First Noktor portraits at f/0.95
I found some time to take some shots when I was out for lunch today. The first thing I noticed is that it is very difficoult to focus correctly when you are in hurry and in outdoor conditions. Probably an electronic viewfinder would help a lot. I will redo some portrait as soon as I have more time. So do not judge the lens based on my shots!
Here some portraits (feel free to download the images but please not use the pictures for any commercial purpose)
Images taken with the Olympus E-P1
And finally my lunch! 
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Recent comments
Comment from temp: First Notkor portraits at f/0.95 or Nok...
Comment from mpgxsvcd: Here is what I would expect from a wide ...
Comment from Miroslav: It seems to me that Panasonic 25mm f/1.4...
Comment from FYI: Well, if anyone wants to buy a GREAT len...
Diego
2 years ago |They are not very sharp.
Jesse
2 years ago |Wow. Garbage. But what do you expect from cheap, CTTV glass…
rUY
2 years ago |Interesting! CCTV quality but premium price. not even compare to a cellphone cam quality.
Travis
2 years ago |This may well be the worst lens ever made.
R!
2 years ago |too much noise maybe try it at iso 100 ?
John Krumm
2 years ago |I looked at the first two and what I noticed is that the depth of field is super thin so the focus was missed. In one shot the focus is on the lips (hazy but not bad for wide open). In the first it looks like it hit the cheek in front of the eye. The keeper rate will be very low with this lens unless you use a tripod, and your model can hold very still. Might be easier with subjects a little farther away.
JaccoW
2 years ago |Well, this is at f/0.95, so it has a pretty narrow band where the picture is sharp. No wonder it’s not very sharp off center.
This lens is meant for situations like the last picture. Quick shots, with just the subject sharp.
peroni
2 years ago |It’s a blurry mess, even the in focus areas look blurry.
Let alone that the lens looks ugly with that yellow ring.
Can you compare to the OM 50mm f1.8 at f1.8?
Or even the Nikkor f1.4?
Traciatim
2 years ago |Would it be possible to take a couple at F/1.4, F/2.0 and F/2.8. It seems to me that wide open would be a very unique set of circumstances to be required and if that’s the case it’s better to have it available for use than not, but from these images I wouldn’t think of paying the asking price.
Krumfield
2 years ago |Not very sharp, but I love the look. Try shooting a bit farther away. The focus won’t be so thin, and the pictures will look much sharper.
Duarte Bruno
2 years ago |I’ve said it a few times and I’ll stand by my words: “This lens doesn’t even come close to the Konica Hexanon 57mm F1.2!”
Upo
2 years ago |The lips of the girl and part of the nose of the man are quite sharp and interesting looking.
I’m waiting with my verdict until we see some properly focused images…
AirShaker
2 years ago |Thanx for the shots.
I have the feeling that this should be a great lens for videos as it is so unsharp that there wouldn’t be any spatial aliasing
The dof is in fact so thin that it is not very usable very usable for portraits -at that distance- (in my opinion) which makes me think that mu43 sensor size might be the best compromise after all as it allows pretty good dof control while gathering four times more light than a full frame would for an equivalent composition (field of view + depth of field).
you captured pretty beautiful instants that deserved a better lens though
Rod
2 years ago |All pictures are absolutely disappointing, even the one with f/2.0. Hm, went something wrong? If that’s the final quality, sorry, I would’t pay anything for the Noktor 0.95.
admin
2 years ago |Please do not judge based on that images. I will take some pictures in RAW and with eyes properly in focus. I can also confirm that stopped down to f/1.4 images do become far more sharper. The thing I liked most until now is when I used full aperture in video mode. Videos are awesome! I will post one as soon as I have one. Just give me some time to upload it!
Cheers
Noktor Hyper Prime - Die Wahrheit | BlogTimes - Fotografieblog
2 years ago |[...] Erste Porträtaufnahmen bei Blende f/0,95 [...]
peroni
2 years ago |At this point we’re not complaining about the composition but purely about the quality of the lens.
It does not matter if the nose is in focus and not the eyes.
It also does not matter much if at f1.4 it gets sharper because the only value of this lens is the 0.95 aperture.
