Canon 50mm f/.95

[agoglanian]

I had read that the most gnarly 50mm lens ever was able to be used on the r-d1. however, i was under the impression that it had a different lens mount, than the regular leica thread mount.. can anyone dispell this mystery for me?

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Yes, this lens is originally built to be mounted on the also specially-built Canon 7 and Canon 7s; although those bodies take LTM lenses, they have an "outer" mount, if you will, that is specifically for this lens.

I have seen, however, a few times on the 'bay this lens modified to an M-mount. It's not cheap.

 

[John Robertson]

Why would you want to?? I bought one of these new about thirty years ago, the worst lens I ever owned! Canon Dream, ? just like my dreams Hazy, Ill defined, and not very memorable. A lens to be seen with, if you are into that sort of thing, but not to use.

 

[agoglanian]

really? man, that just had so much potential in my mind. .. bummer... how is the canon 50 f/1.2?

 

[Stephanie Brim]

The 1.2 and 1.4 lenses are rather good, at least from what most people have been saying here. Good enough that I want one or both when the time comes for me to have the lenses. The 1.9 is also good, apparently, and keh.com has one for a decent price right now IIRC.

 

[peterbilitch]

Using the Canon f/1.4 with the R-D1 produces images that retain a high clarity of detail, yet look as though they have been taken using a soft focus filter.

http://peterbilitch.smugmug.com/gallery/673607

I have a Canon f/1.2 on its way right now, so I shall feedback the results from that lens next week...

Peter

 

[laptoprob]

I have the 1,2. Not used it on a RD-1 myself but with the limited baselength it may be problematid. Focussing it on the CLE is challenging. It is beautifus for portraits, with increadible OOF area. The 1,4 is told to be sharper but probably less soft in the OOF areas.
I use the lens mainly wide open, but stopped down it gets a lot sharper. NB! Also stopped down the OOF areas are smoother than my Rigid Summicron!

So: ymmv!

Rob

 

[jlw]

Stopped down even very slightly, the Canon 50/0.95 is very, very sharp; when I did a semi-organized test of all my Canon 50s a few years ago, it was actually sharper at f/5.6 than the 50/1.2 or 50/1.4. Not that you can tell much about sharpness in a downsampled online pic, but this gallery image was taken with a 50/0.95 at about f/1.2.

At full aperture, it does have low contrast and very limited DOF, as well as producing weird-shaped flares of light sources within the picture, like this:

As Brian says, though, some of us like these effects!

Side note: Did anybody else notice the listing on eBay the other day for a 50/0.95 in South America? One of the pictures appeared to show it mounted on a Leica M3, so I emailed the seller to ask him what he was trying to pull. He said that the lens does mount only on the Canon external bayonet, but that he had used a "prototype adapter" to mount it on the M3.

Naturally, I emailed him back to ask for more details about this adapter, and if it might ever graduate to being a production item! Will update the group if I hear back...

 

[John Robertson]

Surely the whole point of buying a lens with f 0.95 is to be able to use it at that aperture. Of course it will work better stopped down, but then you would be just as well buying a f1.8. that is unless you just like the look of it on the camera. :angel:

 

[jlw]

Surely the whole point of buying a lens with f 0.95 is to be able to use it at that aperture. Of course it will work better stopped down, but then you would be just as well buying a f1.8. that is unless you just like the look of it on the camera. :angel:

Surely the whole point of buying ANY lens is to be able to use it at whatever aperture you want!

With the 50/0.95, you get an ultraspeed lens that offers quirky but usable results at full aperture, and conventional sharp performance (albeit with considerable bulk and viewfinder blockage) at stopped-down apertures.

 

[John Robertson]

Ah well there you go then! 🙄

 

[jlw]

Ah well there you go then! 🙄

Well, what are you SUPPOSED to do? Every time you need a smaller aperture, remove your large-aperture lens and replace it with a different one with a smaller maximum aperture? "Hmm, I've got my f/2 Summicron on the camera, but now I want to shoot at 1/60 instead of 1/125... better put on the f/2.8 Elmar, no point in using an f/2 lens when I'm not shooting at f/2..."

 

[pfogle]

Brian... those shots are gorgeous! I'm drooling...

Phil

 

[Mackinaw]

Some guy on Photo.Net took a big interest in the Canon 50/0.95 and discovered that the "flange-back distance" (or whatever the term is that describes the distance from the lens mount to the film plane) on many of these lenses is off. All it takes is a few tenths of a millimeter and the picture becomes very soft. He claims, that once properly adjusted by a camera tech, picture quality is comprable to the Noctilux (center up to about 2/3ds out....the Noctilux is still better in the corners). He even supplied pictures to prove it. I'm sure this thread is still in the Photo.Net archives if one is interested.

Jim Bielecki