Transcription
What makes this lens so special is not necessarily the image quality, but it's the passion, the engineering, and the attention of detail, and the respect for what Leica did back in 1966 with the first Noctilux. This is the Light Lens Lab 50mm f1.2 1966, as they call it, lens. An homage to the original 50 1.2 Noctilux Deluxe that Leica made back in 1966. A very significant lens in terms of their optic history. The first commercially available aspherical element lens, two aspherical elements, and a lens this small. This is the same size as the original.
Now, back in that day, everybody was trying to make faster aperture lenses, obviously, the limitations in film speed. Case in point, the Canon 50mm f0.95, the dream lens. Zack Snyder used it a few years back for one of his films. Those lenses were very big. But Leica, with their optics and engineering, made something small with aspherical elements, which was very hard to do back in the day. As a matter of fact, those aspherical elements had to be hand-ground, unlike today, which they're molded or made with various different methods. It was a very rare lens, around a thousand made in total, if I'm not mistaken. And if you find one in the market nowadays in very good condition, they can cost you anywhere from 30 to 40,000 thereabouts. And I saw one of them recently too, I'll talk about that in just a second. But this lens is an homage to that.
And you know, I've been using Light Lens Lab lenses for a number of years since they came out with the 35 8-element, the 50 Elmarit, the 50 Summicron, which I did a review on a few months back, and of course, the 35 collapsible. But when this lens was announced by them, I was very, very excited. I tried the 2021 retro version of this lens, the Leica kind of reintroduced a few years ago, and that lens was good. It's a nice lens, has the same look and design as it. But the optics, the image quality, it's not necessarily the same as the original 50 Noctilux Deluxe. It's using molded aspherical elements. The rendering is a little bit different. It's not a bad lens, but it's an acquired taste. And very similar to this lens in that regard is that this is not a sharp, well-corrected lens. It's made for film. It was made back 50 plus years ago. Considering that, Light Lens Lab, they found a way to make hand-ground aspherical elements. They found a way to recreate the 90043 glass that was made by Corning for Leica back in the day.
By the way, I'm getting my information from two sources, mind you, which I'll be crediting and putting links in my description below. One from Macfilos, who had a pre-production copy of this lens last year, and also Ted Forbes, Art of Photography, who did a beautiful video talking about this lens, pre-production version, and as well as the history of the Noctilux. So I'll put a link there. With that said, Light Lens Lab wanted to recreate as close to the original as possible. It took them years of R&D and sourcing and finding the right fabrication methods to make this lens possible. And as a result, only 998 are being made. The price point is at a premium, over $2,000 plus, and we'll talk about all that in just a second. But what you have in your hands here, in my personal opinion, will become a collector's item for photography nuts like myself and others out there in years to come.
So with that, let's talk about this lens in terms of the build quality, the design, and what it's like to use. Now, if you've never used a Light Lens Lab lens before, the packaging is very nice. Comes in a nice white box, and they usually come in sort of a pouch of sort. This comes in a cream-colored, kind of a taupe, leatherette pouch. And the moment I took this lens out, it blew me away at how good it was made. It is beautiful when you hold this lens. And this is the black brass version, coming around 650 grams, so there is some weight to this. It's exquisite. It's a piece of art. This focus ring here is smooth. The aperture ring, the tension is perfect. The back rear cap is made of metal. Has a push cap for the front with felt inside. Look at the amber coating on the front of that lens, how gorgeous that is. The paint on this, kind of a semi-gloss black sheen to it, will match beautifully with a black M10-R black paint. It's a beautifully made lens. Also comes with a hood, vented hood, metal. Also has a glass filter inside of it as well, that's built in, which is nice for protection. You know, this is their crown jewel, my personal opinion. And if you thought the 35 8-element was nice, you thought the 50 Elmarit was nice, you thought the 35 collapsible was nice, you thought the 50 Summicron was nice, if you get this one, you get it in your hands, it's as equal to, if not better than, what Leica makes. And I've seen it next to the original and also the retro version.
We're going to talk about that story in just a second, and what's different on the production lens versus what we saw from Ted's video and also Macfilos' images on their website is that you don't see any sort of Noctilux name on it, nothing like that. There's nothing inside of it. All you see is 1966, ASP for aspherical, the 50 1.2, 623 out of 998. That is the number of this lens here, and it says Light Lens Lab. So they took away that Noctilux name that they had on those lenses. That's all gone here. The markings of this lens match almost exactly to what Leica does. They're engraved. It is absolutely stunning. This is a piece of art. I'm going to say it like many times throughout this video.
