This April, Nikon announced a new lens, an AF-S version of the 50 f1.8. However, within hours of the new lens appearing on Nikon's website, the page suddenly disappeared for over a week before the lens was 'officially' announced. Upon official announcement, the lens was revealed to be quite a deal with AF-S (duh), a distance window, a fast f1.8 aperture, and a weather seal, all for a mere $225. Unfortunately, given the situation in Japan, many expected it to be awhile from official announcement to when the lens started hitting stores.
Wrong, the lens has obviously shipped as Photozone has just completed a review of it. So, how did the 50 f1.8 AF-S fare against Photozone's high standards? Short answer, very well.
First, the good. For any camera lens, optics are first and foremost, and in this respect, the new 50 delivers the goods in a big way, easily besting its older incarnation in the the area of edge sharpness. In areas of chromatic aberration and vignetting, the lens is what one would expect, namely that these things are present wide open but are dramatically lessened by closing the lens up a stop. The build quality is also excellent as the lens, whose barrel is high-quality, tightly assembled plastic, is constructed on a metal mount. The rubber seal at the mount is another useful feature that many more expensive lenses don't even include.
Now, it's time for the bad. While the build quality of the lens is high, there is one complaint: play in the focus ring. Simply put, one has to turn the ring a few millimeters to actually get it to do anything in regards to focus. Another con, despite being AF-S, the focus speed is actually slower than on its older, AF-D cousin.
Final word? The new 50 is better in virtually every respect than the old version. The only area where the new lens lacks: focus speed and size (having that built-in motor necessitates a larger lens). Howver, all is rosy everywhere else. The higher price? For all the added bonuses you're getting (full time manual focus, compatibility with all Nikon cameras, better optics, and the weather seal), the price increase of about $100 over the 'D' version are fully justified, and worth it, too.
