In article
>Can anyone comment on the Nikkor 50mm 1.8 "E" series (the plastic-y one
>intended for the Nikon EM)? In particular does anyone have an opinion >about its optical quality? (...)
You may want to check this out:
D. Ruether's "SUBJECTIVE Lens Evaluations (Mostly Nikkors)",
which includes a listing of all Nikon SLR lenses ever made (with a
subjective evaluation of many of them, a general description of Nikkor
lens performance characteristics by lens-type groups, and comments on
particular lenses when the general descriptions plus the subjective
evaluation numbers are not sufficient to describe performance),
can be found at these sites:
-- Jan-jaap Aue: (nice text format)
http://www.phys.rug.nl/mk/people/aue/nikon/david.html
-- Bo-Ming Tong: (go to end of long article, plain text format)
http://www.cs.arizona.edu/people/bmtong/photo/nikon.faq
-- Quang-Tuan Luong: (plain text format)
http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/~qtluong/photography/35mm/nikon-neuman
-- Niklas Nikitin: (nice table format)
http://www.cs.hks.se/~nicke/private/photo/david.html
The "E" Nikon 50mm f1.8 and the AF 50mm f1.8 are the same (except for
the barrel and multicoating), and are fine lenses (though I have occasionally seen some variation in these very inexpensive lenses).
They have some advantages over the 50mm f1.4: no distortion, better
wide aperture corner performance, and better close-focus performance,
especially on tubes. They are a steal.
Hope This Helps