50mm ideal?

I was just looking, a little while ago, at Ken Rockwell's comments about the Nikon D800E. I've never even seen a D800 or D800E (in fact, I was at a local photography shop a few weeks ago, and they hadn't seen a D800 or D4. Since I had my D4 with me, I was happy to let them take a look. Still, it seemed weird to me that they hadn't), so I don't have too much to say about either one.

But he talked about how sharp the 50mm f/1.8G lens is, and using that instead of the 24-70mm zoom. I don't have the 50mm 1.8G (I got the 1.4G instead), but I thought I'd do a comparison. To see the sharpness difference, I had to zoom in to 100%, and even then it was such a small difference that I wasn't certain it was my imagination.

What jumped out at me, though, is the difference in distortion (it would be even more obvious if I set up a mouseover event for the two pictures here). The 24-70 has no visible distortion, while there's a significant amount from the 50mm 1.4G. Look at which titles make it into the picture in the corners. This picture was taken only six or eight feet away from the shelves, and a whole additional title makes it into the picture in the top-right and bottom-right (and two-thirds of one in the center). The upright supports are also significantly curved.

Yes, the distortion can be corrected, but it's always better to not need to do so. I suspect (although I can't check at the moment) that correcting the distortion will reduce sharpness enough to remove the 50's slight edge there.

Update: Almost forgot to attach the pictures. 24-70mm first, then 50mm.

As a side note, Rockwell has been annoying me lately with things like what he did elsewhere in this article. That is, he repeatedly says that the D800 is for making pictures, while the D800E is for counting pixels. And that's fine, as far as it goes. But what irritates me is that he also gleefully talks about giving his D800 to charity to keep the D800E. So, he's just a pixel counter? (Plus, there's the comment about cost of equipment being irrelevant for him. If so, why doesn't he shoot Hasselblad? They're ridiculously expensive, but they do make better pictures. If cost really is irrelevant, then that's where you want to be. Or going to view camera, I suppose, which is not as expensive, but a lot more painful to use. Yes, I know he talks about liking large format film from time to time, but he seems to do most of his real work on 35mm.)