Fast 50mm Shoot Out: MFT vs FF (or why I bought the Sony A7II and a single FE lens)

You might remember from my previous posts about the Canon 35mm f/2, the Canon 50mm f/1.4 and the Panasonic Leica 25mm f/1.4 lenses how much I appreciate and love the 50mm focal length. To the extent that I previously mentioned that if I found a fixed lens FF camera with a fast 50mm (think Sony RX1 with a 50mm lens instead), I would sell all my gear and only use that camera and a single TTL flash. Unfortunately, that camera doesn't exist yet. So I bought something a bit different. Did it work? Hit the jump to find out.

Review: MFT Adapted Canon FL 55mm f/1.2

Canon FL 55mm f/1.2 on my E-M1

How many f/1.2 or faster portrait lenses can you get for MFT? If we're talking about lenses available with a MFT mount, then these are the ones I know about:

• Panasonic Nocticron 42.5mm f/1.2 - $1,500: the best you can get, the sharpest lens of all at f/1.2, auto focus, gorgeous bokeh, and the most expensive, large and heavy.
• Voigtlander Nokton 42.5mm f/0.95 - $1,000: an even faster aperture, manual everything, not as sharp as the Nocticron, but able to produce some spectacular results, large and heavy.
• ZY Optics Mitakon 42.5mm f/1.2 - $400: lowest price, manual everything as well, smaller than the others, wide-open performance is not that bad according to this review.

But what if you don't want to pay that much to get f/1.2? That's what we'll talk about today.