There’s no hiding the fact that the Z 50mm f/1.2 S is a big lens. In fact, it’s bigger and heavier than the excellent Nikon Z 24-70mm f/2.8 S. That’s a consequence of the large aperture and the unusually high number of elements (17 in 15 groups) – for comparison, the excellent Z 50mm f/1.8 S is constructed from 12 elements in 9 groups.
Nikon has given the Z 50mm f/1.2 S a dedicated control ring that can be customised via the camera’s menu to control the aperture, exposure compensation or sensitivity (ISO) setting. I usually opt to control exposure compensation via a lens ring, but with such a huge aperture range, I prefer to use it to adjust the aperture setting with the Z 50mm f/1.2 S.
With Z lenses that don’t have a dedicated lens ring, Nikon allows the purpose of the manual focus ring to be customised. When there’s a dedicated ring, the manual focus ring cannot be customised. It would be great if Nikon could issue firmware upgrades to the cameras and lenses to enable both rings to be customised and used to adjust key settings.
As we’ve seen before on Nikon’s other top-flight Z-mount lenses, the Z 50mm f/1.2 S has an OLED information panel that can show the aperture, focus distance, ISO and depth of field. You just press the DISP button to toggle through the information.
There’s also a L-Fn (lens function) button that can be customised via the camera’s menu to used to activate one of a long list of parameters such as subject tracking, the framing grid AF-on and bracketing. It would be handy if there was an option to press the button to switch the purpose of the control ring. That would mean that I could switch it from adjusting the aperture to adjusting exposure compensation, for example, but it’s not possible. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for a firmware upgrade.
To summarise the build and handling, the Nikon Z 50mm f/1.2 S feels very well made, is sealed against dust and moisture. Both the focus ring and the control ring have a smooth action and the lens responds quickly to any adjustment. However, it would be nice to be able to adjust more than one parameter quickly via the control ring or the control ring and the manual focus ring.