Fred Miranda wrote:
On paper, these new $10K Leica lenses sound outrageous. Yet - if you don't get in line early, you may be waiting many months to actually get one!
It's not that demand is necessarily insane..Production seems slow and extremely meticulous. Leica also plays the exclusivity game very well with our minds. Of course, the hope is that the payoff is a lens that isn't rushed, built properly, and made with the tight tolerances. Does that make the price and the wait easier to justify? Probably not, but it does make us feel better about handing over the credit card and then patiently refreshing our inbox for shipping notice.
You may have noticed that even though I sometimes earn a commission from links, I share my own impressions...like early reviewer errors on lens weight, aperture and focus rings being too close (potentially causing accidental changes), corner astigmatism, or the small real-world difference between f/1.2 and f/1.4 in a 35mm. I also share how impressive this 35/1.2 Noct is...truly one of a kind. It's just my personal take, not driven by profit or any special Leica relationship....Show more →
Thank you Fred! I feel it's safe to say that most forum members appreciate your long track record of meticulous, unbiased reviews. I find it telling that Voigtlander is almost always willing to furnish review copies of their new lenses. I get the feeling that they are proud of their continuing innovation and look forward to an objective evaluation.
I don't always get that same feeling with Leica products across the board - I don't remember them shipping you many lenses over the years, especially brand new releases? They don't realize the they are probably shooting themselves in the foot...people that would actually purchase new Leica lenses such as this Noctilux are more likely to trust your reviews over some flash in the pan influencer. But I could be wrong. Either way, please keep up the good work!
As I watch with envy and see all of the enthusiastic early adopters of the 35 Noctilux, I am very hopeful there will soon be a thorough side by side comparison between the new Leica and the 35 Nokton V4.
RustyRus wrote:
You don’t need the 35 Noctilux for anything really You can say that for just about any modern lens that is created though.
I am going back and forth on picking this one up- When my name is called it will be telling if I pull the trigger or not. My guess as of now, I am leaning towards I prefer the 35 Lux over this one….
Time will tell though!!
While true, what I meant was that using this lens for that kind of photography doesn’t really show what the purpose of this lens is. It’s not showing the special characteristics of this lens.
There’s no way I’d ever get this lens: 35mm isn’t my thing; I couldn’t focus it at f/1.2; my wife would kill me if I bought a lens for 10k…
The focus throw is not as long as it appears, as maybe 35% of total occupies the range from MFD of 0.5m to the 0.7 detent. There is a generous spread from 0.7m across the close focus range of 1m to 7m, and this will present no difficulties to the user.
The detent is a reminder of the close focus end stop for older M lenses, and it acts as a psychological divider separating two rather different kinds of photographic work. The ultra fine bokeh, amplified by the breakthrough PGM aspherical process. This strong effect is tremendously enhanced by using the 0.5m to 0.7m range, for near-far comps.
You get better precision using a combined finger-thumb ring turn, so no tab to get in the way and pretend it works as well. The design focus involved very high optical performance at MFD and portrait distances.
Subject stand out from the background is of very high quality. More than thee years in the making, and a lot of it devoted to the character to be engineered into this one. The new star is Dietmar Stuible, Head of Development Optics.
this is the region street shooters will be using (courtesy Bobby Tonelli)
johnvanr wrote:
While true, what I meant was that using this lens for that kind of photography doesn’t really show what the purpose of this lens is. It’s not showing the special characteristics of this lens.
There’s no way I’d ever get this lens: 35mm isn’t my thing; I couldn’t focus it at f/1.2; my wife would kill me if I bought a lens for 10k…
Fear of death must not stop you. She will not really kill you. But, you may wish she would. It might be easier...
1bwana1 wrote:
Interesting. In many I prefer the Cron for this use case.
For this, for sure. While the Noctilux is sharp, it still has a slight softness to it where the Cron is just bitingly sharp across the frame. If you look at MTFs of the two its reasonable to think the Noctilux can stand pretty close to the Cron, but the Cron is clearly ahead in my first few samples
rsolti13 wrote:
How can I measure? My opinion - the focus throw on the Noctilux feels perfect for how this lens is to be used. I really like it
A simple way to measure focus throw:
Set the lens at the MFD or 0.7m, depending on the range you want to measure. Mark the focus tab or a reference point on the barrel, then rotate the focus ring to infinity. The angle between the two marks is the focus throw for that distance range.
You can eyeball it, or use a printed protractor, a phone angle app, or take a top-down photo before and after to measure the rotation..
https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-mPVVmKm/0/MsvDRLM7sPjCtNqSLwxkcLk4FNqMRSJND2ssJ5bfT/O/i-mPVVmKm.png
