My Love Letter To The 0.95 Noctilux

[C_R]

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What about field curvature ? The focus area is not plane in the 0.95 as well as in 1.0 Nocti, and so should be the OOF area too.

[Lindolfi]

What about field curvature ? The focus area is not plane in the 0.95 as well as in 1.0 Nocti, and so should be the OOF area too.

 

No, that is not the main cause. For instance if at 1 meter the corners are 10 cm out of focus (which is much more than I measure in the Nokton), the distant background bokeh disks are not 2.8 mm in diameter, but 2.5 mm in diameter in the focal plane with a 50/0.95 lens. So there is an effect, but tiny compared to the barrel occlusion.

[Guest]

The barrel occlusion!

 

Let's remember:

First when the word "bokeh" was popularized few payed attention, while high speed color negative film made big glass look unnecessary.

This Japanese world was unknown to the rest of the world, before Canicon marketing kept repeating this mantra, so most of us parted with compact lenses and got big, heavy, and a lot more expensive ones instead.

In order to get "bokeh" to minimal focal lengths of 21mm.

 

Now we learn that, with the Noctilux there is much more barrel occlusion than with a Summilux, and that mere Summicrons lack it, not to mention Elmarits or Elmars.

 

The new Olympic discipline, the latest challenge here: photos with barrel occlusion .

 

As Tom Sawyer got Aunt Pollie's fence painted and was rewarded by Ben Rogers for allowing him to do the effort,

this newly discovered feature, scientifically and empirically described here, allows us to invest into the technical aspect of our photographic passion nice amounts. Not of our time and effort of practice, though. That's the Ambassadors job. We just have to buy the big glass to belong to the elite of the elite of photographers.

 

We should be aware, that we witness the beginning of a new paradigm. The name of the latest adventure is the barrel occlusion.

 

Come on, this is not the America Cup, guys!

 

The backlash could also be that, next thing you know 50 to over 80 years old LTMs appreciate, because more and more shoot for the Barnack Challenge .

[Lindolfi]

Tri it is true that our perception is partly formed by the concepts we use, like "bokeh". That is why it is so important to also look at the images you capture and if something unexpected happens, to find an explanation beyond fixed terms. If you do so, your perception becomes less dependent on those terms and may even become deeper.

 

The romantic idea of an artist who does not understand his tools, but simply uses them to express what is in the soul looks appealing, but in real life I have seen the advantage of a little insight.

[Lindolfi]

To show the barrel occlusion effect on size and shape of the bokeh disks, here an image with the Nokton 50/1.1 at full opening on an M9, focussed to 1 meter. De lamps (tiny LEDs) were situated at 3 meter from the camera in a plane parallel to the sensor of the camera.

 

The bokeh disk in the center has a surface of 8 times larger than the one in the corner of the image. That means two things:

 

1] sharper rendering of the out of focus parts in the corner

 

2] 3 stops loss in light in the corners on top of the loss due to the angle of the rays (only 0.5 stops in a 50 mm lens in the corners of a 24x36mm sensor)

 

Now this is at f/1.1. In the corners the effective aperture is only f/3.2 !!

 

At f/0.95 these effects may be stronger.

[Guest stanjan0]

Bert, I have been reading and contributing to this thread and you are probably the most experienced photographer with the best and most equipment to post here however, you use as an example a Nocton f/1.1 lens to make a point, why? I as a 79 year old photographer with nowhere the equipment nor the experience that you have just wonders why? You are not using apples to describe apples but, are not using a Leica lens f.95 to properly criticize that lens.

 

If the above doesn't make sense please forgive this amateur, old man for butting in.

[Lindolfi]

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Stanjan, I am just trying to explain and study something as a reaction to a question in this thread. Is there something wrong with the Noctilux 50/0.95 since the background seems sharper in some places where you would not expect it. That was the question. ( see post #54 in this thread) The answer I have given using a lens with a wide aperture. If I would have had the Noctilux 50/0.95 on the shelf I would have used it. But the principle is the same.

 

I am not doing a comparative consumer report on whether the Nokton 1.1, Noctilux 1.0 or Noctilux 0.95 is a better lens. I leave that to people who think that that is possible.

 

I am just explaining that there is nothing wrong with the Noctilux 50/0.95 based on the images that are shown. It is just optical laws we are looking at. This forum is for a large part on quality and the need to establish it. My role is more in the direction of relating and researching what you see in a picture to the principles of the hardware (camera, sensor, lenses) you use to get that image.

 

And those principles are the same in the Nokton as in the Noctilux. The details are just different.

 

So I am not criticizing a lens that I don't have here, I am explaining why you see a change in background unsharpness in pictures made with such a lens.

[Jerry_R]

"if lenses suffer from vignetting by part of the lens barrel, then the depth of field at the edge of frame is larger than in the center"

 

Zeiss document:

http://www.zeiss.de/C12567A8003B8B6F/EmbedTitelIntern/CLN_35_Bokeh_EN/$File/CLN35_Bokeh_en.pdf

 

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