50mm lenses with wide apertures tend to be quite popular, as their neutral focal length and versatile light-gathering power make them useful for a wide variety of applications ranging from portraits to events coverage and much more. The Voigtlander Nokton 50mm f/1.0 Aspherical lens offers a particularly wide maximum aperture, making it an intriguing option, and this great video review takes a look at the sort of performance and image quality you can expect from it in usage.
Coming to you from Gordon Laing, this great video review takes a look at the Voigtlander Nokton 50mm f/1.0 Aspherical lens, A classic Voigtlander lens, the Nokton 50mm f/1.0 Aspherical lens is manual focus only and made of a rugged metal construction and comes with a nice range of features, including:
- Ground aspherical (GA) lens element for improved image quality
- Electronic contacts for transmitting EXIF data to body
- Focus peaking, magnification, and focus guide support
- Floating lens element for consistent focus
- 12-blade aperture diaphragm for especially smooth bokeh
- Selective aperture click for clickless operation for video work
Of course, many users might be put off the lens' lack of autofocus, but the focus assistance features of modern mirrorless cameras help to mitigate some of the difficulty brought about by that. Check out the video above for Laing's full thoughts on the lens.
Great review.
Although I own the Nokton 50/1 for Leica M, I first used it on my Canon EOS R6 before mounting it on my Leica M10 (which I bought later second hand, because all M-lenses have rather unsharp corners on the EOS R6). I totally agree, this is a lens which is fun to use, even without focus assist, as my M model doesn't have the electronic contacts needed for that. Viewer magnification is sufficient in pretty all cases, maybe I'm just used to it. CA can be a pain in foliage against bright light, but normally one doesn't notice it that often. Can be corrected, so what.
What I think Voigtländer has improved here - judged by this review - is the nearest focussing distance and probably corner sharpness. Adapting the M version isn't the best solution available. On the Leica M the M version shines, so I know where I'm using it most of the time.