Rumoured Noctilux Family

[anickpick]

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Give it a few years and $10,000 will barely buy a Summicron.

 

I fear you're right.

[farnz]

An F1 or F0.95 35mm is very unlikely IMO. More likely F1.2 and E49 (if that works). A more pertinent question IMO is why a 35mm Noctilux at all?

 

A 35/1.2 Noctilux would be on the same step as the Voigtlander 35/1.2 Nokton so I suspect that Leica would be driven to go at least one step further.

 

Pete.

Edited November 30, 2017 by farnz

[james.liam]

With a DOF of no more than (?) 2mm at a 1-2 metre distance, this series are EVF-only lenses for all but the most experienced M users, and with perfectly calibrated rangefinders. The 75 Summilux' softness wide-open often obscured some of the focus error, something these highly-corrected lenses will not afford. Hell, even Thorsten von Overgaard is seen in his videos shooting the Noctilux with the EVF attached. 

 

The situation will become even more untenable when the rumored 90/1.5 is introduced in late 2018.

Edited November 30, 2017 by james.liam

[wattsy]

A 35/1.2 Noctilux would be on the same step as the Voigtlander 35/1.2 Nokton so I suspect that Leica would be driven to go at least one step further.

Yes, that may be right. I don’t think Leica will feel they are in competition with Voigtlander (I suspect they feel they operate in a different league) but they could well feel that a 35 Noctilux has to set a new speed standard if it is to make a statement. I guess it is also true that the two current Noctiluxes are at least a stop faster than the next fastest M lens of that focal length. Either way, it won’t be a lens that is of interest to me. A pancake 35/F3.5 on the other hand...

[pico]

It seem that the affluent cannot appreciate, "Il meglio è nemico del bene"

Edited November 30, 2017 by pico

[Michael Geschlecht]

Hello Everybody,

 

With today's variable ISO, along with old time shutter speeds: Why not turn the World around?

How about a 135mm, F 5.6. Solid Catadioptric (Mirror) lens?

Which is the size of a Version 1, 35mm, F2, Summicron.

 

And takes the same 39mm filters.

 

And uses a 12575 lens hood.

 

With proper design: This could be the best 135mm lens in the World.

 

Best Regards,

 

Michael

Edited November 30, 2017 by Michael Geschlecht

[michaelwj]

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Hello Everybody,

 

With today's variable ISO, along with old time shutter speeds: Why not turn the World around?

 

How about a 135mm, F 5.6. Solid Catadioptric (Mirror) lens?

 

Which is the size of a Version 1, 35mm, F2, Summicron.

 

And takes the same 39mm filters.

 

And uses a 12575 lens hood.

 

With proper design: This could be the best 135mm lens in the World.

 

Best Regards,

 

Michael

 

 

Except the "bokeh" would be rings and no one would buy it at the price Leica would charge  Better to make it f/8 and then there is less out of focus. 

Edited December 1, 2017 by michaelwj

[farnz]

Yes, I expect that its inherent catadioptric 'doughnut' bokeh would relegate it to a gimmick lens alongside fisheye lenses; used when first bought but quickly discarded other than for special projects.

 

Pete.

[Exodies]

One person’s gimmick is another’s lifelong enthusiasm - take black and white pictures for example.

[michaelwj]

One person’s gimmick is another’s lifelong enthusiasm - take black and white pictures for example.

 

 

Black and white pictures will never catch on. 

 

Does anyone currently make a mirror telephoto lens? (I'm seriously asking)

 

Edit: just checked, Samyung/Rokinon/Bower do, anyone else?

Edited December 1, 2017 by michaelwj

[pop]

There used to be a squinty mirror telephoto lens which did not suffer from doughnut bokeh, but it never quite caught on.

[norbertnl]

I fear you're right.

Fear not, we're pretty close already: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/search?N=0&InitialSearch=yes&sts=ma&Top+Nav-Search&Ntt=50%20apo%20lhsa

[farnz]

One person’s gimmick is another’s lifelong enthusiasm - take black and white pictures for example.

 

Since black and white photography emerged long before colour photography was possible shouldn't colour pictures be viewed as the gimmick? 

 

Pete.

Edited December 1, 2017 by farnz

[Michael Geschlecht]

Since black and white photography emerged long before colour photography was possible shouldn't colour pictures be viewed as the gimmick? 

 

Pete.

 

Hello Pete,

 

Actually, no.

 

You have not mentioned the predecessors to black & white photography, which black & white photography was invented to emulate.

 

These predecessors were called paintings & drawings.

 

And, altho they were sometimes done in black & white, they were often done in color.

 

These predecessors, many in color, were being made for more than 15,000 years before the invention of black & white photography. They were done by people in many places all over the Planet.

 

Black & white photography has only been here around 200 years.

 

Best Regards,

 

Michael

[Michael Geschlecht]

Hello Everybody,

 

People today tend to only remember the less well made, popularly priced mirror lenses of the last quarter of the 20th Century.

 

Neither the bokeh of fuzziness of refracting lenses, nor the donuts of mirror lenses are accurate representations of the scene being viewed by the photographer. And, as Exodies has pointed out: Neither is black & white photography.

 

There have been a number of high quality mirror lenses manufactured by a number of companies that have produced image quality equivalent to that of comparable refractor lenses.

 

Mirror lenses can be 1/3 or less of the length & less than 1/3 of the weight of a comparable refractor.