I got a chance to try next to the 50 1.2 original. How did that happen? Well, by chance, actually. I took this lens with me when I went to Wetzlar, Germany, for the SL3 launch. And I brought the S5 Mark IIx because I needed a hybrid video camera because I was going to be shooting some content there. And I was walking around one morning and I was taking photos with this lens mounted to that. And you're going to see some of those images here in the morning. And I was just trying out the rendering of the lens, how it performed, etc., etc. I ventured into the classic store. Now, if you've never been to Wetzlar, Germany, they have two classic stores, so to speak. Well, actually, they have two stores. One that has new cameras as well as some vintage cameras and lenses in the back, and also one that's just all vintage. So I went to that one. Good friends of mine, Liam and Paul, who work there, great guys. They know everything about Leica lenses and cameras. And if you ever need anything, you can see them on Instagram as well. I'll put their link in my description below. I was looking through the glass cases to see what they had, what was new, because I'm always looking to pick up something, just me collecting, as you can see behind me. And they had an original 50 1.2 in the glass case, going for around €30,000, if I'm not mistaken. And it was expensive, beautiful condition, by the way. I was talking with the guys and I said, "Hey, I brought this Light Lens Lab version as well. You want to see it?" And they said, "Sure," because they've heard of Light Lens Lab but they never seen one before. They were blown away by the build quality. So what they did is they actually took the original out of the case, they put it next to this to compare the two. I didn't take any videos out of respect for where I was at, so sorry guys, you're just going to have to go along with my story here. Consider it like a podcast at this moment in time. They were impressed. I mean, the focus ring, the aperture, everything felt really good. So what Liam did is he actually took some sample images with both of the lenses. A friend of ours, Christian Delling, who's also a Leica photographer, he worked with Leica for many years. He's in marketing for their Leica watches. He's a phenomenal photographer, by the way. I'll put a link to his Instagram as well. And these are just sample images, one in landscape, one in portrait. You can decide which is which, but I'll give you a little bit of a clue here. Light Lens Lab wanted to make this lens slightly sharper than the original. Believe they want to make a little bit more of a warmer tone to the lens overall. So based on that, you probably know which image is what. But if you look at the bokeh, you look at the falloff, the way that it captures the subject, they're very, very similar. Even Liam said himself, he was shocked at how similar they were in terms of rendering. And these guys work with vintage lenses day in and day out. That's what their job is at Leica, and they're the best at it.
After that, I had even more confidence in this lens than I already did, and I've been proceeding to shoot with it. I went to Austria for the Hyundai Driving Experience. I was shooting some street photography there. I took a photo of the car at f5.6 to see how it's stopped down in terms of sharpness, which it does get very sharp at f5.6. You can see the details in the tires and the rims and the way that the car shape and the details on the car. It captures everything very, very well. But, and that's the interesting thing about this lens, the way that it renders, it is softer wide open. Even though they say it's sharper than the original, which it is, it is still soft at f1.2 and f1.4. But it sharpens up at f2 and beyond that. It is still going to give you a very vintage look. Vignetting wide open, you're going to get a little bit of distortion. It does still render on the cooler tones, even though it's warmer than the original. Compared to more modern lenses, it's still going to render a little cooler. So you can adjust that in Lightroom or Capture One or whatever software you're using, so keep that in mind.
Now, I also did compare to the Retro 2021 version here in Singapore at Riceball Photography. Leon, who was kind enough to be my model for this, and also I was his model as we were testing out this lens back and forth. You're going to see that at f1.2, the Retro version is slightly sharper, a little bit of a different rendering that is made with molded aspherical elements versus hand-ground elements. So there's going to be a little bit of a difference there. In addition to that, I also compared it to the Arri Lab, the 50 1.2 that I recently reviewed. And while these lens design-wise look similar with the scalloped focus ring and the aperture rings are designed, they render very differently. At f1.2, this is still going to be sharper than this. Has close focusing at 0.35 meters versus 1 meter for the Light Lens Lab. But at f2 and beyond, this is a bitingly sharp lens, very modern rendering. This lens is well-corrected at f4 to f5.6 and beyond that. But all the way up there, you're going to get a little bit of chromatic aberration, a little bit of onion rings coming into bokeh balls, imperfections coming into play. This Arri Lab, in my personal opinion, was designed for mirrorless camera systems, and thus it reflects that. But still a great lens, to each their own and what they like or prefer. But if you want something that is closest to the original, this would be it.
