Finally the lens has been unveiled! You can preorder the Noktor 50mm f/0.95 lens on their official website: http://noktor.com/index.php
I am in touch with the sales manager of Noktor. He is very friendly. If you have some questions comment this post and he will answer you!
UPDATE 4: Quick link to fullsize image samples -> http://www.flickr.com/photos/theleggett/
UPDATE 3: Steve Huff and Philip Bloom will will soon publish their reviews.
UPDATE 2: via the awesome website noisycamera.com we learned that theleggett.com made some testshots!
UPDATE 1: We added the vimeo testvideo! (scroll down a little bit and you will find it)
Price: 750 Dollar
Ships April 15
| Focal Length | 50mm |
| Aperture | F0.95 – F16 |
| Autofocus | No |
| Min. Focus Distance | 0.6m |
| Lens (Elements) | 8 |
| Lens (Groups) | 7 |
| Weight | 480g |
| Mount Type | m4/3 |
| Filter Size | 62mm |
Noktor – Shoot Wide Open from Noktor on Vimeo.
Shot with Noktor 50mm F0.95 HyperPrime on a Panasonic Lumix GH1. 60 frames per second, 1/120 shutter speed and 800 iso.
Image samples!
60 Responses
Completely underwhelmed by the quality of the images in the noktor gallery. This is what they are posting to market this lens? No thank you. Strange shaped bokeh and artifacting from the direct backlight… Not to mention that all the images were soft.
very nice! Straight up mft mount, now they need to bring over that 25mm .95 too
No contacts on mount at all? hmmm… This means no automatically magnified image when manually focusing. Totally useless – unless using a tripod.
Horrible bokeh!
Seem promising, especially for video.
Was hoping for a little lower price point (500$-600$), but I think they’re actually not too greedy.
Just 1 little note to Noktor: that badge with name, length and speed is way to big, feels too chinese-ish… 😉
Personally, I’ll wait for a fast (1.2?) 25mm, to replace my adapted 24mm Cosina 2.8.
M.
Yeah, sorry but it’s way overpriced for the quality you get. =(
see some full size samples here:
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=noktor&w=all
I’d like to see a f0.95 lens with a 4/3 mount.
Whoa! This would be awesome for videographers and filmmakers. A little soft for photography, but it has a unique look. Is the free shipping international?
don’t pixelpeep in fullres pictures, it’s for video, just capture the mood. good solution for indie filmmaking budgets. it will find it’s niche in video i think.
Usable for video. For stills photography not attractive at all.
The price is better than expected if the quality is there. This lens is two stops faster than the Panasonic 45mm and cheaper too.
I’m sure that plenty of reviewers will be shooting it wide open. I hope someone also trys stopping it down a bit to see how it compares with the Panasonic.
im not surprised that the lens isnt stellar at f0.95 im curious if it holds his own at 1.4 and up.
My other comment has an error. This lens is 3+ stops faster than Panasonic’s lens. (It’s still early here on the west coast. I was interested enough to get up in the wee hours to see the new lens…)
I don’t think we should criticize the performance of this lens based on the internet photos that have been posted so far. We really haven’t seen any photos that show what it can do in daylight.
So- here are my questions:
1) how does the lens do when stopped down a bit?
2) how long until you make something that competes in the wide and normal ranges?
its actually 3 stops faster from 2.8 to 2 its one stop; from 2 to 1.4 its another stop and finally from f1.4 to 0.95 its another stop;)
this is for video i think the good thing its the ability to control the aperture in the machine since the focus woul be manual
Dwight is right. get someone to test its performance and build up the words of mouth is important at this stage. not sure who going to post a more detail test on this. Perhaps. Admin could get one for test and show us the outputs.
Re: No contacts on mount at all? hmmm… This means no automatically magnified image when manually focusing.
-That should be a possible fix for Dandelion, the Russian entrepeneurs. However, I haven’t seen yet any chipped adapters for m4/3, only for classic 4/3.
-The Noktor 50mm f/0.95 may be a Kubrick-type of lens (remember the super-fast 50mm f/0.70), mainly for video.
