The Japanese blog Egami (Click here) spotted a new Nikon patents containing a couple of new Nikon 1 lens specs. We have the 10mm f/2.8, the 32mm f/1.2 and the 7-13mm f/3.5-5.6 lens. But the patent discloses a surprise….drumming….Nikon unveils that lenses up to f/0.7 aperture are possible! Of course this is a patent and you know well that 90% of the stuff they describe will never become real. And honestly don’t know how much sense a lens like this would make. Anyway, I know of one lens, the Zeiss Planar 50mm f/0.7 used by Stanley Kubrick (more here on Wikipedia). And at f/0.75 aperture you can find plenty of lenses on [shoplink ‘f 0.75 lens’ ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink].
So is the impossible…possible?
25 Responses
Wow! I wonder what depth of field that would produce? Bokeh may be possible on the Nikon 1 system yet
The same depth of field of an equivalent focal lenght F2 lens on a 35 mm.
Instead of patenting, they should have produced some more interesting pancakes for the system. And pancake zooms too.
Given the depicted size, if I were to buy the Nikon 1, it would be probably the last lens I would consider.
What is the depicted size ?
F/0.7 looks overkill. However, to become relevant the Nikon 1 system does need some very fast lenses. Something like f/1.0, with good performance wide open. Is that even possible?
stupid lens for the wrong system. it’s like the nice pirelli commercial “power is nothing without control”. do you remember?!
No! Not stupid at all to have a much faster lenses. May I remind you that with smaller than full frame sensors it is an absolut must to have faster lenses (compared to full frame) to obtain the same shallow depth of field. Sure, 0.7 is super fast and probably 1.0 would also do it. But generally faster lenses than 3.5 or 2.8 are much appreciated with smaller sensor sizes.
The Nikon 1 is the wrong system to choose if you want shallow DOF. People need to choose the system that makes sense for what they want. Don’t buy the Nikon 1 for something it was never meant to be. There is no purpose in putting huge native lenses on the Nikon 1.
You make it sound as if DOF were the only thing to consider when deciding which camera (system) to buy into. That is just not the case. People may have bought the Nikon 1 because of reliabity and compactness, because of styling and performance. They might have gotten it as a present, they might have bought it before knowing what DOF even is. It’s not like Nikon 1 buyers generally hate shallow DOF. Only few people put DOF at the top of their priority list. There are so many more things to consider. So saying that Nikon 1 users shouldn’t “be allowed” to get a lens which allows a shallow DOF is kinda weird in my book. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to have such a lens available as an option, to expand the versatility of the Nikon 1 system.
> to obtain the same shallow depth of field.
The m43 has some “hyper” primes – f/0.95 – and either the lenses need to be stepped down or the images need to scaled down to web size to get rid off the softness. There were also floating videos of adapted f/0.75 lens: it was like the radial smooth, but without the Photoshop.
IOW the extreme f-numbers lead to IQ loss.
I know pictures can be very soft with fast lenses. I own some old and fast lenses like the Rayxars etc. and they work perfect with my GH2. Not everything has to be tack sharp all the time 😉
are you kidding? even with f0.7 it will suck at having bokeh unless it’s a very long range. it will also have very bad performance wide open unless it cost one arm.
Good for bragging right.
Instead focus on DOF or bokeh, how about insane low light performance with its speedy phrase/contract detection hybrid AF for snapshot?
Who ever said it was impossible? Lenses already exist for years that are even faster then f0.7. The smaller the sensor, the more it becomes possible / viable to create such lenses.
However, making such a lens for this system will be expensive and very niche, and the people interested in such a lens are not the same people interested in the camera that goes with it.
Whats the problem You get more photos at base iso and more blur of course.
But the lens will suck at 0.7 naturally…
f0.7 for Nikon 1 implies aperture of 22.66 mm, which is coincidentally about f0.95 for M43.
Great… this will be just the excuse needed to charge a thousand dollars when actually the DOF affect is still that of a $200 lens on other system formats.
It’s a cool design but I smell a fish in this recipe. _Only_ time will tell!
the fastest lens came from Zeiss: (scroll down)
http://www.westlicht-auction.com/index.php?id=215778&acat=215778&_ssl=off
There is a 81mm f/0.38 from American Optical
The “Kubrick” lens story:
http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/sk/ac/len/page1.htm