Topic: New Noctilux From Leica

[cmdrray]

Check dpreview.com for the announcement on the new 0.95 50mm Aspherical Noctilux......

[edthened]

Och as a havnae got a Leica am nae buyin it 

[rolo]

At 8000 Euros it not only needs to go out and take it's own photos, it better get up early and make breakfast for its owner.

"Hey Noctilux, I take mine with milk and two sugars!"

[david b]

We're through the looking glass here, people.

[Heather]

I'd rather have a lens that makes me breakfast for that money. Then again at the end of the day it's just a lens. I already find my 50mm f/1.8 has shallow enough depth of field and if i wanted shallow depth of field for artistic effect, tripod and my 90mm macro lens at f/2.5 is scary enough.

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[Francois]

At 8000 Euros...

And they try and sell the old one in a wood box for 10,000 Euros 

[cmdrray]

My 1980s Summicron is just fine...small, unobtrusive...and great quality. Keeps the
insurance premium down, too.

[Stu]

Noctilux shmoktilux - I just got a 1960 (ish) Summilux for my M2, it's superb and a bargain at ?270.
Still the most I have ever spent on a lens!

[outofcontxt]

And I though my trusty ol' Auto Nikkor 50/1.2 was fast! Sheesh! At that price, it better see forme...

[Ed Wenn]

I'm more than content with the 50mm f1.4 that I use with my Pentax SLRs...and having bought it 2nd hand on evilBay for something like 1/200th of the price of the new Noctilux kind of puts its relative inadequacies into perspective.

f1.4 + some reasonably fast film pretty much covers most low-light situations and if I want to seriously reduce my DOF then I can always put a loupe or something in front of the lens.

[Francois]

I know the Noctilux is more of a status display item than something anybody would really use. I read that DOF is so shallow that it's hard to focus. It's also quite big and heavy since all the the elements must minimally be as large as the focal length for objects focused at 30x focal length... (f value=focal lenght/lens diameter) and this is for single element lenses...

So, like Heather, I stick to a very old and creaky f/1.8 Nikkor.

And for those who wonder how I know this stuff, I have a book on Optics from Edmund Scientific