Noctilux focus and the M8

[DaveB]

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Full size crops shot today. M8, Noctilux, tripod, kitchen table and ambient light.

 

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[woodyspedden]

i forget which way it is, but you just want to back it off from infinity a touch, not so much you can really see it in the alignment of the focus patch for distant objects. anyway, if you go to far, you see the the patch won't line up, so you tweak it the other way until it does. In practice it is just iterative. If the 50 is your longest lens, I think it solves your problem. If you have a longer lens then I think you might not be able to get longer lenses to coincide at infinity.

 

before I was not able to use my 50 for portraits, now I can. I can accept any other problems this may induce, but so far on wider lenses I have seen none. my 35asph cron still focuses tack sharp.

 

I find the problem with the 2mm tweak is that if it is as sensitive as you say (i.e. barely leaning on the wrench) I wonder what a good bump of the body would do to focusing? No argument with what you are doing but I do wonder about the M8's ability to function in a normal environment of bumps and bangs. When I go clamboring on rocky trails I sometimes have a camera that gets some sideways bumps on rock walls etc. I am sure I could go to extremes to protect the body but it is and should be a tool which can take at least a little grumpy environment.

 

Just my humble concerns..............any one else have comments?

 

Woody Spedden

[DaveB]

Shot today with the M8, tripod, focused at the infinity stop.

 

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[DaveB]

When I go clamboring on rocky trails I sometimes have a camera that gets some sideways bumps on rock walls etc. I am sure I could go to extremes to protect the body but it is and should be a tool which can take at least a little grumpy environment.

 

Woody Spedden

 

It's a pretty robust little camera system when protected well. I spent over 40 nights in the Canadian wilderness this summer with mine and, when not in use, it was snug in a water and shock proof Pelican box along with six extra batteries and 20GB of SD cards. No problems to report other than dust on the sensor.

 

I think that in a grumpy environment dust is a much bigger headache than is the risk of the rangefinder focusing getting knocked around.

[marknorton]

Mine is back in Solms for the third time - they plan to replace the focussing mount which I take to mean replacing the focussing cam with a new unground one, setting the infinity stop and grinding the cam to match the particular lens against a standard M8 calibration.

 

Interesting that Eoin has been told Leica are not accepting any more orders for it. I expect Leica are sick to death with the Noctilux, a big drain on service resources, and, TBH, past its sell-by date.

 

Whether it will be replaced is another matter. On a pure light gathering basis, just improving the noise performance by 1 ISO equivalent (which may be what we're getting in the new firmware) turns my 50/1.4 ASPH into a Noctilux. I know it doesn't have the extreme lack of DoF or the look, but isn't that the source of the older lens' undoing?

[robertwright]

I find the problem with the 2mm tweak is that if it is as sensitive as you say (i.e. barely leaning on the wrench) I wonder what a good bump of the body would do to focusing? No argument with what you are doing but I do wonder about the M8's ability to function in a normal environment of bumps and bangs. When I go clamboring on rocky trails I sometimes have a camera that gets some sideways bumps on rock walls etc. I am sure I could go to extremes to protect the body but it is and should be a tool which can take at least a little grumpy environment.

 

Just my humble concerns..............any one else have comments?

 

Woody Spedden

 

well it stayed "out of focus" for 10 months and now has been "in focus" for 2 months so i suspect it stays where you put it. But rangefinders are more finicky, the verticle align is out and it will have to be adjusted soon. I use and carry the camera every day so it does get banged around.

[Bill W]

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David, I have done the same test with my Noc. Yours seems to slightly fron focus till f2.0 then it goes slightly back. Your outdoor results look like mine, f1 at infinity is not in focus till you stop down a couple of stops. I might send mine in for an adjustment to NJ.....

[robertwright]

Mine is back in Solms for the third time - they plan to replace the focussing mount which I take to mean replacing the focussing cam with a new unground one, setting the infinity stop and grinding the cam to match the particular lens against a standard M8 calibration.

 

Interesting that Eoin has been told Leica are not accepting any more orders for it. I expect Leica are sick to death with the Noctilux, a big drain on service resources, and, TBH, past its sell-by date.

