Rented a CV 50mm Nokton f/1.1

[cmdrzed]

Hi all, I have been thinking about buying the CV 50mm f/1.1 but decided to rent one from lensrental.com before forking over $1k. I posted a few photos on my my flickr page illustrating the lens size (if anyone is interested).

I will be posting some photos taken with the lens as I get them. It seems that I can shoot film faster than I can develop it! Feel free to post yours if you have them. 😀

 

[Todd.Hanz]

sexy beast!

 

[bmasonoh]

I tried to pull up lensrental.com but it wouldn't come up. What other M lenses do they rent?

Please post some pics taken with the lens. It appears to be a very sexy beast!

 

[cmdrzed]

Sorry guys, I fat-fingered the url. It should be lensrentals.com ('s' on the end). They have a pretty good selection of M lenses (as well as an M9). Luckily, I'm in Memphis so I can do local pickup. I will post photos soon. I'm still shooting like a maniac 😀 I have it 'till Tuesday and trying to get as much film through it as possible.

 

[cmdrzed]

The one thing that I have noticed over the past few days is that this thing gets heavy. I read somewhere that one could use the 50mm f/1.1 as their only 50mm lens. After carrying it all day (attached to my M6), I came to the conclusion that if I buy a copy I will need an additional (albeit slower) 50mm lens as well. I miss the compactness of my smaller lenses but loving the speed of the Nokton.

 

[mervynyan]

would it be easier to folk out 1 grand then sell it if you don't like it? lensrentals is a bit over priced on leica stuff.

 

[Todd.Hanz]

Lets see some pics bro, I'd really love to see something that peaks my interest from this lens. So far nothing has quite gotten there for me, the DOF doesn't seem shallow enough for 1.1, mor like 1.4.

Todd

 

[lns]

Hi all, I have been thinking about buying the CV 50mm f/1.1 but decided to rent one from lensrental.com before forking over $1k. I posted a few photos on my my flickr page illustrating the lens size (if anyone is interested).

I will be posting some photos taken with the lens as I get them. It seems that I can shoot film faster than I can develop it! Feel free to post yours if you have them. 😀

Thanks for those photos of the lens size. That's always been what I've wondered about. These pictures are worth a thousand words.

-Laura

 

[hteasley]

There's a decent DoF shot with the Nokton. I like it, but it is heavy and large, and I like the bokeh of the 50mm Summilux II I bought off Wintoid better. Sometimes the Nokton gives contrasty, noisy bokeh, while the Summilux is always smooth. And the Summilux is much smaller, so I'm using that much more.

 

[Fujitsu]

Lets see some pics bro, I'd really love to see something that peaks my interest from this lens. So far nothing has quite gotten there for me, the DOF doesn't seem shallow enough for 1.1, mor like 1.4.

Todd

Thats what everyone said when the first sneak preview shots from Tom A appeared.

Maybe Cosina corrected this lens too well, I am not an engineer, but it sure lacks the "wow" of other ultrafast lenses.

 

[cmdrzed]

I just posted three shots from a recent roll of Ektar 100. All are in my flickr set. I have one shot at f/1.1 and two at f/1.4 (I have more but they're at apertures >= 2.0). Overall, I like the lens and the way it renders but not fond of the overall size and weight of the lens. I do think, for my purposes, that it is excellent and a worthy addition. I wouldn't carry it around with me at all times but I would definitely use it often.

 

[250swb]

....while the Summilux is always smooth.

How boring. By which I mean the rendering can be a choice rather than what pundits say is right. If you want an edgey image, urban life, street life, or disquiet, why not choose a lens that has an edgey bokeh rather than a smooth technically perfect bokeh? What is so great about smooth, whats so much more expressive about it, other than for a wedding photo or a nice photo of a vase of flowers? Does smooth say anything much more than this is neutral?


