Leitz Wetzlar NOCTILUX 50mm F/1.2
Standard prime lens • Film era • Discontinued • Collectible
Model history (2)
| ■Leitz Wetzlar NOCTILUX 50mm F/1.2 | M | 6 - 4 | 1m | S.VIII | 1966 ● | |
| ■Leica NOCTILUX-M 50mm F/1.2 ASPH. | M | 6 - 4 | 1m | E49 | 2021 ● | |
| Leitz Wetzlar NOCTILUX-M 50mm F/1.2 ASPH. Silver (100 units) | 2021 ● | |||||
| Leitz Wetzlar NOCTILUX-M 50mm F/1.2 ASPH. “Leitz Auction” (20 units) | 2023 ● | |||||
Features highlight
Specification
| Production details: | |
| Announced: | 1966 |
| Production type: | Small-batch production |
| Availability: | ● Sold out |
| Order No.: | 11820 - black anodized |
| Original name: | LEITZ WETZLAR NOCTILUX 1:1.2/50 |
| System: | Leica M (1954) |
| Optical design: | |
| Focal length: | 50mm |
| Speed: | F/1.2 |
| Maximum format: | 35mm full frame |
| Mount and Flange focal distance: | Leica M [27.8mm] |
| Diagonal angle of view: | 46.8° |
| Lens construction: | 6 elements in 4 groups |
| 2 ASPH | |
| Diaphragm mechanism: | |
| Diaphragm type: | Manual |
| Aperture control: | Aperture ring |
| Number of blades: | 16 (sixteen) |
| On Leica M8/M8.2 APS-H [1.33x] cameras: | |
| 35mm equivalent focal length: | 66.5mm (in terms of field of view) |
| 35mm equivalent speed: | F/1.6 (in terms of depth of field) |
| Diagonal angle of view: | 36° |
| Focusing: | |
| Coupled to the rangefinder: | Yes |
| Closest focusing distance: | 1m |
| Maximum magnification: | <No data> |
| Focusing modes: | Manual focus only |
| Manual focus control: | Focusing ring |
| Physical characteristics: | |
| Weight: | 515g |
| Maximum diameter x Length: | ⌀61×60mm |
| Accessories: | |
| Filters: | Series VIII |
| Lens hood: | 12503 |
| Lens caps: | 14102 (front) |
| 14051 (rear) | |
| 14269 (rear) | |
| Sources of data: | |
| 1. Manufacturer's technical data. | |
| 2. Leica M5 booklet (PUB. 110-87d) (March 1974). | |
| 3. Leitz General Catalogue of Photographic Equipment (January 1975). | |
Manufacturer description #1
From the LEICA photography magazine (1966, No. 3):
The six-element Leitz 50mm Noctilux f/1.2 lens for the Leica was one of the most talked-about optical innovations at the October Photokina exposition in Cologne, Germany. It offers corner-to-corner correction, sharpness and contrast never before available in a lens of this speed.
The appearance of the 50mm Noctilux lens, first of an experimental production series based on new manufacturing techniques from Leitz, is a major advance in the field of lens design and production.
Until now, conventionally designed and made lenses have used only flat and spherically ground surfaces. This has produced such unwanted effects as spherical aberration, which means that light rays passing through the edge of the lens focus in a different plane then do the central rays. Correcting this and other problems of high speed lens design is best solved by the use of aspherically ground lens surfaces. But grinding and checking such surfaces, especially on a production basis, has not been successfully accomplished before.
However, Leitz's Glass Research Laboratory, lens designers and production engineers, working as a scientific research team, came up with both the optical glasses and methods needed to achieve the long-sought goal. The result is the new Noctilux f/1.2 lens.
The "secrets" behind the unparalleled performance of the Noctilux lens are:
1. Aspherical lens surfaces. Heretofore, it has been impossible to produce such nonspherical surfaces on a production line.
2. High-refraction optical glass. Leitz's own glass laboratory has developed the glasses which make it possible to produce a high-speed lens with superlative correction across the entire field.
3. Close relationship to Gauss-type lenses with but a few glass-air surfaces for excellent contrast.
4. Progress in optical computation which provides contrast and correction, even at f/1.2, which virtually eliminate flare, even at full aperture. Superb color work can be done with the new Noctilux with existing light without fear of loss of color saturation on the transparency.
