I had the chance to compare the 50mm f1.8G to my old AF Micro-Nikkor 55mm f2.8. I was considering the 1.8G because everyone raves about how good it is. Actually, not so much. Perhaps the copy of the 1.8G was a bad one, but the Micro-Nikkor just spanks it away from the center. The AF Micro-Nikkor never got much love back in the day because it looks like a plastic piece of junk (and the manual focus is a nightmare to use, it has an insanely short throw), but it really holds its own on the D800E (unlike the wide angle AIS lenses I've tested, which are handily bested by their 1.8G equivalents). Anyway, it's staying in the bag for now. Here's the overall scene and some 100% crops of the center and right edge. (OOC tiffs cropped and saved for web as JPEGs; focus was center point Live View, two shots with mirror up at each aperture, best frame selected.)
Now I'm curious to see how the AF 55 stacks up against the 60mm G which has a really impressive MTF chart.