On Tue, 13 Jan 2004, Boris Liberman wrote: > I am about to be enabled with the above lens (SMC M 50/2.0). It is > optically identical to A 50/2.0 and very similar (AFAICT) to 50/1.7. I > wonder how come Stan's site has nothing to say about it and except one > line on Alex's site I couldn't find anything in regular PDML annals > <g>...
>From memory of things I have read in the list, the 2s are fine lenses, despite someone calling them "optical body caps" (they later explained that they too consider them to be fine optically and only calling them so because of their abundance; all that from memory and out of context, so beware). Stan's site, under "best normal", contests your opinion that the Ms are identical to the As in terms of performance (perhaps less so for the 2s, though it could me sample variation). Ignoring the differences between K/M/A/... if I was buying a 50 now, I would go for the 1.7, which appears to be the best compromise between correction/price/light/weight, though any 1.4 at the better-than-right price might tempt me (still not experienced the difference is colour rendition, so I don't add this to the equation). But I am not looking for one, as I have the FA50/1.7 which is great as a manual focus lens as well in my opinion, as: it's very easy to turn and focus with the left index finger only, thus holding the camera from the "ears" all the time; it goes for 0.40m to infinity much quicker than the old manual focus lenses and I prefer this to tweaking till I lose the shot. I use a B&W rubber collapsible hood with it which allows the cap to snap on it and it works a treat; bought for pittance. HTH, Kostas