 

A lot of the trouble that people had in the past was that they would take a long lens equivalent, hand hold it & then treat it like the 1/3 or less focal length lens that it appeared to be.

 

Long mirror lenses need MORE stabilization, like big, heavy tripods, than their refractor siblings because they have less mass, themselves, to stabilize the system.

 

Given the advances in optics & machining (Mirror lenses are more effected by mechanical imperfections than refractor lenses of the same focal length are.): A high quality Solid Catadioptric lens might not be quite as silly as it might seem.

 

Best Regards,

 

Michael

[adan]

Since black and white photography emerged long before colour photography was possible shouldn't colour pictures be viewed as the gimmick? 

 

Pete.

 

B&W was simply a limitation of what raw silver (or for that matter raw silicon) can produce. It was a defect of photography that artists, artisans, scientists and industrialists spent a century trying to overcome (and in the process, learned a lot about physics, wavelengths and the nature of light, human color vision and the brain that backs it up, etc. etc. - cf: James Clerk Maxwell).

 

It took several decades even to get accurate B&W renditions of our colorful world (by the discovery of sensitizing dyes, which allowed green and red light to trigger silver compounds, which in their native state are strictly blue/UV-sensitive) - leading to orthochromatic and panchromatic films that finally rendered blue skies as something other than bald white blank areas. Panchromatic film was a prerequisite for making color photography something other than a laboratory curiosity).

 

Prior to photography - B&W was the "low-rent district" of visual art, relegated to preliminary sketches, notebooks, and cheap mass-produced lithographs (only needed one ink). Big boys used color.

 

I remember first seeing Thomas Eakins' "The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand" at the St. Louis art museum, and being amazed that someone had painted B&W in oils (it was right about the time I began my own photography - in B&W and color). Turns out it was just his "reproduction" of his original color painting, for use in a publication (photography still couldn't reproduce colors correctly at that time, even in monochrome). Which I guess answers the old conundrum of whether, had color photography been technically possible from the beginning, would anyone ever have bothered to invent B&W photography? (Answer, yes - for cheap or easy reproductions... ).

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fairman_Rogers_Four-in-Hand

 

Conversely, Eakins was one of the first painters to make use of Edweard Muybridge's photographic motion studies, to accurately capture the gait of horses.

 

Now, artists have also "learned" to use B&W for finished masterpieces - witness Motherwell's Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 110 and other work, or Chuck Close's "Photorealist" portraits, or George Bellows' Stag at Sharkey's lithograph. But it is an "acquired taste" - not how humans experience the world in their native state.

 

(What all this has to do with Noctili I don't know - except I guess they work equally well on a Monochrom and on an M10 )

[farnz]

Hello Pete,

 

Actually, no. ...

Actually, yes.  Colour photography came long after black and white photography (as monochrome is often called nowadays).  So, yes.  

 

To include art in your argument is a bit disingenuous and specious, Michael.

 

Pete.

Edited December 1, 2017 by farnz

[Michael Geschlecht]

Actually, yes.  Colour photography came long after black and white photography (as monochrome is often called nowadays).  So, yes.  

 

To include art in your argument is a bit disingenuous and specious, Michael.

 

Pete.

 

Hello Pete,

 

I don't think so.

 

The greatest portion of photography is a continuation of artwork previously done by painters & the like.

 

Don't forget that the introduction of photography was, to a great extent, responsible for the disappearance of a lot of the work that painters did up until that time. Meaning the painters who would paint your portrait or who would paint a landscape for you. NOT the painters who would paint your house or paint your fence.

 

The same 19th Century portraitist who had just painted a portrait of your child would often also do the art work on the sign on a building or do the drawing re-creating an event for a newspaper or book. Photography changed a lot of that.

 

A lot of the jobs that previously existed just like the need disappeared for many mechanical calculators did in the last quarter of the 20th Century.

 

Painters, to a great extent, had to re-invent themselves. Like Madonna (The 1 from Michigan.). And they did: With new styles such as Impressionism, Pontilism, Fauvism & the like. Because the market for photorealistic images & the like was to a great extent taken away by photography 

 

Because: Whether it is is Botticelli painting his girlfriend in the Birth of Venus or Hugh Hefner photographing Shannon Tweed: Once you are past the palette or the lens: There are very few differences between photography & other forms of art.

 

The lighting is the same.

 

The perspective is the same.

 

And so on.

 

The biggest differences between the 2 different image capture surfaces has to do with the technology of capturing the image: With paint or film or digital sensor..

 

And how you display it & preserve it.

 

By the way, in all of the times that we have written back & forth I have NEVER written that anything that you wrote was "disingenuous & specious.

 

What I wrote, that you were referring to, was proper, correct & accurate. I think that an apology on your part is called for.

 

Best Regards,

 

Michael

[farnz]

You'll have to continue with your argument by yourself, Michael.

 

Pete.

Edited December 1, 2017 by farnz

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[pico]

So many impressions of this new lens from people who do not have one, never used one. People who can only imagine making a photograph using imaginary optics - the stuff of writing, posts, uncoupled from reality.

 

Is there a person or agent who has objective credibility who feels no personal 'investment' (unikely at this date) or to Leica in the lens outcome? Would any remark that there is no big difference from the ƒ1.4 Summilux worth the difference in $ or post processing or common sense?

Edited December 1, 2017 by pico