I'm not exactly an expert, but last I knew the FA 50mm 1.4 was noted for not only being very sharp, but having really excellent bokeh.
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Hi there.
I´ve just made my mind, and with surprising concusions [thanks again Er1kksen].
I do mainly use my camera [a good old *istDS] for street shooting -yes, I do never shoot jpeg with this camera, though I have to say that they don´t look as bad as some people might say].
I´ve just purchased the FA 43 Limited. And have an option on the FA 50 1.4. And boy-oh-boy, those lenses are SHAAAAAAAAARP. Razor sharp, indeed.
I did some pre-purchase tryouts. And found some interesting stuff.
The first which inmediately fall down was the Cosina Zeiss. Too bulky, and too sharp. In a bad way. The accutance it delivered was quite unpleasing, and pictures had that smear of being "over processed" right out of the camera. Not good. Plus, too expensive. Manual focus, too. [´ll got back to that later]. All in all, I will have to work AGAINST what I wanted [which is good sharpness].
Then, a good shootout. I decided not to have the macro. I just won´t use it enough for the small aperture you get [though I have to admit that it did perform beyond expectations for a macro both in macro mode and normal shooting, having tried Canon, Olympus and Cosina SL I macros].
And we get to the Ultron, Nokton and FA primes.
Those Cosina lenses are little wonders. But they have a caveat. They are manual focus. This, which many will see as something not to care for, turns out to be a must for the next project I have to handle: people eating. Plus, all in all, I liked the overall look of the Pentax lenses over the Cosina ones. Overall, the Cosina lenses are a tad sharper than the Pentax lenses. But they do cast a blueish tint to the image, and have not as good out of focus image quality.
All in all, if I had to put a purchase list in order of preference, I had to say that I´d go for:
Pentax FA 43
Pentax FA 50
Cosina Voightlander Ultron 40
Cosina Voightlander Nokton 50
Pentax P-D 50 Macro
Cosina Zeiss 50
I´m keeping the FA 43, and having my doubts of the FA 50 over the Nokton. Most probably I will keep the FA50 for the price they have [how can they make a profit with such a good lens -I know it is polycarbonate, but no problems there-] and the fact it is autofocus [the *istDS performs very nicely when focusing, and has a surprisingly big focusing area compared to Nikon, for example].
Thanks again