Zuiko 50mm F1.4 on a 5D Mk2

A post from last year tested this lens on a Canon 60D, and found it to be an excellent manual focus alternative to a modern AF lens. As my Canon 50mm f1.4 is going for repair after a bash resulting in misaligned lens elements, the older 50mm has been resurrected. To illustrate the difference in construction quality, the all metal constructed Zuiko is 34 years old and has been knocked around over the years. The modern plastic made Canon lens has lasted 6 months of light use and failed at the first collision …..

Doing what it does best at 1.4. Shallow depth of field, heavy vignetting, and an ‘expensive’ look.

Anyway, gripe over, is it as good on a full frame sensor as on a crop sensor? On the 60D it’s a 80mm-ish equivalent lens, on the 5dMk2 it’s a proper 50mm.  You would use this as a general purpose standard lens on the 5DMK2 to create shallow depth of field effects, half length portraits and in low light – 1.4 is very fast. The filter thread is an economical 49mm, hence the B+W filter – unusual as I’m usually too cheap to pay for expensive filters. The EF to OM adaptor is the same old Fotodiox used for earlier posts.

Mounted on the 5DMK2 body – maybe a little on the small side for this body but it works well.

It looks a little small on the bulky 5dMk2, but not ridiculously so. It’s quite heavy and doesn’t protrude too much so is nicely balanced. Focussing is easy at f1.4 on the standard focussing screen.

Close focus at f1.4 is tricky as any slight movement after focussing moves the shallow depth of focus area – literally millimetres deep! Focus bracket if it’s a good shot. This figure is around 12 inches high.

Right then, onto the test area – the mill. It’s effectively a brick wall, but a very scenic one. If you don’t like looking at test results, look away now (well scroll down to the conclusion anyway). All shots processed in DXP Optics Pro 9, downsized and resized in Photoshop.

The full test frame.

At f1.4 :-

f1.4 centre crop

f1.4 edge

Soft and rather ‘ethereal’. Not bad for f1.4

At f2.8 :-

2.8 centre

2.8 edge

No problems here.

At f5.6 :-

f5.6 centre

f5.6 edge

Or here…

At f11 :-

f11 centre

f11 edge

At 1.4 images are a little soft with low contrast as you might expect, but by f2.8 things are sharp, the contrast has improved and the vignetting has disappeared. An excellent result all round and very useable, with performance peaking at f5.6 to f8.

Just out of curiosity I also shot this test frame using a 24-104mm L series lens at f8 at 50mm for comparison purposes.

The L series has an advantage as DXO knows what lens is attached so can do lens specific corrections, distortion correction and bespoke sharpening – something it can’t do for the Zuiko. The Zuiko can’t match the modern zoom for biting sharpness in the centre, but it is three stops faster and looking at these full size on a monitor (rather than pixel peeping) I’m not sure I’d notice the difference.

The slightly greenish hue to out of focus areas is a feature of the old Zuiko (and many fast lenses).

In conclusion, it’s just as good on the 5dMk2 as it was on the 60D, with shallower depth of field (see equivalence), a super fast f1.4 max aperture and an ability to produce images with real ‘depth’. Get hold of one if you can. I’m rather glad I didn’t sell it six months ago!

If you’re interested in using other MF lenses on your DSLR have a look at the other reviews on the film, camera and lens review index tab.

Hope you find this useful – thanks for looking.

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