The Leica Noctulux Deluxe F/1.2 Reissue Lens: A Unique and Challenging Option

When it comes to capturing images with a distinctive look, some lenses stand out from the rest. The Leica Noctulux Deluxe F/1.2 reissue lens is one such example, offering a unique character that can be both captivating and challenging to work with. With its large aperture of f/1.2, this lens provides an extremely shallow depth of field, making it ideal for portraits, close-up shots, and creative compositions.

The minimum focus distance on this lens is 1 meter or approximately 3 feet 4 inches, which may seem restrictive at first glance. However, it's common among lenses of this era, including the Noctulux Deluxe F/1.2 reissue. What sets this lens apart from others in its category is its ability to produce a truly organic look that can be both beautiful and evocative. To get the most out of this lens, one must learn how to work within its limitations and appreciate its unique characteristics.

One of the key aspects of the Noctulux Deluxe F/1.2 reissue is its "look." This lens has a very distinct aesthetic that can be polarizing, with some finding it beautiful and others being put off by its uniqueness. The good news is that this lens can produce results that are absolutely fantastic, making it a worthwhile investment for those who appreciate the art of photography.

In terms of price, the Noctulux Deluxe F/1.2 reissue comes in at around $8,000 USD, which may seem steep to some. However, when compared to its more expensive counterparts, such as the f/0.95 version, which can cost upwards of $12,000, this lens becomes a relatively affordable option. In fact, if you're looking for an alternative with a similar look, you might consider renting or purchasing used lenses from other manufacturers.

The Noctulux Deluxe F/1.2 is also noteworthy for its historical significance, being one of the first f/1.2 50mm lenses to incorporate spherical elements. This makes it a significant example in the history of 35mm photography. Leica's reissue of this lens provides a unique opportunity for photographers to experience the look and feel of this historic design.

For those interested in exploring alternative options, there are several other lenses available that can produce similar results at a lower price point. Canon's 55mm f/1.2, for example, is an older lens from the 1960s that can be found used or new. Nikon also offered a 55mm f/1.2 in the 1970s, although its design and look are slightly different from the Noctulux Deluxe F/1.2 reissue.

Another option to consider is Voigtlander's 50mm f/1.2 knock-on lens, which can be purchased new with a warranty. While it doesn't have the exact same "look" as the Leica Noctulux Deluxe F/1.2 reissue, it offers a similar aesthetic at a much lower price point.

Ultimately, whether or not the Leica Noctulux Deluxe F/1.2 reissue is right for you will depend on your personal preferences and needs. Its unique look and characteristics can be both captivating and challenging to work with. If you're willing to learn how to get the best out of this lens, it can produce results that are truly exceptional.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis video is brought to you by squarespace welcome back everyone in this video we're going to be talking about the all-new leica noctelux m 50 millimeter f 1.2 this is essentially a modern reissue or historical version of the very first noc deluxe now there are multiple versions of noctuluxes you might be saying well let's clear that up there's actually four different versions of the 50 millimeter noc deluxe there's also a 75 millimeter but in terms of the 50s first one came out in 1966 it was a 50 millimeter f 1.2 this was followed with the f 1.0 which was a walter mandler design there were several variants on that dealing with the lens hood and how it kind of was physically constructed but the elements were all the same then we have the modern peter carbe era noctilux which is f 0.95 and then we have this one which is a reissue of the very first one all right so why in 1966 do we need an f 1.2 lens or a fast aperture lens well you have to remember film speeds in 1966 were a little bit different than our high isos of today color film namely kodachrome was an iso of 32 not 3232 black and white film was typically around 100 now photographers were pushing film back in those days particularly people who were photojournalists who were needing to shoot in natural light in really low light situations but what happens is when you push film you increase contrast you're already shooting in a very high contrast situation so the need arose to have a lens with a really fast aperture now this is very different than what we deal with today where we have digital cameras with incredible high iso settings in fact iso is just a metaphor for what we had in the film days it's really digital gain on the sensor i can shoot on the m10p comfortably at 12500 iso and it's very usable and the sl2s probably goes a little higher than that even so why do we need a fast lens in the modern day well the term bokeh came to use fairly recently i would say in the 90s and it became kind of an aesthetic of the out of focus areas so what used to be a necessity has now turned into an aesthetical choice because you have very selective