Good points Bernard.
I'll be honest; reading some some of the commentary here about the Nikon 58/1.4 saddens me. I guess having researched a bit about the lenses designer (Haruo Sato) and how he often designs for pictorial results/rendering as a goal as opposed to a "we must produce the best MTF and win all test chart battles" approach, I look at this lens as being more of a work of art that is going to be "tuned" (for lack of a better word) to photographers who have moved beyond the "I must see MTF at all apertures" and the test chart pixel peeping stages of their lens evaluation lives.
Reading the brief interview with Sato on the Nikon imaging site, we already can read that at some point in the iterative design process he ended up suppressing resolution slightly in a particular use case in order to better balance other design attributes. To me this shows both some maturity on the part of the designer as well as some, well, straight up balls, given the seeming current obsession by so many with the test charts, sharpness "uber alles" and MTF chart mania.
As for the Zeiss comparisons: I look at the Zeiss 55/1.4 Otus, surely a magnificent lens, as being the first lens in a brand new extreme performance lineup from Zeiss that concentrates mostly, I think, on reproductive image quality as opposed to something with more of a intentional rendering quality; I view the Nikon 58/1.4 as being squarely in the latter category. So, as it often does, it comes down to what each photographer needs. I see both sides of the coin: for my landscape work something like the Zeiss OTUS approach might be more useful (a better marriage of lens performance to task) than the Nikon 58/1.4 approach, while for my personal work in the studio or with people, I could see something like the Nikon 58/1.4 approach being the better fit. I would think if I were wealthy, I would own both, to use for different tasks. Some photographers are going to be more suited for the Zeiss, and some, I think, with the Nikkor. Even looking at MTF alone, one can see the Nikon is apparently corrected quite well for astigmatism and probably has great bokeh (I say probably because as usual, Nikons sample images leave some meat on the bone in terms of how good they could/should be).
And I certainly don't think there is this onus laid down upon Nikon for this (specialist) lens to be fundamentally perfect in order for Nikon to maintain a reputation as a lens design firm either. This lens frankly appears to be one of those cases in Nikon lens design history, where they gave a senior designer the "go" on a pet project, irregardless of whether the lens will be a commercial super selling success or not. Things like the 300/2, 6mm fisheye, 1200-1700 zoom and so forth have been earlier examples of this, from them. In a way, while I am certainly amongst those who wishes Nikon would produce some better quality updates of common focal lengths that are needed in today's hi-rez DSLR era, I am at the same time happy Nikon still has the cojones to go produce something that might not win the test chart wars but might very well affirm their reputation as a lens design company who still understands that rendering is important too.
Off my soap box.
-m
