Noktor f/0.95 MicroFourThirds Lens That Will Out Perform the Human Eye.

Noktor 50mm f/0.95

43rumors is reporting that a new upstart, Noktor, is preparing to release a 50mm f0.95 lens on March 1st.  The lens will be a 50mm with an aperture of f/0.95, the closest comparison (as its name suggests) would the Leica Noctilux 50mm f/0.95; which is a $11,000 lens.  Leica lovingly refers to a f/0.95 lens as “breaking the “sound barrier” of lens speed 1.1 has been the Holy Grail of lens design for many years“, and a lens that can “Out Perform the Human Eye” and a “King of the Night“.  On paper at least, this Noktor should become a poor-man’s Noctilux.

43 rumors also points out that these lenses possibly could be based on the Senko/Navitron/Yakumo lens designs fitted with a MicroFourThirds mount.  Those lenses were primarily C-mount lenses designed for broadcast CCD cameras, and have been frequently modified amongst the M-mount community  for use on their Leicas.  However, it should be kept in mind that a 50mm lens on a MicroFourThirds system will have an equivalent focal length of a 100mm on a full-frame due to the 2.0x crop-factor.  Being that MicroFourThirds cameras can do HD video (which Leica cannot) and has been shown to have impressive low-light performance comparable to dSLRs with larger sensors, this Noktor could become a useful tool in a photographer’s arsenal of lenses.

Noktor has also put up two samples viaTwitter:

Sample 1, Sample 2

“f/0.95″, What Does it Mean?

“f/0.95″ is the aperture size.  In general, the larger the aperture, the more light can enter the camera, the shutter speed can be faster, and photographs can be taken at lower light, but it also means that photographs taken at large apertures will have a much more shallow depth-of-field(DOF).  Sometimes this shallow DOF is desirable because it produces a nice “bokeh” effect that isolates the subject.

Most 50mm prime lenses range between f/1.4-f/1.8, but there are some speciality lenses like Canon’s 50mm f/1.2L that offer larger apertures, but they tend to be relatively expensive.  dSLRs like Nikon’s F-mount and Canon’s EF-mount are typically at a disadvantage in producing incredibly large apertures, this is because dSLRs have a much larger focal-flange distance (FFD) to accommodate the typical SLR mirror-box assembly.  So rangefinders, like the Leica M-mount, can make lenses with large apertures because they can mount the lens closer to the light-sensitive medium (film/sensor) because it has a shorter FFD due to the lack of a mirror-box (and hence also lacks autofocus abilities as well as an optical view finder).

Since the camera has entered the digital era, the mirror-box assembly (and its phase-detection based AF) has become less necessary.  Panasonic in particular has demonstrated that contrast-based live-view style cameras can also produce fairly accurate autofocus comparable to dSLRs.  Since last year, MicroFourThirds cameras that do away with the complex mirror-box assembly and short FFD have hit the market.   Many have started to refer to these cameras as “E.V.I.L” cameras, as in “Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens”.  This means that compact large-aperture cameras along with modern features (HD video, AF/AE, etc)  are possible with the MicroFourThirds system.  This upstart Noktor has seen an obvious niche that the big lens companies have yet to fill.

Alternatives

There are currently  several ways to mount ultra-fast primes onto the MicroFourThirds system.  The Loctilux 50mm f/0.95 for instance can easily be mounted onto any MicroFourThirds body with an M-mount adapter.  There are also several very-fast primes like the Cosina-made Voigtländer Nokton 50mm F1.1 lens which sells for a little over $1,100 and which can be mounted via an VM adapter (sample).  Cosina, it should be noted, also make the superb Carl-Zeiss SLR lenses for Canon and Nikon mounts.  Nikon has also made a 50mm f/1.1 rangefinder lens in 1956, as well as a 50mm f/1.0 Nikkor O-lens in 1962, but those lenses are expensive and very hard to find.  There is also slightly slower, slightly cheaper, alternatives like the Minolta 50/58mm Rokkor f/1.2 or the Canon FD 50mm f/1.2 that can be mounted via adapters.

The lens that shouldn’t forget mention is the Canon 50mm f/0.95 “Dream lens”, which was originally produced for the Canon 7 rangefinder.  However, there are issues with mounting the lens onto a MicroFourThirds body.  The first method is purchasing a lens that has been converted to an M-mount, or converting the lens yourself by sending it to several specialists.  The lens has been popular amongst the Leica community as there are several M-mount Dream lenses floating around, but they tend to cost over $1,000 and can be hard to find.  The other option is to buy the “TV” version of the lens, which Canon produced for CCTVs, that comes with a C-mount adapter.  From either C-mount or M-mount, the lens can be fitted onto a MicroFourThirds body.

This Noktor 50mm f/0.95 should offer something more easily obtainable without the hassles of finding old-lenses on Ebay or fiddling with adapters; it will be a native MicroFourThirds lens.  The big question is how much it will cost and what image quality it will produce.  Will it have the soft ephemeral “dream”-like quality of other f/0.95 lenses?  Stanley Kubrick famously converted a Zeiss 50mm f/0.7 NASA lens to take the candle scenes in the movie “Barry Lyndon”,  modern sensors mated to these ultra-fast primes could produce similar unique results- especially mated to capable video-centric MicroFourThirds cameras like the Panasonic GH1.  This could be a lens for the modern-day Stanley Kubricks…

Canon 50mm f/0.95 "Dream Lens" mounted on a MicroFourThirds Panasonic G1