The Nikkor-S.C 5cm f/1.4 is a higher-end lens, so there won't be as many in circulation as, for example, the Nikkor-H.C 5cm f/2 (which was sold as a kit lens with a lot of Japanese Leica-copy screw-mount cameras in the 1950s).
There are a few of the Nikkor-S.C LTM lenses available right now, however:
RFF Classifieds
KEH
CameraWest
If you're patient or willing to pay top dollar for a collectible-condition example, you should be able to get your hands on one. Great lens, and I love it.
Cheers,
Ari
The Nikkor-S-C 50/1.4 is actually a lens with many drawbacks, it's optimized for close-ups where it actually delivers, but at average and infinity focusing distance it will vignette a lot even if you close the diaphragm to 5.6 and beyond - shooting slides with it drives you nuts.
Wide open it flares crazily, this makes it quite unusable at f/1.4 unless you want to shoot ghosts
😀.
Also, many of them suffer from "golden droplets" around the rear group elements (Canada balsam getting brittle and opaque), ad this enhances the vignetting issue.
All in all this is not such a great lens, Nikon wanted to improve the original Sonnar design with it but with unconvincing results.
It's not a bad lens either, of course, but there are clearly way better choices out there.
The Nikkor-H-C 50/2 is considerably better at all apertures and all distances, and fully usable wide-open, with a similar bokeh, and no vignetting onwards from f/2.8, so...
This is not for no reason that Nikon replaced their original 50/1.4 with the so-called "Olympic" 50/1.4 back in 1964.
I know that we're discussing the LTM version here (which, by the way, should drive this thread in "LTM copies" rather than in the actual Nikon RF forum) but the optical formulas being the exact same were it for Nikon S or LTM mount...