focus with a very narrow field of focus and so you're able to get really blown out images with beautiful bokeh in the background that's essentially why we use fast lenses today the first noc deluxe was designed for leica by helmet marks and peter sendel there's a few changes on the reissue lens from the original so you're going to notice that the elements are slightly refined in a few places and we are using modern coatings at this point one thing that is very notable about the original noc deluxe is that was the very first lens to incorporate a spherical elements into its lens design there are actually two aspherical elements in that lens now today it's very common for lenses to have a spherical elements incorporated into their design but manufacturing is completely different today than it was in 1966 this was very difficult to do a spherical elements had to be ground and they had to be ground by hand now leica had a machine to make these lenses with they had two employees that could actually use said machines so you can imagine that they didn't produce a lot of that very first lens in fact by today's count there's only 1757 of those in existence this was a really significant lens though because nake enabled photographers to shoot in very low light situations it worked as a lens and it was copied a couple years later nikon and canon came out with their 55 millimeter f 1.2 lenses and later 50 millimeter lenses nikon had a 58 millimeter f 1.2 the f 1.2 was kind of a hit in fact here's an image of henry carter saw himself with the original noc deluxe he's photographing the paris riots in 1968 note that it is always best to show up to photograph a riot wearing a suit if you look at those images that he took they don't necessarily have any of the blatant characteristics of the noc deluxe of course they're also being taken in broad daylight he's probably stopping the lens down considerably but there is one image that i found that was at auction at christie's a while back that clearly has the noctilux f 1.2 look the very shallow depth of field it's a photo of a couple she's photographing the paris riots also this is an excellent example of the visual signature that this lens has so what exactly is the visual signature that you can expect from the noc deluxe f 1.2 reissue well many of you know that i live in the beautiful city of fort worth texas these are some images that i made at this little bar called thompson's bookstore and you can see that the images are really quite beautiful this was a low light situation now nocteluxe lenses are never designed to be completely clinically sharp to the corners edge to edge with all distortions corrected there are many imperfections in this lens but that's kind of the beauty of it and what you learn to embrace there is vignetting on the lens i think it's got a nice character to it one of the other things i want to note about this lens is that if you compare this to modern lenses particularly the f 0.95 version of this lens it's not going to be nearly as sharp with the points that are in focus in fact wide open it is pretty soft particularly if you're closer to the minimum focus distance the bokeh is gorgeous on this lens and let's be honest that's what you're going to get it for another note that i want to make is this image in particular was shot at f 5.6 and you can see that it still retains a lot of that kind of historical lens vibe to it it's not going to be as clinically sharp as a modern lens but that's the whole point of this lens this is a 1966 lens design and it's going to give you i don't want to use the word softer look but a lot less clinical so if you want an older cinematic look a lot of filmmakers prefer older lenses just for the specific reason this is the lens for you the noctilux f 1.2 is designed with six elements in four groups so we have a classic double gauze configuration the outer elements are both a spherical although they are machined now they are no longer hand ground and another cool thing about this lens is there are 16 aperture blades this is by far more than you're going to find on any other lens produced today and so this is going to ensure that that boca look that you want remains consistent when you stop down so spherical highlights actually stay round i want to dive a little deeper into the performance this lens and i want to talk about the cost but first i want to give a shout out to our sponsor this week who are the awesome folks over at squarespace.com i am actually redesigning my personal website right now and i'm going to be using a squarespace so i've been sharing a lot of images with you guys in these videos this is something that i want to share more of be able to put links and things to when i have collections made squarespace is an awesome place to do that it really is the easiest way to build a website you can build an online portfolio you can even build an e-commerce store on here the tools have really gotten good how easy is squarespace to use well you're going to start with one of their award-winning templates now all these templates are customizable your content is separate from the template so you can change the entire look if you feel like you need a complete refresh or you're not sure on something you can get things to look exactly like you want them