Nikon Nikkor S.C 50mm f/1.4 ~ field flatness

Living where I do, I absolutely know much how fortunate I am to live in peace.  There is mental space and physical safety to do the things I want, like write these little amount to nothing important blog entries.  

Not everyone has this option these days.  We receive daily reminders of this fact and it's downright heartbreaking.  People are being killed for a man's out-sized sense of power, control, and entitlement.  I wish peace for everyone.

And the best of luck to Peter Turnley.  He is in the Ukraine.  What he says about the refugees and the photographs he is making of them fleeing the war zone gives serious pause.

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I'm starting to clean up an old multi-coated Nikon Nikkor-S.C Auto 50mm f/1.4 and thought it could be interesting to continue just a bit further down this Path to Insanity of considering oh so many many lenses for this, that, and another thing.

I realize that I'm not only being redundantly repetitive, but that I'm now looking for pixies.  The differences I've uncovered between various optics are difficult to discern.

Still, onward I march.

 

 

Setup - 

• Sony A7 - ISO100, 2 second timer, in-camera levels used to square the whole plot up
• Manfrotto tripod - it's capable of securing an 8x10inch view camera, so it's sturdy enough for this
  
• Lens -
• Nikon Nikkor-S.C Auto 50mm f/1.4
  
• Rawtherapee RAW to jpg conversion - Auto-Match function, but nothing further (ie: NO Capture Sharpening) to minimize processing effects
• 
  

Comparison - 

Here is the scene setup.  It's just a pair of closed gaze scrims in our apartment.  The details are interestingly small, so therefore useful for this kind of "wee look-see." 

 

 

[As always, click on the image and look at it to 100percent file size to see whatever there is to be seen.]

 

 

Comments - 

This Nikon Nikkor-S.C Auto 50mm f/1.4 lens has a few problems.  

There was a bit of fungus which, fortunately, was easy to clean.  The coatings remain in immaculate condition.  As of this writing, I have 95 percent of the problem resolved.

A second problem is the grease is dry and the focusing ring is stiff.  In the process of trying to disassemble the lens I found that two screws are, with 50 years of service, welded in place.  I will have to drill out the old screws and re-tap these two locations.

To confirm the lens was worth the effort of completing a CLA I put it to my field flatness, "sharpness" test.  As you can see, yes, the field is flat across the entire field from wide open all the way down through f/5.6.

As for resolution, the lens is slightly soft wide open.  It sharpens up nicely at f/2, and is the equal of anything new or old from f/2.8 and beyond.

Once sorted, this could be an interesting lens.  There are hints of "greatness" in this one, as we will explore in the following two blog entries.