The performance of the 50mm Noctilux f /1.2 lens far surpasses previous lenses of this aperture. And, with three times the speed of the Summicron f/2, it offers new possibilities for photography by existing light in black-and-white and especially in color. The 50mm Noctilux will be available in mounts for the Leica M3 and M2. Price is expected to be $678.00. A small supply of this lens will be available by the end of this year on a ration basis to professionals. Regular deliveries will begin in the summer of 1967.
Manufacturer description #2
Since it first appeared on the market in 1966, the Leica Noctilux-M has always been considered a masterpiece of optical engineering that brings photographers enormous creative freedom. It is the world’s fastest aspherical lens for 35 mm photography and, when shooting in low light, reveals fine details that are hardly perceptible to the naked eye.
Pictures made with a Noctilux-M are characterised by the unmistakable bokeh of the lens and a visual quality that verges on impressionism. It is a fascinating tool with which photographers from every corner of the world master visual and artistic challenges. The lens has been used by them to bring us fascinating stories from the darker and lighter sides of life. The character of images captured with the Noctilux remains unrivalled until today.
The Noctilux-M is characterised by its unique rendition of contrasts – this results in pictures of outstanding brilliance, sharpness and minimal flare and coma effects when shooting at maximum aperture. A street lamp at night, the tail lights of a vehicle, the face of a child in candlelight, or an actor or singer spotlighted on stage, appear with authentic and natural clarity in every picture. Subtle nuances of colour and finest textures become visible. These images radiate a certain delicacy and sensuality.
What’s more, a Noctilux-M enables creative composition with the aperture, the plastic, seemingly three-dimensional, isolation of the subject that lets it float against a creamily dissolved background. No other lens can achieve such perfect bokeh. An aspect that for many photographers is much more important than working with Noctilux-M ‘only’ in failing or hardly perceptible available light.
1966: the first Noctilux lens is presented at photokina.
The Noctilux astounded visitors to the fair and the industry press with its virtually revolutionary optical properties. For those days, it offered a simply gigantic maximum aperture, but not only that, it was also a maximum aperture that delivered exceptional optical performance.
Also remarkable was the fact that it was the first ever lens produced in series to feature two aspherical lens surfaces. One of these two asphericals was made from special glass with a high refractive index. The task of the asphericals was to reduce spherical aberration at maximum aperture and increase quality in the image field.
At that time, the production of asphericals was a particularly complex and costly process. Even the most innovative new lens grinding machines were no alternative to the experienced precision optical engineers who gave each element its final polish completely by hand. Even so, such specialists were unable to further minimise larger tolerances in the final stage of their production. Often enough, an element had to go through every stage of the grinding process all over again. An extremely costly method that was in urgent need of improvement.
At the same time, new testing methods also had to be developed to assure the technically almost Utopian precision demanded for the aspherical surfaces of the required elements.
Manufacturer description #3
The 50mm NOCTILUX f/1.2 is a special LEICA lens designed to meet the most critical requirements of available-light photography with high-speed films.
From the point of view of the practical photographer, modern optical correction brings two principal values: resolving power and optical contrast. Resolving power, the classical criterion of lens performance, represents the ability of the lens to image very fine subject details. Optical contrast refers to the ability of the lens to perform two very different, and very important practical functions: to clearly separate closely similar tonal values, and to concentrate all of the light from a single subject point into a single image point.
Because high-speed films - both black-and-white and color - used for high-aperture "available darkness" photography provide only moderate resolving powers, the LEITZ NOCTILUX was designed to yield an exceptionally high degree of optical contrast, with slightly lower resolving power than the other high-speed 50mm LEICA lenses. Whenever available-light pictures are made with high lens apertures on b-and-w films with indexes of 400 ASA (27 DIN) or higher, as well as when fast color films are used, superior optical contrast weights the scale decisively in favor of the NOCTILUX.
A glance at the NOCTILUX cross-sectional diagram reveals a 6-element, 4-group classical Gauss formula that is actually simpler than those of other high-speed lenses. This less complicated optical design with fewer air-glass surfaces was made possible by the most modern computer calculation methods, the use of very new optical glasses with specially high refractive powers and low color dispersion developed by the LEITZ Glass Research Laboratory in Wetzlar, and by the employment of aspherically ground optical surfaces.
No one of these factors could have provided the high NOCTILUX performance by itself, but the inclusion of aspherically ground lens surfaces is the key factor. It is this that gives the NOCTILUX its almost perfect freedom from spherical aberration over the whole field, and from coma.