There are plenty of f1.4 manual focus lenses that are probably considerably cheaper.
mortmain
2 years ago |I also quite like the look of these images, but I will echo what others say: paying $750 for a remounted, nicely painted CCTV (security camera) lens is absurd. People say, “well of course these images are blurry, they’re shot at f0.95 — post some stopped down so we can see the quality.” But if the quality isn’t there at f0.95, why buy a f0.95 lens? And from what I’ve seen, stopped down to 1.2 or 2.0 this lens doesn’t come close to any of the wonderful wide aperture lenses out there (Hexanon, Nikon, etc) that cost far less. Buying this lens is like buying a formula one car that shakes and heaves and rattles when you drive over 80mph, and saying, “Well, just keep it under 80 and it drives pretty well. Not as well as my BMW that cost $400,000 less, but pretty well.” If you want that blurry shallow DOF look, just buy a wide aperture C mount CCTV lens on ebay for $20-$50. Flickr has many examples of people shooting similar images to those posted here with CCTV lenses found for small change online.
Ranger 9
2 years ago |These pics are making the Canon 50/0.95 lens I’ve had for eons look even more like an astute purchase!… but I think some of the kvetchers are going too far in condemning the Noktor offhand.
When I wait (and wait and wait) for the larger images to download, I can see that details such as eyelashes actually look pretty well-defined, even if not “crisp” in the sense that people expect to see from their 50/1.4s and 50/1.8s. That doesn’t necessarily mean there’s anything wrong with the Noktor’s image quality, though.
One thing that many people don’t realize about ultraspeed lenses: since the DOF is so shallow, the vast majority of the image is necessarily going to be out of focus. That means all those out-of-focus areas scatter extra light into the IN-focus areas, lowering their contrast even if details are still sharp. It’s part of what gives an ultraspeed lens its distinctive “hazy” or “dreamy” signature.
This effect doesn’t crop up so much at more usual apertures of f/1.4 or faster (with a 50mm lens) and that’s why this has always been the rough boundary between “conventional” fast lenses and “special-purpose” optics. Even going all the way back to the 1930s, you could assume that your 50mm f/1.5 Zeiss Sonnar would cost more than your 50mm f/2 Sonnar, but other than that, both of them would give nice, conventionally crisp images. Once you got faster than that, though, you expected crazy stuff to start happening.
Manufacturers eventually managed to push the crazy-stuff boundary down to about f/1.2, but even that usually required some tricks such as stretching out the focal length a bit longer (which is why the Hexanon and Rokkor f/1.2s are 57mm or 58mm rather than 50mm) and even then you have to admit that your lens has a significantly different character at f/1.2 than it does at f/2 or f/2.8.
So I’m not going to condemn the Noktor on what I’ve seen so far (although what I’ve seen so far doesn’t make me feel like I need to replace my 50/0.95 Canon either!) Everybody needs to keep in mind that any lens faster than f/1.0 isn’t just faster (and costlier) than an f/1.4 or f/1.8, it’s a completely different animal…
(Example Canon 50/0.95 pic on a Lumix G1:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3206/4561929354_b9fdb7a008.jpg)
Irmo
2 years ago |Nice lens for video if not perfect, but for photography I whould choese some of the old lenses … I whouldn’t switch my Carl Zeis 50mm f1.4 for 75$ for this lens.
Regarding the focus problems, thay should finaly put some realy nice AF asystence in m4/3 on 4/3 I focus with Catz eye
FYI
2 years ago |Well, if anyone wants to buy a GREAT lens (not this CRAP) I am selling my Nokton 50mm f1.1 on Ebay!
Got tired of waiting for a high-end Micro 4/3 body.
Price includes a free Rayqual Leica M to Micro 4/3 adapter!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260594646452&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT
Miroslav
2 years ago |It seems to me that Panasonic 25mm f/1.4, mentioned the other day, although more expensive, is a better buy. It can even auto focus on m43 cameras …
mpgxsvcd
2 years ago |Here is what I would expect from a wide aperture lens on m4/3s. This is the Canon 55mm F1.2 @ F1.2. The first picture with RAW in its name has post processing. The other 3 are all jpgs straight out of the camera.
You can click on the “original” link at the bottom of the page to see the original files.
http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/4222674355/photos/274063/p1460357-raw?inalbum=canon-55mm-f1-2-f1-2
RAW processed file
http://g1.img-dpreview.com/BDA90F88A45B42A7999BA150BDA87D74.jpg
JPG straight out of the camera
http://g2.img-dpreview.com/B399F6CFCEDD4C6AB7802F2E07818440.jpg
temp
2 years ago |First Notkor portraits at f/0.95 or Noktor ?
)))