I think this must be very interestibg but… Does it cover the full sensor?
These are the most softer images i have ever see. The only place you can use this lens is fairy tale weddings.
good for video….. because it’s a video lens in the first place 🙂
and yes, bokeh is god-awful
let’s see what it does a lil stopped down
What so bad about the bokeh? I don’t see it. Contrast does seem a bit low, but this is a cheap fast lens.
Keep in mind all super fast lenses have worst image quality compared to their slower brothers. For example the Summilux 50mm is much better than in every way when compared to the Nocti,except of course for speed.
To put things into perspective:
A Nocti is $10,500!!!! Yes, it’s a better lens, but I will never be able to afford one.
A used Canon 50mm f1.1 at KEH is $4459
An old Canon 50mm f0.95 on ebay will cost around $1,200 and it’s a lousy lens in a lot of ways (I had one).
I wouldn’t pay that price for a lomography lens.
So, is this true 50mm or equivalent of 100mm when on the GH1?
Just wondering.
een
True foal is 50 mm. When mounted on a μFT, this is equivalent to 100 mm on a 24×36.
@Max
This is adapted from a CCTV lens. A video or cine lens would have a much longer focus ring stroke, particularly one with a max. aperture of f/0.95.
“To put things into perspective:
A Nocti is $10,500!!!! Yes, it’s a better lens, but I will never be able to afford one.
A used Canon 50mm f1.1 at KEH is $4459
An old Canon 50mm f0.95 on ebay will cost around $1,200 and it’s a lousy lens in a lot of ways (I had one).”
You forget the voigtlander Nokton 50mm 1.1 at 999€ (not to mention the 50mm 1.5 at 479€…)
The price tag is way to high for so crappy result.
Sure this lens is for video. However, without stepless aperture control it won’t really be useful. I would much rather have a good F1.2 lens with stepless aperture than this lens.
Seb,
I agree the Voigtlander 1.1 is a close competitor. I’m sure it’s a better lens optically, but it is $400 more in the US..
Despite the fact that Voiglander puts a Nokton label on it, the 1.5 isn’t really a super fast and so not comparable.
I’ll reserve judgment on IQ until I see some pro reviews.
This is an new brand with limited photos for quality comparison, I really don’t think it is appropriate to put it with the same line as Voigtlander and Leica. To be fair. let someone have it and get it a test and we will know whether it is a real f0.95 and how usable of it before we are so positive or negative.
I like the lens, at least based on the low light photographs made available for review so far.
The primary reason for my favorable opinion is that the lens produces pictures that capture what low light reality “looks like”.
For example, there is the profile photograph of a young man. The nose looks “soft” yet the ear appears “sharp”. This limited focus range is characteristic of very fast lens shot “wide open”. For us 4/3 advocates this represents a recapture of artistic options lost with the smaller sensor, compared to full frame sensors. The photographer can now steer the observers attention. I like a 50mm (100mm equivalent) focal length lenses for portrait work, and the sharp to soft focus range within the subject is an effect that works great on eyes. This limited focus range also corresponds quite nicely to how we see. Our attention is drawn to one spot, and the rest becomes blurry.
I also like the increased bokeh. For example, there is the full-face photo with lights in the background. The background is clearly out of focus. While the effect is not as strong as is possible with a full frame sensor, the effect corresponds to what I would see if I were there, that is to say the bokeh seems very realistic to my minds eye.
The true to observation characteristics of this lens really shines in video shots.
I hope to see more of a selection of these fast lenses.
Snowflake
I don’t think the bokeh’s so awful. It’s not the best I’ve seen, but I always thought that if you’re looking that carefully at the bokeh anyway, you’re looking in the wrong place! I’ll reserve judgement on the overall quality until I see more reviews. What I find interesting is that their first release is for m4/3 – interesting business decision, which I hope says something good about Olympus’ fortunes!
I like Reverse Stream Swimmers observation regarding the loss of a magnified focus.
I have gotten spoiled with this handy tool. Focus is critical when working with a shallower depth of field and low light photography increases the difficultly in setting a proper focus.
Snowflake
I guess this lens will be ok for video people, but without the electrical contacts on the lens mount I don’t have much of a use for it from a photographers perspective. If I’m going to pay $700+ for a manual focus lens it will have to have those contacts so the focus ring can trigger the 7x manual focus mode on the camera body. Also, was this lens designed to cover just the smaller 4/3’s image sensor size or is it an older 35mm design that’s just been rigged up to mount on a m4/3’s mount? I wonder because if it’s the latter then this lens is much larger than it needs to be. I appreciate the effort, m4/3’s certainly needs fast primes, but I’d like to see native lenses designed from scratch just for m4/3’s.
One question no one seems to have raised yet: Does it really cover the full µ4/3 format?
If this is just a CCTV lens with a µ4/3 mount on it, it may not. The µ4/3 forae are full of example photos using various adapted CCTV lenses: some cover only 16:9, and some can’t cover any µ4/3 format without seriously darkened corners.
Noting that the example video is in 16:9 AND is all night scenes where darkened corners wouldn’t show makes me wonder if the vendor isn’t being a bit clever about hiding possible coverage deficiencies…
Still, if you want to get that available-darkness look and don’t mind purely manual operation, this may turn out to be an intriguing option. $750 will strike many of us (other than dedicated night-owls and/or moneyed dilettante artistes) as kind of high for such a special-purpose optic, but it’s actually less than most of the other faster-than-f/2 options.
(For a look at some other fast 50s on µ4/3, see this post on my blog: http://ranger9.net/?p=425)
The weight is similar to the Olympus 50mm f/2 macro (4/3 mount) That is surprising because the Noktor is 2 stops faster and focuses closer. Any ideas how they pulled that off?
I have a few *totally uninformed* ideas:
1) the Oly is of better construction
2) a lot of weight is saved by giving up AF and auto diaphram
Will it be available from UK based distributors? On the website you can pre-order for shipping to the UK, but of course on arrival it would get stung for the customs tax. Thanks.
Follow-up: Okay, I just looked at thelegget’s test shots and I like ’em! (Incidentally, how the heck d’ya suppose Mister Noktor picked the recipients of evaluation lenses? Used a dartboard?)
Anyway, his shots don’t seem to have significant corner darkening, so maybe it DOES cover 4:3, at least mostly. The images seem to have the sharp-within-soft quality that I like about the 50/0.95 Canon, but without the wacky flare spots the Canon makes when you’ve got bright lights near the corners. (Tip: Typically this type of “soft” image cleans up a lot with a little smart-sharpen or “clarity” adjustment, so it may be useful for something beyond fairytale weddings after all.)
The out-of-focus rendering does seem a bit “edgy” (looking at background phone wires in thelegget’s shots) but it doesn’t seem to have the 50/1.1 Voigtlander Nokton’s problem of ring-shaped out-of-focus highlights (example from my blog here: http://ranger9.net/wp/wp-content/gallery/fashionweek_2009_faces/09-09-05_099.jpg)
So this is starting to look promising. Mister Noktor — where are the wider lenses? We’ve already got several other choices for an ultra-fast 50 — but if you can get out an ultra-fast 25, or 12.5, you’ll have that turf to yourself!
Looks nice, but not $750 nice.
poor quality….terrific bokeh..overpriced…..:(
I wonder if this would work with the underwater housing?
The main problem I have is why did they gear the iris ring like that but no the focus ring….if that was the focus ring you could use it with a follow focus with no gears!
Glad to see a supper fast lens. I shoot regular 4/3, if you offer this or another supper fast lens in 4/3 I will buy them.
Voigtlander Nokton 35mm 1.2 is VERY good and it can be bought for ~$800. http://shop.ebay.com/?_nkw=nokton+1.2
Voigtlander Nokton 40mm 1.4 is very good too and is priced ~$500. http://shop.ebay.com/?_nkw=nokton%201.4
Voigtlander Nokton 35mm 1.1 can be bought for < $900 http://shop.ebay.com/?_nkw=nokton%201.1
All this lenses have excellent image quality and very good bokeh. F/0.95 vs F/1.2 is half a stop. Do you really want to sacrifice image quality for a small number change?
Looks decent for video, but the 20mm is better for photos.
Not trying to pile-on or poo-poo Noktor here, but here are my thoughts:
– Not too impressed with the color at all. Seems washed out and shifted.
– Sharpness as some has said is an issue.
The fact is, both Voigtlander M-mount or 16mm C-mount lens are very viable options for Micro 43 today. Noktor’s first offering is somewhat underwhelm (even with the super wide /F0.95) as I have both Voigtlander and C-mount lenses to choose from.
I think aspiring filmmakers will love this lens.
This lens is so boring, no magic.
@ Ranger 9: ” $750 will strike many of us […] as kind of high for such a special-purpose optic, but it’s actually less than most of the other faster-than-f/2 options.”
Hmmm…. maybe you meant to say f/1.2?
In addition to those Ark-kun points out, there’s a ton of cheaper glass out there at 50mm between f1.4 and f2, some of it really, really cheap, and yet often very well built and optically excellent.
Not saying this lens won’t find its niche — it should as long as the build quality is reasonable. But I suspect some clever marketing has led to outsized hype.
Thanks for the shout 🙂 It was actually a few of us taking photos with it, so I don’t want to take all the credit! Fun to play with for sure!
This lens looks suspiciously like a reworked Navitar CCTV lens designed to cover a 1″ chip.
The Navitar site has the specs. They sell it in C-mount and it is listed at $870 USD.
There is one of them on eBay right now with lots of pictures; item # 280435497791. Seller asking $1000!
Cheers,
Jean-Louis
Also sold under the Senko name.
Check out this thread:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1041&message=34532492
Cheers,
Jean-Louis
[I agree the Voigtlander 1.1 is a close competitor. I’m sure it’s a better lens optically, but it is $400 more in the US.]
Actually the CV 50mm 1.1 is infinitely better than this… And it is only $250 more. All of the fast primes by Canon, Nikon, CV blow this lens away. In fact there really is not even a discussion. If it was $300, then okay… But why would you consider using it at all — even for video? Garbage in Garbage out. Sorry to be so direct, but c’mon. Emperor’s New Clothes let’s call it like it is.
bhomatude’s point taken, but let’s also not forget that so far we haven’t actually seen many example photos.
I own the Voigtlander 50/1.1 and 35/1.2, the Canon 50/0.95, and a few other weird ultraspeed lenses from the CCTV world (36mm f/1.1 GE, anyone?) and I’ve shot a lot of pictures with most of them.
One thing I’ve learned is that these are quirky lenses and most of them have a learning curve — it takes a while to see what kind of shooting conditions, post-processing, etc. give the best results with each particular one. Nobody is at that point with a Noktor yet; we may start seeing better-looking images once the testers have some more time behind them.
Incidentally, the reason I mentioned the 50/1.5 Voigtlander in my previous post is that even though it’s NOT an ultra-speed lens, it’s as fast as most people need, less expensive, and a lot more practical. Ditto the 40/1.4 Ark-kun mentions, although I like the 50 better. Unlike ultra-speeds, these are NOT quirky — you can just stick one on the camera and start shooting sharp, clear pictures. But they don’t have the distinctive ultra-speed “look,” which some of us like and some others obviously do NOT like!
I would take the “equivalent” AF’ing 100/2 for FF for half the price… and probably 10x the IQ by the looks of it. m43 is still a long way from being considered a complete system.
I just picked up a mint nikkor 50 1.2 on ebay for $425…. I had the voigtlander 75 but really wanted something faster. Considering that you can pick up new nikkor 50s for $650… Noktor will have their work cut out for them.
What I hoped for for a while…
What would make me buy a lens immediately…
Is autofocus!!!
As much as I like my Voigtlander 1.2 it’s a bit tiring to focus this half-kg beast wide open manually. I had thoughts of buying an ultra-fast Hexanon lens and some other good but non-mainstream lens, but asked myself – do I really want another manual lens?
I couldn’t see this on the Senko site either, how much would it cost.
One word….I agree. Ok so thats two but you get the point :-p
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