With that said, though, does this lens render something so unique that we haven't seen it before? And the short answer is no. You can look at a lot of lenses out there in the marketplace that are less expensive than this that are going to give you very similar renderings. I mean, you have to consider this is a 50-year-old plus design. It's not about the image quality, as I mentioned earlier in this video. It's about the passion. It's about the nuance. It's about the attention to even the type of glass that Leica put into the original Noctilux that Light Lens Lab recreated as close as they could to give us in the photography community a piece of history for a fraction of the price.
Let me explain it to you this way. I've got an Apple Watch Ultra Series 2 here. This watch is phenomenal. I love this watch. It does everything. It's made of titanium, sapphire glass on the front of it. It's durable. It can tell me how high I am. It can tell me how deep I am in the water. Can do all these different metrics on me. It is amazingly accurate. It's a phenomenal watch, and it comes around $1,000. Then on my wrist here, I have an Omega Seamaster. This is the Bond 60th anniversary Co-Axial movement. Beautiful movement by Omega. It's got the wave dial on it. It has a very special back of it, the way that it renders James Bond walking down the gun barrel. It's made of stainless steel. The mesh bracelet is awesome. It's beautiful. This watch is thousands of dollars more than this watch, and this watch does more. But why do people spend more money on a watch like this and they would on that? Why would they prefer a watch like this and not that? They appreciate the mechanics. They appreciate the nuances, the engineering, the craftsmanship that goes into a watch like this, and they understand how difficult it is. And that wearing a piece of engineering machinery, a piece of art on their wrist means something to them. And they're willing to spend thousands of dollars more for something like that than an Apple Watch. And that's what this lens is like. You're not getting this lens for the image quality because I could put this to other lenses that are out there at f1.2 or 50 f1.4, whatever the case may be, and you probably would have noticed the difference. You're getting it for the attention to detail, the engineering, and the R&D, and the passion that is behind this lens. And that is what is so special about what Light Lens Lab does as a whole as a company, why I've been a supporter of them for a number of years now. Not every product they make is great. The 35 collapsible wasn't my favorite lens, but this lens is very, very special. I don't get to keep it, unfortunately. It goes back to them, but it is a Leica's piece, a special piece. And yes, the price point is at a premium, and it will be a hard sell for many people out there, to be honest with you, to spend $2,000 plus US dollars on a small lens company, you know, respectively, when you could probably get a secondhand Leica 50 1.2 Retro 2021 version for, you know, maybe a few thousand dollars more. If you are someone that is into the finer details, you appreciate the journey that one takes for this to make these possible, this lens is very special, and I think you're going to enjoy it once you get it into your hands.
Anyway guys, those are my thoughts on this 50 1.2 1966 version from Light Lens Lab. Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below. Do you own this lens? What do you guys think about this lens? I'd love to hear from you guys. Any questions you have, I'll try to answer them for you, as you know, I'm very active in the comment section below.
With that said, I do want to talk about a bag company that I'll be working with here, that I have a special discount for you guys, and that's from Over-Ready. Now, many of you may know them from the Leica community here. They are known to make what are considered to be the Rolls-Royce of camera bags. The leather, the quality of leather on this is absolutely phenomenal. This is their Everest backpack. They make sling bags, they make cases, they make straps. And there's a 10% discount in my description. Look at the code right there. When you go onto the website, you can put that code in and get 10% off their bags. Their bags do come at a premium, but what you're getting in here is a very, very special, very well-made bag. And this is part of the new SL3 collection, by the way. So if you did get an SL3 and you want a good bag for that, this is something to consider. You can fit a 15 or 16-inch laptop in the back of this as well. The leather quality, the stitching, the material on this thing is absolutely beautiful. I love this bag. This is awesome, and I'm very proud to be working with them on this. So yes, if you'd like to pick up an Over-Ready bag, strap, or case, check out that link in my description below. 10% off, and it also helps my channel out as well.
So yes, guys, if you like this video, hit that like button, subscribe to the channel, more content on the way. Thanks again for the support, and I will chat to you soon. Take care.