 pixel in our tests even at its worst. Here’s how it measures in the lab:

Such a low level of chromatic aberration will rarely be visible in your photos, even if you have CA corrections turned off in post-processing.

Sharpness

The Nikon Z 50mm f/1.8 S is a very sharp lens, approaching the best available today. Its center performance really is best-in-class throughout the aperture range, and the corners quickly catch up once you stop down to f/2.8 and narrower. As with all lenses, diffraction lowers the sharpness as you keep stopping down toward f/11 and f/16 – but you can blame this on the inevitable result of physics, not on Nikon’s lens design. Here’s what we measure in the lab:

We tested two copies of the 50mm f/1.8 S in the lab, and there was only mild sample variation between them. The chart above is from the first copy, which had slightly better numbers wide open and averaged a bit stronger performance overall.

However, the second copy actually won out in maximum possible sharpness, reaching slightly better results at f/2.8 in the center. Yes, this is sample variation, but it is nothing objectionable. Minor discrepancies like that from copy to copy are perfectly common, and even the most trained eye would have a hard time distinguishing between them, especially in real-world images.

Finally, we found very minimal focus shift with the Nikon Z 50mm f/1.8 S (i.e., focus changing when aperture is adjusted). This is a welcome sight for a 50mm f/1.8, given that wide-aperture primes and zooms are the most likely lenses to be affected by focus shift.

Bokeh

Aspherical lens elements often negatively impact the way background highlights and bokeh are rendered, and the Nikon Z 50mm f/1.8 S has two such elements. As a result, you will sometimes find “onion ring” textures in out-of-focus highlights with this lens. There is also a bit of a “cat’s eye” shape to out-of-focus highlights in the corners of the frame with this lens, and slightly defined edges. None of this is ideal, but the shallow depth of field afforded by a 50mm f/1.8 lens still means that you’ll get nice-looking backgrounds most of the time.

Ghosting and Flare

Nikon employed both Nano Crystal Coating and Super Integrated Coating to reduce ghosting and flare with the Z 50mm f/1.8 S. While the lens isn’t totally free from flare, it does a reasonably good job in backlit situations. The petal-shaped lens hood is also very effective at blocking stray rays of light coming from outside the frame. As you shoot at narrower apertures, the hazy loss of contrast from flare turns into more sharply-defined spots. Even so, we’ve seen much worse than this before.

Focus Breathing

Nikon claims to have designed the 50mm f/1.8 S to have minimal focus breathing – in other words, the magnification of an image changing upon focusing. This is more of an issue for videographers than still photographers, unless you do a lot of focus stacking for landscape photography. Either way, we saw practically no focus breathing whatsoever in our tests of this lens.

The next page of this review dives into the sharpness numbers a bit more, with some comparisons against other lenses that Nikon users may be considering. So, click the menu below to go to “Lens Comparisons”: