Ok that’s unfair. I admit that I received the “rumor” directly from Noktor 🙂 So I guess I could call that “news” and not “rumor”. What did they tell us? “we now have a totally custom lens design in the works (not based on existing design like the Goyo lens)” and “It will be sharper and faster than our current F0.95 lens (but priced higher)“. They didn’t tell us how fast they will make the lens. The only ultra fast lenses I know (because I found them on eeBay) are the Oude Delft 50mm f/0.75Oude Delft 50mm f/0.75
Oude Delft 50mm f/0.75
Oude Delft 50mm f/0.75
Oude Delft 50mm f/0.75
Oude Delft 50mm f/0.75
Oude Delft 50mm f/0.75
Oude Delft 50mm f/0.75
Oude Delft 50mm f/0.75
Oude Delft 50mm f/0.75
Oude Delft 50mm f/0.75
and the Leica Leitz 75mm f/0.85Leica Leitz 75mm f/0.85
Leica Leitz 75mm f/0.85
Leica Leitz 75mm f/0.85
Leica Leitz 75mm f/0.85
Leica Leitz 75mm f/0.85
Leica Leitz 75mm f/0.85
Leica Leitz 75mm f/0.85
Leica Leitz 75mm f/0.85
Leica Leitz 75mm f/0.85
Leica Leitz 75mm f/0.85
Noktor is following 43rumors so may you could tell them what kind of lens you need!
[poll id=”33″]
17 Responses
17mm – wide, fast and with AF. We need something for indoors and night shooting. You can easily crop unwanted parts if you need narrower FOV.
Will it have autofocus though? As much as I love fiddling around with manual focus at times, AF is important it they are thinking of continuing native m43 lenses…
Good thing Senko (the company that makes the lens that Noktor sticks a m4/3 mount on) already makes a 25mm f/0.95 that you can get for like $400. Hope Noktor doesn’t charge much more than the price of said lens + a C-mount adaptor.
But I bet the dude in his garage is happy that 25mm is winning your poll.
Noktor is just a CCTV lens with with other mounts and body – with terrible quality… and the real price – something about 250$ 🙂
http://www.cinema5d.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=11166&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=0
Read it if you want more.
The question is… why?
I would love a 25mm or 30mm f/0.95. The Pany 20mm is just a bit wide for a “normal” lens. I know Senko has a 25mm f/0.95, but it’s not very sharp and the vignette really takes away from the image. I really hope Noktor makes a better version and for a price that is more affordable.
The only lens I would like without an autofocus is a Macro lens cheaper than the Panasonic-Leica one.
I suspect all their future lenses will continue to be manual focus — I don’t think it’s realistic to expect a small firm to engineer and produce an AF lens that will sell in small numbers.
So, if you knew that their next lens would be manual focus, would that change your preference? I think that because of the small image size, a 17/20/25 lens faster than f0.95 would be very difficult to focus manually, even with EVF magnification — flare from out-of-focus areas reduces the contrast so much that it’s hard to see exactly when you’ve reached the peak of best focus.
(It’s less of a problem with longer focal lengths because the image details are magnified more in the finder, but it’s still an issue. For example, I find it significantly harder to focus my 50mm f/1.1 Voigtlander Nokton than I do my 50mm f/1.5 Nokton, because the image as seen through the EVF is less crisp.)
I think the sweet spot for these independent ultraspeed lenses is going to continue to be in the 40-50mm range. Shorter lenses (if they actually cover M4/3, unlike the cheap CCTV lenses) will be hard to make and hard to focus, while longer ones will be too bulky.
Something along the lines of a 45mm f/0.85 with full M4/3 coverage, reasonably close focusing, and good central sharpness would be a nice thing for portraitists and cinematographers!
Noktor is just a CCTV lens with with other mounts and body – with terrible quality… and the real price – something about 250$
it’s a shame they did this! but what a great marketing team…
And why do we need expensive, ultra-fast primes? They have very limited use, and the quality isn’t up to par with other lenses. How about some inexpensive or moderately-priced primes that are pretty fast instead (f/1.2 – f/2)?
Where can I vote for 300 mm ? 😉
$250 for the Senko 50mm? I’m sure even Noktor would be happy to pay that price… where the hell do you find it that cheap? The 25mm is the cheapo one… it vignettes heavily though!
Oh and the poll is kinda stupid… it’s impractical to make a lens faster than f0.95 with a focal length anything other than 40-60mm (unless you want a boat anchor!!!)
@Ranger 9: I’d buy a ( reasonably priced ) 17mm F0.85 even if it’s MF. Do you hear this Noktor 🙂 ?
I’d use it mostly for night outdoors photography and concerts; stills and video. I’m not interested in portraits.
I suppose the size could be something between Panasonic 14-45 and 7-18mm m4/3 lenses, but as long as it’s smaller than 50mm F0.95, it’s not a deal breaker.
Now, let’s all vote for 17mm and make them release it 🙂 !
AF yeahhh
Actually, on µ4/3, the easiest lenses to get really fast are 20mm, getting progressively larger either way from there.
JK: Not even remotely true. I have a 25mm f/0.78 (Canon TV-16) that is nice and compact, and would very likely cover m4/3 without significant vignetting.
Unfortunately, it extends too far past the c-mount to fit an unmodified E-P2 or G1 (the two m4/3 cameras I’ve tested). I still wonder about picking up a used and abused G1 and going to town with a dremel from time to time.
More expensive than their other WAY OVERPRICED lens? Yea right! What they really need to do is work on “assembling” a lens for under $100. No one in their right mind would pay more than that for a lens from these guys.