Noktor 50mm F0.95

[JD Holloway]

Does anyone know who made the lens Billy Bitzer loaned to Leni Riefenstahl for her night time torch ski sequence? It seems if I remember right Billy had the fastest lens in Hollywood, so she asked if she could use it, but I have not seen what the FL or f/ stop was and who made it?

Its in my lens collection with "the Arc" and a crystal skull thingy.

 

[Humberto Rivera]

Here is a quote from: http://www.dpreview.com/news/1003/10030102noktor50mmhyperprime.asp "Noktor HyperPrime 50mm f/0.95 specifications"
“After a brief online campaign, US-based company Noktor has announced its first product: the HyperPrime 50mm f/0.95 lens for Micro Four Thirds cameras. This ultra-fast manual focus lens with manual aperture control bears an uncanny resemblance to the Senko 50mm f/0.95 C-mount CCTV lens and shares almost all of its vital specifications. The company, that appears to be registered to a residential property in Canton, Georgia will start shipping the lens from April 15, 2010 at a retail price of $750.”

Humberto Rivera

 

[Henry Olonga]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/theleggett/sets/72157623527995554/show/

Way too soft IMHO. Good luck pulling focus on this.

 

[Zack Birlew]

It's a specialty purpose lens, you don't want to risk rack focusing with it unless you like headaches. My Nikon 50mm 1.2 is hard enough for racking but that's not really what you should be doing at f/1.2. Static shots are the best thing for fast lenses or, if you're adventurous, slow dolly pans. Looking at the stills this lens makes, it can certainly be useful for beauty shots and, as the pictures show, in locations that you can't light artificially.

I'm voting for the Nikon F version, I don't know why everyone is going Canon FD, you don't want to let this thing go with AF, just get it in the most universal mount possible!

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Having looked through all the test photos posted, I have to say I'm not a fan of the "look" this lens produces.

Zack, you're right about the Nikon F version! But I think it's all the Canon vDSLR shooters out there that want the Canon mount.

I still want to know the T-stop. It's hard to tell from the test photos, but I'm willing to bet that the Canon or Nikon 50mm f1.2 transmit just about as much light. I also think the dpreview link commenting on the Senko 50mm C-mount lens is dead on. The Senko lens looks identical other than the labeling.

If they move on to provide a lens that can cover APS-C (Nikon DX and S35), then it may end up being a different design.

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

There is already one test about Noktor 50mm f./0.95 from Steve Huff:

LINK>>>

All semples are shot wide open @ f/0.95.

 

[Andrew Rieger]

Seems like it would be perfect from dream like footage. Very very soft wide open, almost too soft but some may like to look, should they decide to make a PL or Nikon version.

 

[Dan Hudgins]

Tight and short

Tight and short

It looks usable if you keep the framing tight as possable so the subject is large in the frame, and keep the shots short and the camera moving so motion blur blends in, like 3 seconds max for each shot, then your eye does not have time to see the missing detail. Also the light is too soft to bring out the surface detail, use strong point light sources from the side and the back to pick up the edge contrast and counter the softness of the lens some what...

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

Also there is Noktor's advertisement clip with a torch shot at wide open on Vimeo>>>

 

[Stephen Strangways]

It looks like it has nisen-bokeh, which is usually due to overcorrection of spherical aberration.

It would probably look nicer if the foreground was out of focus and the background was sharp, though I'm not sure that's how most people would choose to shoot with this lens.

 

[Pawel Achtel]

Is it me or they are relatively low contrast.

 

[Deanan]

Bokeh seems not as nice as the noctilux (which goes weird also sometimes).

 

[Marc Berger]

Bokeh seems not as nice as the noctilux (which goes weird also sometimes).

Yeah,this one looks like a interesting lens for strange dream/horror effects. A weird lens which will find its place, like lensbabies.

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

Noktor Hyper Prime 50mm F/0.95 ($750) I could call an "emergency" fast lens just in case that you can't get another.

Other much better option are the following:

Cosina Voigtlander 50mm F/1.1 the Knock Your Socks Off Nokton(!)

that offering great high speed performance at a great price ($999).

Shot handheld on R1-M withSuper Fast Voigtlander 50mm F/1.1 the Knock Your Socks Off Nokton, ISO 320, shutter 1/50.