Almost complete freedom from coma is a special NOCTILUX advantage of great practical value to the available-light photographer. Coma is the optical aberration which distorts image points into tear-shaped forms pointing either inward toward the center of the picture, or outward toward the margins. Coma is especially critical in available-light work because such pictures often contain direct light sources such as incandescent lamps. Even at f/1.2, this aspherical lens records these light points accurately, without shape distortion.
The high correction of coma and of all other critical aberrations, combined with an almost complete absence of internal reflections, results in an unusually high optical contrast. In available-light photography, NOCTILUX optical contrast means more shadow detail with cleaner highlight areas. Even at f/1.2 the NOCTILUX produces so very little flare that strong light-sources are imaged with only minimum halo surround. Brightly back-lighted subjects, anathema to poorly corrected high-aperture lenses, have clear, accurate outlines.
High optical contrast is especially advantageous in color photography because exposure by non-image-forming light subtracts from final color density in the reversal film process. Available light color transparencies made with the NOCTILUX exhibit improved color saturation because light energy is concentrated where it belongs: rays intended for highlight areas are not spread all over the film.
Another interesting fact about the NOCTILUX is that it has what might be called a "built-in optical lenshood". This can be seen by looking at the front lens surface from an extreme angle, and then slowly moving your eyes toward the lens center. When your visual angle exceeds the NOCTILUX field if view you will see what appears to be a mirror. This is a total reflection of all unwanted light rays from outside the imaging field.*)
Superior optical contrast due to high correction for coma and all other critical aberrations and due to freedom from internal reflections, make the NOCTILUX the ideal high-aperture lens for use with high-speed available-light films.
*) Although a lenshood is not so important for the NOCTILUX as for other lenses, LEITZ provided an open-sector hood for this lens. This hood is useful for blocking out very strong side illumination, as well as for keeping the front surface free from rain, spray, and finger marks. The NOCTILUX lenshood also serves as a holder for standard Series VIII filters.
Alternatives in the Leica M system
Sorted by focal length and speed, in ascending order
Leica SUMMICRON-M 50mm F/2 [V] M 6 - 4 0.7m E39 1994 ● Leica APO-SUMMICRON-M 50mm F/2 ASPH. M 8 - 5 0.7m E39 2012 ● Leica SUMMILUX-M 50mm F/1.4 ASPH. [I] M 8 - 5 0.7m E46 2004 ● Leica SUMMILUX-M 50mm F/1.4 ASPH. [II] M 8 - 5 0.45m E46 2023 ● Leica NOCTILUX-M 50mm F/1.2 ASPH. M 6 - 4 1m E49 2021 ● Leica NOCTILUX-M 50mm F/0.95 ASPH. M 8 - 5 1m E60 2008 ●
Lenses with similar focal length and speed
Sorted by manufacturer name
Cosina Voigtlander NOKTON 50mm F/1.1 VM M 7 - 6 1m ⌀58 2009 ● Cosina Voigtlander NOKTON 50mm F/1.5 Aspherical VM M 6 - 5 0.7m ⌀49 2013 ● Cosina Voigtlander HELIAR 50mm F/2 VM “Voigtlander 250th Anniversary” (2500 units) • Collapsible M 5 - 3 1m ⌀39 2006 ● Cosina Voigtlander NOKTON 50mm F/1.2 Aspherical VM M 8 - 6 0.7m ⌀52 2018 ● Cosina Voigtlander NOKTON 50mm F/1.5 Aspherical II VM M 8 - 7 0.7m ⌀43 2020 ● Cosina Voigtlander APO-LANTHAR 50mm F/2 Aspherical VM M 10 - 8 0.7m ⌀49 2020 ● Cosina Voigtlander HELIAR 50mm F/1.5 VM M 6 - 3 0.5m ⌀49 2021 ● Cosina Voigtlander NOKTON 50mm F/1 Aspherical VM M 9 - 7 0.9m ⌀62 2021 ● Konica M-HEXANON 50mm F/2 M 6 - 5 0.7m ⌀40.5 1999 ● Konica M-HEXANON 50mm F/1.2 Limited (2001 units) M 7 - 6 0.9m ⌀62 2001 ● Carl Zeiss C Sonnar T* 50mm F/1.5 ZM M 6 - 4 0.9m E46 2004 ● Carl Zeiss Planar T* 50mm F/2 ZM M 6 - 4 0.7m E43 2004 ●
Standard prime lens
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