what good is a website if nobody's looking at it will squarespace have the right social tools and email integrations in here so you can do your own website promotion as well my favorite part of squarespace well it's really intuitive so if you can drag and drop a folder of images you can build a photo gallery it's that easy you can easily go into the settings to customize everything to your liking hook it up to your own domain in fact they sell those too and you are in business so head over to squarespace using the link below this video and you can try it out for absolutely free and when you do decide that squarespace is right for you i can save you an additional 10 on your first order by using offer code aop so once again offer code aop and i want to give a special shout out and thanks to the awesome folks at squarespace for sponsoring this video let's dig a little deeper into characteristics the first thing i want to talk about is sharpness so i'm going to be honest if you want a really sharp modern leica lens this is probably not your lens this is a vintage lens design and photographers that want that kind of look are going to be thrilled with this as i mentioned earlier even at f 5.6 it's very natural it has a more cinematic look i personally really like this it does have a lot more of a 1960s feel to it i've not had an opportunity to compare this to the original version but i will say in the reissue that color rendition is impressively good this is not the case with a lot of retro style lenses that you can buy today but like you use modern coatings on this lens so you're going to get the best of both worlds with this now performance i'm going to be honest here performance is a challenge with this lens as i mentioned the images are a little soft when you're shooting wide open especially at the minimum focus distance you want things to move a little further back one little non-scientific test that i like to do with all the lenses that i review is to look at the field of focus so what we need to do is shoot something with texture i use the street in this case when i take it into photoshop and run it through the find edges filter you're going to only see what is sharp in the image and you can see that wide open at a close focus distance this is really not sharp corner to corner and so it becomes kind of a challenge to use a lot of times you think you've nailed the focus it looks slightly off in the image and it's actually on it's just a little bit soft wide open now of course this improves as you stop down and it's a 1.2 lens so you can start stopping down to improve that performance but at a minimum focus distance it really doesn't start improving till about f 2.8 so it's something you're going to have to learn how to live with it is a look and you kind of have to work towards the characteristics of this lens to get the most out of it that could be a deal breaker for some people i also want to note that the minimum focus distance on this lens is one meter or about three feet four inches which is common of lenses this era it's also the same across the board with all noctulux lenses that is the same minimum focus distance so m-mount lenses are a fascinating challenge because they're designed to be used with a rangefinder camera if the lens is too big it blocks the rangefinder and when you use the lens hood on this lens there is definitely some blockage even though it's ventilated so you can see through parts of it m-mount lens design is an art unto itself it always comes down to trade-offs but honestly this lens has a very organic quality to it and you learn how to get the best out of it and the results are absolutely fantastic so inevitably i need to address the pain point of this lens which is the price tag so the noc deluxe f 1.2 reissue lens comes in at a little under 8 000 u.s so i don't know you could look at this as expensive or you could look at it as a real deal because the f 0.95 version of this lens will likely raise their prices last year and that one comes in at over 12 000 now and then you can compare this to the original which is a more fair comparison because the look is very similar it's the classic look if you want to find an original noctelux f 1.2 well i mentioned earlier there's only 1700 or so of these in existence and so therefore they are scarce therefore they are collector's items therefore they go for astronomical sums of money i've seen them sell for as high as 50 you go on ebay and you see people asking over a hundred thousand dollars for them sometimes so when you put it in context i mean if you want this look then that price tag doesn't look so bad in the end but what about alternatives so i have reviewed a lot of older vintage type lenses on this show one i touched on recently was a lens that i had an insect in that had been sitting in a drawer for years and years anyway that was a canon 55 millimeter f 1.2 it is not as old as this design this was 1966 and i believe the canon came out in the 70s nikon had some in the 70s that were 55 millimeter and you can get those later versions that were 50 millimeter f 1.2 but i actually argue they're all slightly unique in the look and it depends on what you want what you're happy with what kind of features you want in the lens those were slr lenses they had improvements