A short good news: Panasonic reported a $164 million profit for the Q1. After years of losses this is finally a good news! There are no details about camera sales in their report (download here).
A good news for European readers: Now the price of the Nokton 25mm f/0.95 lens became ridiculous low! You cna buy it now for 639 Euro(!!!) at [shoplink 32577 ebay]Micro Price eBay (Click here)[/shoplink] and for 647 in [shoplink 32578 ebay]eBay France (Click here)[/shoplink]. For some pro photographer that lens would be the only one you ever need to fit on your m43 camera!
31 Responses
First!
Ataboy.
639.- EUR is damn tempting… that Nokton lens would fit quite nice on my om-d 😉
Just checked: Pixmania France lists it for € 655 and Pixmania Netherlands for € 699. I guess it won’t be long before these prices show up in other shops too. And now we wait for price reductions on the 17/0.95 …
ok nokton make a full cinema set of declicked f0.95 12mm/17,5mm/25mm/45mm primes and I´m sold!
Totally. I’d guess a 0.95 12mm would be tough. Would love a 0.95 45-50mm in m43 mount would be soooo awesome!!!
Perhaps Nokton should have a word with Olympus and Panasonic and politely ask if they could implement focus-peaking in their camera bodies so that someone might consider a manual focus lens on m43.
While they are at it, they could ask Olympus why IBIS doesn’t work for MF lenses too…
IBIS works great for stills, just not for video (AFAIK, don’t really do any video).
“Nokton” is not the name of a company, it’s a model name. The lens is made by Cosina under the Voigtlander brand.
Thanks Colin. Yes for video only. Along with the omission of 24p or 25p from the video options on the EM5, it seems like Olympus don’t want to give us too much of a good thing.
IBIS works great for both stills and video on MF lenses.
While focus peaking might be nice at times for some people, seeing how for a long time they couldn’t even make enough noktons to keep up with sales, I’m pretty sure people are considering those MF lenses on m4/3 cameras.
Additionally, with a very shallow DOF, focus peaking is hardly ever needed (still nice, but nice to have is NOT the same as absolutely needed, learn the difference), and focus peaking is actually often not accurate enough with very shallow DOF.
And yes, I am saying this based on actually using such lenses on various systems for quite a bit, and hence on actually having experience with manual focus on m4/3 without focus peaking.
Again, not saying it isn’t a “nice to have” feature, but it IS a rather overrated feature that doesn’t work nearly half as good as many seem to think.
Not to mention, if you pay somewhat closer attention to ‘aliassing and moire artifacts’ during manual focus, you actually get a much more accurate ‘in-focus’ indication then focus peaking will give.
It’s subjective. Focus peaking may not be important to you, but it’s important to me. Some people prefer a rangefinder, some prefer a split prism, some prefer a loupe/magnification, some prefer focus peaking. You can’t make broad claims that any are better than the others.
Hence I said it is a ‘nice to have’. My point being that many people wil consider MF lenses without it, and the statement about oly having to implement focus peaking in orcer to get people to consider manual focus lenses is not generally true, it is however true for some people.
I agree. I tried focus peaking on a Nex 7 using a Leica lens: quite strange, you need to “trust” the camera. On my OMD I use Nokton 17,5mm and Noktor 50mm and I think that at f0.95 FP wouldn’t make that difference. Maybe stopped down, but at that point I change lens and use an AF as 45mm or 12mm or 25mm. By the way, I just received my new grenade: 75mm. It’s AWESOME
Actually I would describe it as “focus peaking would be nice to have for most people and necessary for some like me with compromised vision”. Are you suggesting I watch for aliasing on the EM5 screen rather than have the edges lit up in yellow like on the NEX5N, which I used successfully with a few old OM lenses for several months before the EM5 came along? Sorry, my vision is not up to that.
The artifacts actually stand out enough that I can easily spot them despite having less then 15% vision. The focus peaking of the nex is even more visible at the cost of interfering more with the preview.
As others already pointed out, it has much more to do with preference then with ‘need’.
Pixmania.de lists the 25mm Nokton for 639€ plus 10€ rebate from time to time, thats how I got mine.
edit: n/m
Price drop before Olympus 25mm shows up for $200 this month?
:-):-)
I’m guessing it’s more in response to Rokinon releasing information and a release date for their cine lenses.
if it were around 500 USD, I think they would sell a lot more of that and the 17.5, but I don’t know if they can afford to make them that cheap. I know you can buy a brand new 50 1.2 Ais, for around 700 USD, last time I checked, but that’s not 17 or 25, but it is a nice lens, witha 5 year Nikon warranty and probably optically better than the Nokons, when stopped down a notch. You just have to get farther back.
Whoops, I guess it’s only a one year warranty now.
I got my new nokton 25 0.95 for 441 euro from italian ebay auction %)
That is the reasonable price and aperture for the system (unlike prices for 45/2.8, 75/1.8, 12/2 and especially 12-35/2.8).
Now if only they would add the chip and AF motor.
Ah yes… The fact that Nokton failed to chip their lenses is a big mistake IMO.
It would at least give exif info and focus confirmation…
For a lens that expensive I cant imagine they couldnt broker a deal with m43 partners.
Have you ever given a close look at one of those f0.95 lenses? There’s no space left for anything inside them, and the weight and size already force you to buy an additional grip. I think it would be possible, but at what cost? (don’t ask me how, I’m not an expert, I simply own a couple of them)
Try the LensTagger plug-in for Lightroom. It let’s you add lens info to EXIF data.
http://www.essl.de/wp/software/lenstagger-lightroom-plugin/
Belive there is always space.
Anyway, a simple dandelion like chip for focus confirm and with FL data and info would have been great. That is 0g weight and 1mm thick.
I completely agree about the exif data chip, still I’m a little bit doubtful about an AF inside one of those f0,95 lenses…
I’m thinking about selling my Pana/Leica 25mm 1.4 and getting one of these. Do you think it’s worth it?