Shot handheld on R1-M with Super Fast Voigtlander 50mm F/1.1 the Knock Your Socks Off Nokton, ISO 320, shutter 1/50.

Nokton 50mm F/1.1 @ wide open F/1.1 on R1-M Quick & Dirty Test (15MB) >>>



And the king of super fast lenses is the newest Leica Noctilux-M 50mm F/0.95 (BH Video online shop>>>$ 10,495.00):

"The NX 0.95 is the most recent addition to the Leica CRF scuderia employing aspherics and floating elements.
When comparing the MTF graphs you can appreciate the quantum leap forward at the widest apertures.
At 1:0.95 astigmatism is well controlled as is curvature of field. Overall contrast is low to medium,
but the focus shift when stopping down is very well controlled. This implies that spherical aberration has been
reduced to low amounts, but one cannot expect a lens with such a wide lens diameter to have crisp definition
of fine details. And where fine detail is soft, the delineations of major subject outlines will be soft too.
To get sharp edges at subject outlines, we need lots of high frequencies to create this sharp boundary.
The performance of the old Zunow lens at 1:1.1 can only be described as a last resort when you desperately need that picture.
The NX at 1:0.95 performs so well that you hardly will guess that the picture was made with a superfast lens.
At this point in the report, we need to take great care in examining the performance profile of the NX.
When testing a lens, and even when just examining the results of the lens, it is quite easy to select and present the good,
the bad and the ugly aspects of a lens. The occurrence of vignetting is such a case.
The technical data sheet reports a vignetting value of 20% at the edges or more than two and a half stops.
There are picture situations where you will very clearly see this strong darkening in the edges.
But there are also many instances where the vignetting is negligible. We should also be aware of the optical specifications.
A superfast lens with a wider angle of view will exhibit vignetting, caused by a number of factors: size of mechanical mount,
cosine 4 law, and image distortion. There is a trade off between distortion and vignetting and the Leica design favors a low level of distortion,
in my view a fine choice. This discussion is not meant to diminish the effect of vignetting in the Nx 0.95 but to indicate that we should differentiate
between an optical error and an optical given. Focus shift on the other hand is an error that can be corrected without severely effecting other aberrations.
There is slight coma at the outer zones of the image field."

Quote from Erwin Puts, "Leica Noctilux-M 50mm f0.95 ASPH. , part 2 (June 7, 2009)" >>>

Shot handheld on R1-M with Leica Noctilux-M 50mm F/0.95 wide open @ F/0.95, ISO 320, Shutter 1/50.

Shot handheld on R1-M with Leica Noctilux-M 50mm F/0.95 wide open @ F/0.95, ISO 320, Shutter 1/50.


Leica Noctilux-M 50mm F/0.95 wide open @ F/0.95 on R1-M Quick & Dirty Test (17MB) >>>

 

[Andrew Rieger]

The only problem is, there are no ways of getting the Leica and Voightlander lenses on the red cams without voiding the warranty.

 

[Roberto Lequeux]

Yes there is. You can rent SJ's R1. :thumbsup:

 

[Dan Kanes]

I think that halo-ey low contrast look is called Coma. Correct me if I'm wrong.

T4 is the new wide open ROFL!:beer:

 

[Roberto Lequeux]

Bloom reviewed the lens (on a 4/3").

He said it is sharp at f/1.4 (anything beyond that a specialty-use plus), with good focus and aperture ring action.

With a $750 price tag it sounds very promising. Far better than a lens sharp at f/1.2, with a less than stellar focus action, no aperture ring, and twice the price (Canon f/1.2L).

 

[XiaoSu Han]

If only someone would rehouse the Nokton 1.1 - best bang for the buck and great characteristics I think.

PS: those pictures were taken on film though

 

[Roberto Lequeux]

I think this lens is definitely worth it's price though. I wonder what it will look like wide open, shot at 5k, downscaled to 2k/1080, with post sweetening. If it really proves to be sharp at f/1.4 (over a S35 or 5k area) then it will be a lens I will be looking at. I am a BIG fan of this look for certain situations:



Of course there are other ways to achieve something similar, but at $750 I might get one for myself one day. My current 50mm is one I inherited. It breathes and only goes to f/1.8.