made on them with closer focus distances so on and so forth but if you want the leica look that this lens gives you this really is the only one and so the alternative i would actually recommend is if you don't need to own it you could rent it like i did that's considerably less money than fishing up eight thousand dollars to buy one note should also mention voigtlander in here because i think voigtlander is a company that makes classic type lenses they have the f 1.2 50 millimeter knocked on i have it in sony mount it's a really cool lens and it has sort of that historical look it's not quite the same look as the leica but that's a lens that you can get for a very affordable price that comes new with a warranty so they're all alternatives like that as well we're talking about alternatives essentially they're just that they're alternatives and yes it's very true that for a lot less money you can get a historical look from a wide variety of lenses both used and new however this lens is extraordinarily unique not only in terms of the look that it renders but it's a historically pretty important lens in fact i think it's one of the more significant lenses in the history of 35 millimeter photography anyway it was the first f 1.2 50 millimeter lens it was the first lens to incorporate a spherical elements and i think it's really cool that leica have given us a reissue option of a lens that's astronomically unaffordable anyway i would love to know what you guys think i'm sure you'll tell me either way so drop me a comment below catch you guys in the next video until then laterthis video is brought to you by squarespace welcome back everyone in this video we're going to be talking about the all-new leica noctelux m 50 millimeter f 1.2 this is essentially a modern reissue or historical version of the very first noc deluxe now there are multiple versions of noctuluxes you might be saying well let's clear that up there's actually four different versions of the 50 millimeter noc deluxe there's also a 75 millimeter but in terms of the 50s first one came out in 1966 it was a 50 millimeter f 1.2 this was followed with the f 1.0 which was a walter mandler design there were several variants on that dealing with the lens hood and how it kind of was physically constructed but the elements were all the same then we have the modern peter carbe era noctilux which is f 0.95 and then we have this one which is a reissue of the very first one all right so why in 1966 do we need an f 1.2 lens or a fast aperture lens well you have to remember film speeds in 1966 were a little bit different than our high isos of today color film namely kodachrome was an iso of 32 not 3232 black and white film was typically around 100 now photographers were pushing film back in those days particularly people who were photojournalists who were needing to shoot in natural light in really low light situations but what happens is when you push film you increase contrast you're already shooting in a very high contrast situation so the need arose to have a lens with a really fast aperture now this is very different than what we deal with today where we have digital cameras with incredible high iso settings in fact iso is just a metaphor for what we had in the film days it's really digital gain on the sensor i can shoot on the m10p comfortably at 12500 iso and it's very usable and the sl2s probably goes a little higher than that even so why do we need a fast lens in the modern day well the term bokeh came to use fairly recently i would say in the 90s and it became kind of an aesthetic of the out of focus areas so what used to be a necessity has now turned into an aesthetical choice because you have very selective focus with a very narrow field of focus and so you're able to get really blown out images with beautiful bokeh in the background that's essentially why we use fast lenses today the first noc deluxe was designed for leica by helmet marks and peter sendel there's a few changes on the reissue lens from the original so you're going to notice that the elements are slightly refined in a few places and we are using modern coatings at this point one thing that is very notable about the original noc deluxe is that was the very first lens to incorporate a spherical elements into its lens design there are actually two aspherical elements in that lens now today it's very common for lenses to have a spherical elements incorporated into their design but manufacturing is completely different today than it was in 1966 this was very difficult to do a spherical elements had to be ground and they had to be ground by hand now leica had a machine to make these lenses with they had two employees that could actually use said machines so you can imagine that they didn't produce a lot of that very first lens in fact by today's count there's only 1757 of those in existence this was a really significant lens though because nake enabled photographers to shoot in very low light situations it worked as a lens and it was copied a couple years later nikon and canon came out with their 55 millimeter f 1.2 lenses and later 50 millimeter lenses nikon had a 58 millimeter f 1.2 the f 1.2 was kind of a hit in fact here's an image of henry carter saw himself with the original noc deluxe he's photographing the paris