One thing I found in an article - and verified myself experimentally - is that this particular lens reaches a max sharpness at f/2.5. Below that it is noticeably less sharp. The spendier f/1.4 50mm is at max sharpness throughout the aperture range.
I'm really appreciating the VR on my zoom lens after working with the new one. It's really tough to get decent low light shots even at f/1.8 that don't exhibit a fair bit of camera shake.
you are the media you consume.
(We have both the AF-D one and a much older manual version.)
