I’m a big fan of sharp lenses, razor sharp lenses. My standard equipment consists of a CZ 135mm f1.8 (best investment ever) and a CZ 24-70mm f2.8. Not really cheap, but I do get a lot of joy out of them (please stick around my photo blog a while longer and judge for yourself).
From the time that I could not afford that kind of ‘toys’, I still have some older lenses lying around. One of them is a Minolta 50mm f1.4. Not a bad lens, but compared to the CZ lenses it is rather soft. Especially wide open. But: in certain conditions this can be really interesting. Yesterday I’ve put the lens (with macro extension tubes) on my camera, to take some pictures of the first roses in my garden. And for that kind of scenes some softness can be pleasing.
The pictures were postprocessed with DxO Filmpack to give them a slightly different color rendering, a kind of old type film. And the last one was cropped (something I rarely do).
Eddy