Here's a short comparison of the Nikon 50m 1.8G and Zeiss 50mm F2 Makro Planar. I wanted to keep this short and simple as there are many great in depth reviews out there for this lens but I couldn't find any direct comparison. I assume that the Nikon will perform similar to Canon's F1.8. I'll post the pictures first and you can read more about my thoughts below. These pictures were taken using a D90 on manual mode all with the same settings (F2, 1/50, ISO 200, 4150K) on a tripod. NB: The reason why I chose F2 is because the Zeiss is designed to perform well even wide open.


Zeiss F2, 1/50, ISO 200, 4150K


Nikon F2, 1/50, ISO 200, 4150K


Zeiss F2, 1/50, ISO 200, 4150K


Nikon F2, 1/50, ISO 200, 4150K









The Zeiss produces darker and warmer pictures with stronger contrast. It stays sharper throughout the picture while Nikon's sharpness stays tight around the focus point. Zeiss seems to have slightly smoother bokeh but only by a margin. Note the results are only based on the parameters used, sorry I didn't go into different aperture settings and environments but will more than happy to do so when I have more free time. I love these two lenses but I won't sell the Nikon because I will need AF in some situations. If I'm out on a relaxing day and have no rush to take pictures I would definitely bring the Zeiss with me. Before I bought the Zeiss I asked myself is it possible to get that Zeiss look with post processing? Well I've tried to make both as similar as possible but I still prefer the Zeiss over Nikon (note I'm still a newbie at post processing with no PS skills, I used Lightroom, all changes were global no brushes or gradient filters used). Here are the post processed images below. I'm also uploading the .nef (taking ages!) files if anybody is interested in testing them out. Thank you for reading and happy new year !


Zeiss F2, 1/50, ISO 200, 4150K


Nikon F2, 1/50, ISO 200, 4150K


Zeiss F2, 1/50, ISO 200, 4150K


Nikon F2, 1/50, ISO 200, 4150K