The Nikkor 50 mm f 1/4G is a very nice lens, as also reviewers on Nikon USA write … but like every lens it has its limits. Finding them should let you adapt to your lens in difficult situations.

For example, hand-held night shoots mounted on a full frame camera like the D800. Sharpness with ISO 4000 and close to f/2 is not excellent as expected, but optical aberrations at the borders are quite annoying. Click here for a full size zoom/pan version on zoom.it or click on the post picture.

At f/1.4 it  is of course even worse and all the picture lights suffer distortion (click here to see a convincing full size example).

With night shoots I would recommend to remove the UV filter you possibly forgot mounted, unless you like green ghost fireworks on the picture, click here for a clear example.

So, when similar results pop out, keep your subject just in the middle, go up with the aperture when possible or find somebody to carry your tripod along!