riots in 1968 note that it is always best to show up to photograph a riot wearing a suit if you look at those images that he took they don't necessarily have any of the blatant characteristics of the noc deluxe of course they're also being taken in broad daylight he's probably stopping the lens down considerably but there is one image that i found that was at auction at christie's a while back that clearly has the noctilux f 1.2 look the very shallow depth of field it's a photo of a couple she's photographing the paris riots also this is an excellent example of the visual signature that this lens has so what exactly is the visual signature that you can expect from the noc deluxe f 1.2 reissue well many of you know that i live in the beautiful city of fort worth texas these are some images that i made at this little bar called thompson's bookstore and you can see that the images are really quite beautiful this was a low light situation now nocteluxe lenses are never designed to be completely clinically sharp to the corners edge to edge with all distortions corrected there are many imperfections in this lens but that's kind of the beauty of it and what you learn to embrace there is vignetting on the lens i think it's got a nice character to it one of the other things i want to note about this lens is that if you compare this to modern lenses particularly the f 0.95 version of this lens it's not going to be nearly as sharp with the points that are in focus in fact wide open it is pretty soft particularly if you're closer to the minimum focus distance the bokeh is gorgeous on this lens and let's be honest that's what you're going to get it for another note that i want to make is this image in particular was shot at f 5.6 and you can see that it still retains a lot of that kind of historical lens vibe to it it's not going to be as clinically sharp as a modern lens but that's the whole point of this lens this is a 1966 lens design and it's going to give you i don't want to use the word softer look but a lot less clinical so if you want an older cinematic look a lot of filmmakers prefer older lenses just for the specific reason this is the lens for you the noctilux f 1.2 is designed with six elements in four groups so we have a classic double gauze configuration the outer elements are both a spherical although they are machined now they are no longer hand ground and another cool thing about this lens is there are 16 aperture blades this is by far more than you're going to find on any other lens produced today and so this is going to ensure that that boca look that you want remains consistent when you stop down so spherical highlights actually stay round i want to dive a little deeper into the performance this lens and i want to talk about the cost but first i want to give a shout out to our sponsor this week who are the awesome folks over at squarespace.com i am actually redesigning my personal website right now and i'm going to be using a squarespace so i've been sharing a lot of images with you guys in these videos this is something that i want to share more of be able to put links and things to when i have collections made squarespace is an awesome place to do that it really is the easiest way to build a website you can build an online portfolio you can even build an e-commerce store on here the tools have really gotten good how easy is squarespace to use well you're going to start with one of their award-winning templates now all these templates are customizable your content is separate from the template so you can change the entire look if you feel like you need a complete refresh or you're not sure on something you can get things to look exactly like you want them what good is a website if nobody's looking at it will squarespace have the right social tools and email integrations in here so you can do your own website promotion as well my favorite part of squarespace well it's really intuitive so if you can drag and drop a folder of images you can build a photo gallery it's that easy you can easily go into the settings to customize everything to your liking hook it up to your own domain in fact they sell those too and you are in business so head over to squarespace using the link below this video and you can try it out for absolutely free and when you do decide that squarespace is right for you i can save you an additional 10 on your first order by using offer code aop so once again offer code aop and i want to give a special shout out and thanks to the awesome folks at squarespace for sponsoring this video let's dig a little deeper into characteristics the first thing i want to talk about is sharpness so i'm going to be honest if you want a really sharp modern leica lens this is probably not your lens this is a vintage lens design and photographers that want that kind of look are going to be thrilled with this as i mentioned earlier even at f 5.6 it's very natural it has a more cinematic look i personally really like this it does have a lot more of a 1960s feel to it i've not had an opportunity to compare this to the original version but i will say in the reissue that color rendition is impressively good this is not the case with a lot of retro style lenses that you can buy today but like you use modern coatings on this lens so you're