see also:

• fast 50mm focal length lenses
• wide angle lenses

• the 35-40mm focal length range for 35mm full frame cameras offers a lovely perspective for street photography and is very useful for photographing groups of people such as at weddings.
• a wide aperture lens such as f/1.4 allows more shallow depth of field (DOF) to separate the subject from the background, and also extends low light versatility

• Sigma 35mm f/1.4DG HSM lens
• the best optically in this class 2nd to the vII Canon EF but not weathersealed and perhaps bokeh could be better

• optically the best AF lens, weathersealed
• see Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L USM lens

• a popular pro lens
• appears to have a rather unique design fault in which the AF/MF switch appears to fail frequently requiring repairs

• much better optically than the AI-s version with coma minimised but similar distortion and vignetting¹⁾
• 10 elements in 7 groups including 1 x aspherical
• 9 rounded blades
• rear focusing, SWM motor
• no DOF scale, no IR marker, and minimalistic focus distance scale
• Nano coating
• 67mm filter (plastic thread)
• close focus 0.3m
• 600g
• DxOMark tests
• Nikon USA web page

• optically, similar to the 1970's Nikon 35mm f/1.4 manual focus F mount lens
• “low contrast and blurry with spherical aberration and vignetting wide open, improving greatly as stopped down”²⁾
• lots of coma aberration
• barrel distortion
• best optics at f/8
• 9 elements in 7 groups
• 9 blades but not rounded
• close focus 0.3m
• 52mm filter
• 381g

• Samyang/Rokinon 35mm f/1.4
  • “superb optics, sharper at the largest apertures than Nikon's enduring classic 35mm f/1.4 AI-s, sharper than the 35mm f/1.8 DX and even a little sharper than Nikon's new $1,650 35mm f/1.4 G” ³⁾
  • 12 elements in 10 groups incl. 1x aspherical and 2 high refractive
  • 8 straight blades
  • close focus 0.3m
  • DOF scale but no IR index
  • 77mm filter, plastic thread
  • 654g

• Voigtlander Cosina Nokton 35mm f/1.2 Aspherical VMII
  • http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/2011/12/02/voigtlander-nokton-35-1-2-aspherical-ii-lens-review-on-the-leica-m9/
• Voigtlander Cosina Nokton 35mm f/1.4 Classic
  • multicoated or single coated versions

• Olympus mZD 17mm f/1.8 lens
• Panasonic Lumix 20mm f/1.7 pancake lens

• Cosina Voigtlander Nokton 17.5mm f/0.95 for Micro Four Thirds