© jmse
By José Manuel Serrano Esparza
In 1966 Leica launched
into market the Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1.2 Asph, the first aspherical lens in
history, designed by Helmut Marx and Paul Sindel, and whose first prototypes
were made in April of 1964.
Top view of the
Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1.2 Asph, showing its superb 12503 entirely metallic shade
with double-trigger release and the 16 blade lens diaphragm making possible to
get great portraits at widest f/1.2 aperture.
© jmse
Featuring 6 elements in 4
groups, a 16 blade diaphragm, length x diameter of 60 x 61 cm, manufactured in black
anodized aluminium exterior with bronze and stainless-steel inner area, and
including two aspherical surfaces, its appearance aroused great expectation and
undoubtedly meant a turning point in the history of photographic lenses, two
years before Nikon created in 1968 its 9 elements in 6 groups OP Fisheye-Nikkor
10 mm f/5.6 with aspherical front lens element and five years prior to the
presentation by Canon in 1971 of its 8 elements in 6 groups and 8 diaphragm
blade Canon FD 55 mm f/1.2 AL, incorporating an aspherical element (which would
be improved in March 1975 with the Canon FD 55 mm f/1.2 S.S.C aspherical,
essentially the same lens but boasting multicoating).
© jmse
The Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1.2
Asph meant to practical effects the fourth defining moment in the evolution of
photographic lenses for 24 x 36 mm format, after the design of the Leitz Elmar
5 cm f/3.5 by Professor Max Berek in 1930, the Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 5 cm
f/1.5 by Ludwig Bertele in 1932, and the Summicron-M 50 mm f/2 first version in
1953 designed by Helmut Marx.
Highly probably, this was
the most strenuous lens to create ever along with the aforementioned Bertele´s
CZJ Sonnar 5 cm f/1.5 (for which the genius born in Munich needed a total of
roughly one million sheets of paper and a raft of manual calculi, because there
weren´t any computers or software for optical design whatsoever), since it was
designed and manufactured with utterly manual parameters, working without any
CNC controlled grinding and polishing machines (so getting a centering of
lenses to the highest accuracy became something of extreme difficulty) or
computer and laser controlled instruments for an accurate interferometric
examination of aspherical lenses to check their deviations, edge drop-off,
astigmatic errors, etc.
© jmse
To design and manufacture this lens was a
huge challenge for Leica, because the need
to generate exceedingly tiny deviations of microns in the original spherical
lens surfaces to turn them into aspherical ones was virtually impossible to
attain within stringent tolerances, since the production of aspherical lens
surfaces was then something particularly complex, and frequently an optical
element had to go through every step of the polishing and grinding method once
and again and new testing methods had to be developed to achieve the
technically huge precision needed for the manufacture of the aspherical
surfaces of the elements.
Detail of the
scalloped focusing ring of the Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1.2 Asph, whose mechanical
construction is exceptional.
© jmse
In addition, any attempt
of mass production became a virtually impossible task, particularly during the
assembly period, because the state-of-the-art technology needed for assuring
the fulfillment of the narrow tolerances and accuracy for grinding and
polishing the aspherical surfaces wasn´t available at the time, so only Helmut
Marx and Paul Sindel could do it in an entirely handcrafted way.
Needless to say that
because of all those factors, the hugely time consuming only way to do things
and a very high quantity of rejected optical elements, production cost
skyrocketed, since vast majority of stages could only be accomplished with
great slog by a very small number of highly qualified and experienced persons.
© jmse
THE SUBJECT OF THE
PERFORMANCE OF THE NOCTILUX-M 50 MM F1.2 ASPH LENS
To begin with, putting
this lens through its paces has never been an easy job, because it is a rare
objective ( only 2,450 units were made between 1966 and 1975) reaching very
steep price tags in either auctions or private transactions among collectors,
investors, etc, so having the chance of properly make tests with one of them
can be risky if any little scratch, dent or cleaning mark could be produced
during its use, resulting in a drop of its selling worth, since it is evidently
a legendary lens and samples in A/B or near mint condition can fetch exorbitant
prices.
Moreover, if the sample to
test has been unused for a long time, chances are that it will need a CLA.
© jmse
Therefore, the Noctilux-M
50 mm f/1.2 Asph inherent nature as a coveted item for both discerning
collectors and investors has meant that only a very reduced group of
professional photographers have had the opportunity to get pictures with it
coupled to Leica M bodies in real photographic contexts.