 

Whether it will be replaced is another matter. On a pure light gathering basis, just improving the noise performance by 1 ISO equivalent (which may be what we're getting in the new firmware) turns my 50/1.4 ASPH into a Noctilux. I know it doesn't have the extreme lack of DoF or the look, but isn't that the source of the older lens' undoing?

 

this was essentially my conclusion, that the extra stop was not giving me much considering the price premium. My 50 lux gets me 90% of the way there. in practice, shooting wide open has all kinds of real limits regardless of whether you are at f1.0 or f1.4. For example while you can achieve good focus on center, those abberations make for a strange rendering off center even when in focus. So putting an in focus subject off center in the frame wide open produces poor results. You end up stopping down to f2 or f2.8 to get a usable off center rendering.

[Jamie Roberts]

Interestingly enough, I actually prefer the contrast of the Nocti against the 1,4 summilux, so even if my summilux was a "stop faster" due to better ISOs, I'd still keep the Nocti.

 

It just looks different to me out to about 5.6. At f8, the contrast seems to equal out.

 

I'm still testing (my brand new Noctilux!) but I'm close to saying it's like Jono's (and Robert's): perfectly in focus close up at 1.0, shifts back by f2.0 by about a centimeter or maybe a centimeter and a half, then is ok again by f4.

 

I actually don't care much about infinity wide open with this lens. The Nocti for me will always be the 80R Lux replacement on the M--in other words, a damn fine portrait lens. If I want sharp wide open out to infinity, then the 50 Lux APSH is the right lens.

 

And considering the shift I'm seeing is at close-focus range, I'm thinking shooting practically with f2 is not going to be the issue I thought it would.

 

And at f1.0 it seems to have a bit more DOF than I thought too--at least a centimeter or two at 1 meter

 

But I'll check more, and if it has to go to Kindermann then it does

[Eoin]

Mine is back in Solms for the third time - they plan to replace the focussing mount which I take to mean replacing the focussing cam with a new unground one, setting the infinity stop and grinding the cam to match the particular lens against a standard M8 calibration.

 

Interesting that Eoin has been told Leica are not accepting any more orders for it. I expect Leica are sick to death with the Noctilux, a big drain on service resources, and, TBH, past its sell-by date.

 

Whether it will be replaced is another matter. On a pure light gathering basis, just improving the noise performance by 1 ISO equivalent (which may be what we're getting in the new firmware) turns my 50/1.4 ASPH into a Noctilux. I know it doesn't have the extreme lack of DoF or the look, but isn't that the source of the older lens' undoing?

 

Mark, you must have been very persistent with them, 3d time lucky as they say. I tend at this point to agree with you, given the reported improvement with the impending FW update the 1.4 Summilux seems to be a more rounded solution. For sure there is a fingerprint with the Noctilux between f:/1.0 and f:/2.8 which the summilux can't duplicate, but the Summilux or a Summicron which is even closer in finger print is looking more like the lens I'll settle on. I can understand the attraction others have for the Noctilux, but having had one and experimented with it I came to the conclusion it was not the lens for me. And a big thanks to Leica for the opportunity to try one through the 30% offer and subsequent sale reducing the overall cost of my M8 by a considerable amount.

[jedi996sps]

I actually don't care much about infinity wide open with this lens. The Nocti for me will always be the 80R Lux replacement on the M--in other words, a damn fine portrait lens. If I want sharp wide open out to infinity, then the 50 Lux APSH is the right lens.

 

I agree entirely with Jamie, 2 very different lenses... interestingly, i 'had' the latest noctilux, complete with all of the problems, got fed up of it and replaced it with a 50mm lux....however, i just missed that unique look of the nocti so got another one, this time the 1st version f1.0......and it dosn't suffer from any backfocusing, albeit that i hav tended to only use it wide or near wide open. Wierd!... i am keeping my lux tho as if sharpness is the goal, then its the lux. The nocti is reserved for natural light people shots

[jonoslack]

No, I meant it focuses fine at f1 and 1.2. I didn't try the other apertures. All Noctilux focus shift, so I haven't even thought of testing it. My Noctilux had always been the high speed lens, with a small 50mm Summicron used for general 50mm photography when samller apertures are used..

Hi Rob

Well, that's a relief! It sounds just like mine - I've found it excellent and it gets a lot of keepers . . . . infinity at f1 isn't something I was really planing on! (I also have the 50 'cron and the ziess sonnar for other jobs).