Bokeh with Nocton 50mm and 40mm

[martin-f5]

High,

I'm still on the way to decide wich Bessa and standardlense I schould buy.
Wich lense will have the most pleasant bokeh, 40mm or 50mm from cv?

Some threads ago there was a wonderfull example with a 35mm leica lense,
oh man, very exciting.

best regards
martin

 

[Huck Finn]

Keep in mind that there are many factors that affect bokeh; it is not a constant even with the same lens. One of these factors is the size of the aperture. The CV 40 is a true f/1.4 at maximum aperture, but the 50/1.5 was measured at a maximum aperture of f/1.6 by Popular Photography. When comparing sample pix shot wide open, you're comparing at 1/3 stop difference, which is significant for bokeh at these apertures even before any other factors such as distance from the subject, distance of the background, & contrastiness of the background are considered.

While it may be obvious, 40 & 50 are not the same focal length. I'd decide on which focal length you want before considering the bokeh of the lens. But that's me.

The CV Nokton 40/1.4 has gotten the reputation of not having pleasing bokeh - unfairly IMHO. Here's an article with some sample pix. http://www.photo.net/mjohnston/column70/index.html

 

[thafred]

Hi Martin,

I have the 50 and I like it (recently I favour the collapsile Cron 50..have you considered Leitz glass? mine is from 54 and came with my M3 for less than I paid for my new Bessa R + Nokton)

Fred

heres some CV Nokton bokeh shots:

 

[CJP6008]

Hi Martin,

I cannot speak for the 50mm but I do have the 40mm. As with so much, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The 40mm lens is a great little lens, however bohek is not, for me, one of its strengths. Mike Johnston uses a shot from a CV 40mm at 1.4 in his book "Bokeh Lens Ratings" (available as a free download from www.lulu.com/content/129691) as an example of worst case bokeh. It is not to say that the lens is always dreadful in this department, so many factors are involved. However, as a general rule it is probably not a lens best used wide open, focused close against a contrasty background.

Mr Johnston does not have a rating for the CV 50mm 1.5 but elsewhere has written that he is "almost allergic" to the lens. As a general rule, wide apertures and aspherical surfaces do not often accompany good bokeh. The CV 50 1.5 has both. Erwin Puts has a review of the 50mm on his site www.imx.nl/photosite/japan/voigtl01.html.

Chris

 

[peptonio]

High,

I'm still on the way to decide wich Bessa and standardlense I schould buy.
Wich lense will have the most pleasant bokeh, 40mm or 50mm from cv?

Some threads ago there was a wonderfull example with a 35mm leica lense,
oh man, very exciting.

best regards
martin

Martin,

there are VERY different opinions about what is good bokeh, I own a 1,5/50 Nok and I am satisfied with the OOF rendering, no matter if day or night.
BTW 40 and 50 is a very different FL and which one is better for you depends on your starter kit, read my post on your other thread.

Peppo

 

[Flyfisher Tom]

Martin,

Bokeh is so subjective that it may not be of any real value to you what others may think of these lenses. On the other hand, it is fun to talk about it ;-)

For what it is worth, I owned and sold my CV 40 MC version because I found the wide-open bokeh to be unpleasant. Of course, some like it.

I did find the 50 CV to have very pleasing bokeh, again, for what it is worth. If you are going by sheer bokeh alone (excluding all other factors such as price, size, weight and focal length ... lol) I'd recommend the 50 over the 40. good luck in your search.

 

[Sonnar2]

Hi Fred,
the background of the nice lady in your picture (excellent work) is an example what bad bokeh means to me: unruly background. Irritating, blurred. The last time I noted this was in a Pentax lens of 1957, a 2.4/58, and in contrast a Sonnar type 2.0/58 pciture usually showing regular harmonic bokeh (links)

good background
unruly background (bokeh)

Don't ask me WHY these two lenses exactly behave like this. There are of two different design families.

I think most people would say that the new Voigtlaender lenses (and some modern Leica lenses too) are too good corrigated to dissolve unsharp light rays evenly, thus resulting in unharmonic background.

Cheers, Frank
http://www.taunusreiter.de/Cameras

 

[thafred]

Hi Frank!

To be honest I don´t have any strong opinion on the quality of the Noktons bokeh! sometimes it works and sometimes not, please correct me if I´m wrong but I think that those pictures show that a variety of characters can be seen with one and the same lens.
Besides Bokeh, the Nokton is a great lens! sharp, fast and great haptics! (only downside is that it is large and intrudes the VF .. if you bother, I don´t )

Excelent Homepage you have there!
Sehr informativ, danke!!

Greetings
Fred

 

[Huck Finn]

Mike Johnston uses a shot from a CV 40mm at 1.4 in his book "Bokeh Lens Ratings" as an example of worst case bokeh. It is not to say that the lens is always dreadful in this department, so many factors are involved. However, as a general rule it is probably not a lens best used wide open, focused close against a contrasty background.

Chris, I'll defer to your assessment of the 40 Nokton's bokeh since you own the lens. But in fairness to this lens, I'd like to put Mike Johnston's use of the picture in context. As you point out, so many factors are involved, which is what Mike says. He does not use this photo as an example of a lens which is characterized by bad bokeh, rather he says the following about the photo in question:

". . . "worst case" bokeh is easy to provoke: it's when you use the lens's widest aperture, focus as close as the lens can, and include an effectively infinite background with harsh contrast such as specular highlights."

Again he was using this as an example of the conditions which could provoke bad bokeh, not of a lens which could produce bad bokeh. In the link I cited above, he shows some photos with good bokeh taken with this lens by the same photographer who produced the bad bokeh example used in the book.