Steve

 

[johannielscom]

How boring. By which I mean the rendering can be a choice rather than what pundits say is right. If you want an edgey image, urban life, street life, or disquiet, why not choose a lens that has an edgey bokeh rather than a smooth technically perfect bokeh? What is so great about smooth, whats so much more expressive about it, other than for a wedding photo or a nice photo of a vase of flowers? Does smooth say anything much more than this is neutral?


Steve

Because the edgy bokeh parts make the background portions cut out from cardboard and pasted into the shot. Or, like a bad PhotoShop job.

See the blue part in the shot below:

Disclaimer: Just some image I loaned from here to illustrate my view on the lenses' shortcomings. The shot itself is well composed and exposed, photographer excelled, lens fouled up.

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

I'm with Steve on this... And he said the softest bokeh can be well used in some images...

But it shouldn't be as important as it seems sometimes...

The shown image doesn't need better bokeh, but better content...

And I don't think the photographer excelled, nor the lens fouled up... If the woman in hat was visibly Tom Cruise, and the background showed a group of a bit more in focus gigolos, we wouldn't be talking about the bokeh but about the photographer or the subject...

Cheers,

Juan

 

[Fujitsu]

Because the edgy bokeh parts make the background portions cut out from cardboard and pasted into the shot. Or, like a bad PhotoShop job.

See the blue part in the shot below:

Disclaimer: Just some image I loaned from here to illustrate my view on the lenses' shortcomings. The shot itself is well composed and exposed, photographer excelled, lens fouled up.

This looks either digital or badly scanned. Film doesnt blow highlights as nasty as we see it here. And I dont believe thats a lens issue btw, this is limited dynamic range. The lower part looks pretty good.

 

[Steve M.]

I'm surprised by the detail in the background on both of these shots, especially the second one. My R Summicron 50 2.0 will blur the background much smoother and cleaner at 2.0. At 1.1, I would have expected a lot more blurring. They almost look like they were shot a f4 or something.

 

[bobby_novatron]

I have this lens + body combo (Nokton 1.1 + M6) ... it's very sharp, great in low light (obviously). I find the bokeh relatively neutral, but that's just my opinion.

One major observation (that I haven't seen mentioned often) is that this lens is highly prone to chromatic aberrations, especially wide open. Stopped down, of course it's a different matter and the CA is much more tame. Wide open, it produces very noticeable flaring on high-contrast edges.

This may or may not be an issue to people. For me, it's not a deal-breaker, but it's something I need to be aware of while shooting in different situations.

 

[lorriman]

.... If you want an edgey image, urban life, street life, or disquiet, why not choose a lens that has an edgey bokeh rather than a smooth technically perfect bokeh?

hmmm, to my mind that's high-school thinking: "The characters are 1 dimensional: let's make a 1 dimensional painting"..type logic. Real art, I think, is about harmonies. Deliberately constructing disharmonious pics is antiart. While harmonising the disquietous is maybe possible the fact that the two elements are both 'disturbed' does not automatically make a harmony except in the artistically-useless abstract.

What is so great about smooth, whats so much more expressive about it, other than for a wedding photo or a nice photo of a vase of flowers? Does smooth say anything much more than this is neutral?

The bokeh is usually the background and as such it's reasonably obvious that it's role should be to support the subject (if there is one; sometimes not). Edgy bokeh tends to distract from the subject. This is why the smooth bokeh people think the edgy bokeh people are unreasonable.

However the truth is that edgy bokeh is some people's taste, perhaps due to genes, and so edgy, character-full bokeh is aesthetically pleasing and interesting to them. One can't fault that. They even prefer their subject to be 'supported' by such bokeh. Often this (minority) taste for edgy bokeh is not recognised so that some state that the bokeh is great, others that it is awful, no one agrees and then the peacemakers insist that bokeh is entirely subjective, which I think is mostly not the case, taste notwithstanding.

 

[craygc]

I'm not a 50mm type of guy but I do have a liking for this lens...

 

[cmdrzed]

Those are some nice b&w pics!