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Comment by ISL | Hacker News Reader

To agree with the article author a little:

A modern $150 50mm f/1.8 at f/8 will out-resolve an older $1300 50mm f/1.2 at f/8, but holy poops, can that older design produce a rendering quality that is simply smooth and beautiful in an intangible way due to the lens designers' intentional tradeoffs.

If you find yourself making comparisons like this one, you're almost to the part of your photographic career where you may be about to start reducing the amount of gear you use, as you begin to find the tools that resonate for you.

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> beautiful in an intangible way

Perhaps the older lens has more pleasing colors: normally absorbing a bit more of hi-freq(blue/violet) lens a comfy "orange sunset" effect and warm atmosphere. Modern digital cameras tend to be "colder" in color, with sharp blue/violet.

Much like the effective high rolloff filter in the vinyl mastering process is largely responsible for the "rich, warm sound" of vinyl.

This is one of the reasons I like the Fujifilm X-trans sensor. It’s raw output always feels a bit warmer and more ‘natural’ vs a typical Bayer sensor.

To me, the copy of the EF 1.2L that I tested had a softness to its rendering that was very painterly. I shudder to use the term "microcontrast", but the lens appeared to have solid contrast and sharpness at broader spatial scales and a softness at the smallest scales.

It felt like a lens that rendered every scene with a deft touch, making everything just a little prettier than it might really be.

Someday, I may find a used one to call my own, but I can't quite justify its weight and expense today. The EF 1.4 largely fills that bill without the price and heft, but doesn't render things so instantaneously as art.

$150 50mm f1.8 from all camera systems are fairly sharp but have soo much chromatic aberrations

Wide open, they have some flaws, but stopped down a little, the aberrations are generally well-controlled.

Here's the Canon 50mm f/1.8 STM compared with the Sigma 50mm f/1.4, both at f/4:

https://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/ISO-12233-Sample...

The Sigma still wins in the corners, but chromatic aberrations are largely absent for both lenses.

With new photographers, I often try to get them to take a 50mm f/1.8 through its paces early in their careers. One of the key milestones in the proposed shot-list is a series of images at f/8. It is eye-opening to see an inexpensive lens deliver top-notch results on even the least-expensive cameras. Beginners are often drawn to the selective depth of field of the wide aperture primes, but to me, the greatest joy of these timeless (and lightweight) double-gauss designs is their ability to render superlative quality at their diffraction-limited apertures.

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