In comparing these 2 lenses, it is important to be aware of the differences in them. As I mentioned above, the 40 Nokton is 1/3 stop faster than the 50, so sample photos are often shown using a maximum aperture not available on the 50. Further, the 50 only focuses down to 0.9 meter, while the 40 focuse to 0.7 m, so sample photos taken with it are often shown at a closer distance. Both of these are factors which affect bokeh.

IMO, the 40/1.4 is a more avanced design than the 50/1.5, which was one of the first RF lenses which Cosina produced for its Voigtlander series. Not only is it faster and has a closer minimum focus distance, but it accomplishes its design within a very compact size limitation than the much bigger 50 Nokton. These are two very different lenses & a purchase should be evaluated on a number of factors, not just bokeh IMHO.

Huck

 

[martin-f5]

Ok guys, I learnd not to make a decision over bokeh.
The lense at least has to fit to my kind of seeing and taking photos,
the bekoh will depend on wich f-stop I use and of course wich background there is.
Not to shoot with wide open lense is importand, so why not take a f2 lense.
The leica summicron 50/2 I remember was satisfying at all f-stops and it was sharp enough to me.
Thank you very much,
this forum is great.

 

[chendayuan]

Hi Martin,

I cannot speak for the 50mm but I do have the 40mm. As with so much, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The 40mm lens is a great little lens, however bohek is not, for me, one of its strengths. Mike Johnston uses a shot from a CV 40mm at 1.4 in his book "Bokeh Lens Ratings" (available as a free download from www.lulu.com/content/129691) as an example of worst case bokeh. It is not to say that the lens is always dreadful in this department, so many factors are involved. However, as a general rule it is probably not a lens best used wide open, focused close against a contrasty background.

Mr Johnston does not have a rating for the CV 50mm 1.5 but elsewhere has written that he is "almost allergic" to the lens. As a general rule, wide apertures and aspherical surfaces do not often accompany good bokeh. The CV 50 1.5 has both. Erwin Puts has a review of the 50mm on his site www.imx.nl/photosite/japan/voigtl01.html.

Chris

If you believe what his rating, it is the day of end of this world. look at the rated 10 35mm/2 4th version. no better than VC 40mm/1.4. Some of these what people called king of the bokeh did show distract back ground.

 

[rich815]

I personally like my Nokton 40/1.4 S.C lens but am not a big fan of its bokeh wide open in bright conditions---it does seem a bit gritty. That said I only use it wide open in the darkest of situations and for that it does just fine IMO. I want a reasonably priced, light weight, fast lens. And the 40/1.4 Nokton serves that up just fine. If you plan to shoot wide open with slow film and will have OOF elements prominent in your photography AND creamy, smooth OOF is very important to you then you might want to consider a much more expensive Leica alternative. But then again maybe the money factor does not make that an alternative! 😀

(Attached image: My wife Amy, Leica MP, 40/1.4 Nokton shot at f/1.4 handheld at 1/30th in available light on Xmas eve. HP5+ developed in HC-110 and scanned with a Nikon LS-4000 using Vuescan)

 

[CJP6008]

Huck,

Don't get me wrong, the CV 40 has a lot going for it. It's a good lens. Bokeh is not everything. The ZM 50 on my Ikon is not to clever in the bokeh dept. either wide open but it has much else to commend it.

I would love to understand better the juggling act that the lens designers have to perform, balancing often competing requirements to get the performance they are looking for. How adjusting for this or that affects spherical aberration (for that seems to lie at the heart of issues surrounding bokeh). Pity the designer though, all that work done, they have made a great light focusing device (for that is what a lens is in essence) and goons like me with no idea of the complexities of what they do go and say that I do not like the out of focus performance. The poor designer, it does what it says on the tin, it focuses the light nicely onto the film and I am grumbling about out of focus performance!

Let's face it bokeh is hardly a descidign factor for most, otherwise hardly a zoom would get sold and never a mirror lens!

And so to bed...

Chris

 

[sychan]

If you plan to shoot wide open with slow film and will have OOF elements prominent in your photography AND creamy, smooth OOF is very important to you then you might want to consider a much more expensive Leica alternative.

I guess my question would be, what is the Leica alternative that has clearly better bokeh? I'm not convinced that the Cron-C or 35 ASPH Lux is appreciably better.

 

[Nick R.]

The early 50 summilux has a unique look for both foreground and bokeh. It's definitely different from modern lenses and it's a look that will grow on you.
(close focussed, wide open)

 

[Nick R.]

Same lens at f4:

 

[Nick R.]

Very harsh test of same lens: Close focussed, wide open, and strong background lighting.

 

[sychan]

How about a big lens?

How about a big lens?

What I see in the pre-asph lux seems to be a lower contrast lens, and especially the OOF backgrounds being lower contrast than the subject. Apparently the 35/1.2 nokton is supposed to be lower contrast as well, and was perhaps designed for well behaved bokeh.

What do you folks think?

 

[Mazurka]

What do you folks think?

Not good -- note the highlights with bright rings.

The lens has over-corrected spherical aberration (SA) which gives a harsh background but benefits foregrounds. If SA is under-corrected, the background is smooth at the expense of the foreground -- all other things being equal. See below.

Like Huck said, there are many other factors affecting bokeh: subject distance, background distance, aperture, brightness and type of highlights, busy or clean background ... all contribute to the final bokeh. That's why the same lens can have varied bokeh renditions under different conditions.

 

[ClaremontPhoto]

And with the 40mm f1.4 Nokton we have two versions: the muliticoated and the singlecoated.