going to get the best of both worlds with this now performance i'm going to be honest here performance is a challenge with this lens as i mentioned the images are a little soft when you're shooting wide open especially at the minimum focus distance you want things to move a little further back one little non-scientific test that i like to do with all the lenses that i review is to look at the field of focus so what we need to do is shoot something with texture i use the street in this case when i take it into photoshop and run it through the find edges filter you're going to only see what is sharp in the image and you can see that wide open at a close focus distance this is really not sharp corner to corner and so it becomes kind of a challenge to use a lot of times you think you've nailed the focus it looks slightly off in the image and it's actually on it's just a little bit soft wide open now of course this improves as you stop down and it's a 1.2 lens so you can start stopping down to improve that performance but at a minimum focus distance it really doesn't start improving till about f 2.8 so it's something you're going to have to learn how to live with it is a look and you kind of have to work towards the characteristics of this lens to get the most out of it that could be a deal breaker for some people i also want to note that the minimum focus distance on this lens is one meter or about three feet four inches which is common of lenses this era it's also the same across the board with all noctulux lenses that is the same minimum focus distance so m-mount lenses are a fascinating challenge because they're designed to be used with a rangefinder camera if the lens is too big it blocks the rangefinder and when you use the lens hood on this lens there is definitely some blockage even though it's ventilated so you can see through parts of it m-mount lens design is an art unto itself it always comes down to trade-offs but honestly this lens has a very organic quality to it and you learn how to get the best out of it and the results are absolutely fantastic so inevitably i need to address the pain point of this lens which is the price tag so the noc deluxe f 1.2 reissue lens comes in at a little under 8 000 u.s so i don't know you could look at this as expensive or you could look at it as a real deal because the f 0.95 version of this lens will likely raise their prices last year and that one comes in at over 12 000 now and then you can compare this to the original which is a more fair comparison because the look is very similar it's the classic look if you want to find an original noctelux f 1.2 well i mentioned earlier there's only 1700 or so of these in existence and so therefore they are scarce therefore they are collector's items therefore they go for astronomical sums of money i've seen them sell for as high as 50 you go on ebay and you see people asking over a hundred thousand dollars for them sometimes so when you put it in context i mean if you want this look then that price tag doesn't look so bad in the end but what about alternatives so i have reviewed a lot of older vintage type lenses on this show one i touched on recently was a lens that i had an insect in that had been sitting in a drawer for years and years anyway that was a canon 55 millimeter f 1.2 it is not as old as this design this was 1966 and i believe the canon came out in the 70s nikon had some in the 70s that were 55 millimeter and you can get those later versions that were 50 millimeter f 1.2 but i actually argue they're all slightly unique in the look and it depends on what you want what you're happy with what kind of features you want in the lens those were slr lenses they had improvements made on them with closer focus distances so on and so forth but if you want the leica look that this lens gives you this really is the only one and so the alternative i would actually recommend is if you don't need to own it you could rent it like i did that's considerably less money than fishing up eight thousand dollars to buy one note should also mention voigtlander in here because i think voigtlander is a company that makes classic type lenses they have the f 1.2 50 millimeter knocked on i have it in sony mount it's a really cool lens and it has sort of that historical look it's not quite the same look as the leica but that's a lens that you can get for a very affordable price that comes new with a warranty so they're all alternatives like that as well we're talking about alternatives essentially they're just that they're alternatives and yes it's very true that for a lot less money you can get a historical look from a wide variety of lenses both used and new however this lens is extraordinarily unique not only in terms of the look that it renders but it's a historically pretty important lens in fact i think it's one of the more significant lenses in the history of 35 millimeter photography anyway it was the first f 1.2 50 millimeter lens it was the first lens to incorporate a spherical elements and i think it's really cool that leica have given us a reissue option of a lens that's astronomically unaffordable anyway i would love to know what you guys think i'm sure you'll tell me either way so drop me a comment below catch you guys in the next video until then later\n"