And regarding results in
optical performance, though most of those knowledgeable testers have defined
the lens between very good and excellent, there have been sometimes certain
differences among the samples.
The lens exhibits very
good resolving power, sharpness and contrast at f/1.2 in the center of the
image for such a huge aperture for the time, with a drop to acceptable in
borders and corners, while on stopping it down to f/1.4 and f/2 there is a
major improvement in acutance, thanks to an excellent contrast on the whole of
the image surface, whose qualitative level will significantly increase on
stopping down to f/2.8 and f/4 and will reach its peak values at f/5.6 and f/8,
where optical performance of the lens can be bluntly defined as extraordinary.
As has often been
explained by the world-class expert on photographic lenses Erwin Putts, there
was the rumor throughout decades that the Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1.2 Asph
delivered its best image quality at f/1.2 and it decreased on stopping down,
what proved to be false, since the lens yields a very good optical performance
at widest f/1.2 aperture but obviously improves on stopping down.
But it isn´t less true
that there have been some testers stating that the non aspherical Noctilux-M 50
mm f/1 gives better results at its widest aperture f/1 than the Noctilux-M 50
mm f/1.2 Asph at its widest f/1.2, which is not true in vast majority of the
latter´s produced units, specially in contrast and color rendition, where the
Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1.2 Asph is superior.
Lateral right
view of the Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1.2 Asph showing the gorgeous brass helical
focusing mount, manufactured in the Lathe Department at Leitz Wetzlar, where
were made all the round mechanical components like setting rings, tubes, mounts
and helical focusing mounts for lenses.
© Leica Camera AG
What can be the origin of
the occasional differences in test results with this mythical lens?
Evidence suggests that it
greatly stems from the extreme difficulty to get a uniformity of performance
unit by unit within each batch of the very low figure of Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1.2
Asph manufactured , because of the previously mentioned completely manual
method for designing and manufacturing.
Anyway, the great optical
performance delivered by this lens, even at full f/1.2 aperture,
straightforwardly indicates that Leica was in mid sixties far ahead of the
Japanese brands of photographic industry in the optical design of ultraluminous
lenses.
© Leica
Camera AG
And this is something
really praiseworthy, because the wherewithal of its own and resources of the
relatively small German photographic firm was far from the immense potential in
both cash-flow and R & D of the great Japanese corporations that had held
sway over the photographic market since early sixties with their excellent 24 x
36 mm format reflex cameras featuring virtually unbeatable price/quality ratio,
and also had great optical designers at the time like Kakuya Sunayama, Saburo
Murakami, Hideo Azuma, Zenji Wakimoto, Yoshihada Hayamizu, Toshihiro Imai,
Nobuo Yamashita, Toru Fujii, Hiroshi Takase, Yoshiaki Horikawa, Tadashi Kimura,
Fumitaka Watanabe and others.
But Helmut Marx (Professor
Max Berek´s successor as head of the photographic lens design office of Ernst
Leitz factory in Wetzlar and creator of the Summicron 50 mm f/2 1st version in
1953) was then the best optical designer in the world along with Walter Mandler
(at the Ernst Leitz Canada factory in Midland, Ontario), and with the lenses
designed by them for Leica M cameras, new standards in optical performance were
set.
And amazingly, the
Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1.2 Asph was launched into market by Leica in 1966 as a
production series item, some years before Professor Helmut Marx began to
develop his COMO optimization program for lens designing with the help of
special computers in late sixties, including all the opto-mechanical data
regarding the construction of a top-notch performance lens, saving a lot of
years of work.
Back left view of the
Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1.2 showing once more the fabulous mechanic construction of
the lens visible in the brass helical focusing mount and its aluminium area,
and the rest of the exterior metallic surfaces manufactured with black anodized
aluminum, while the inner metallic components are made with bronze and
stainless steel to ensure a smooth operation.
© Leica Camera AG
Whatever it may be, there
were tons of intuition, expertise and optical insight in the design of the
Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1.2 Asph by Helmut Marx and Paul Sindel, without forgetting
the accuracy and toil of Gerd Bergmann using a just created Leitz developed
early copy grinding machine to machine produce aspherical lens surfaces with
remarkable precision, something that only he could do.
But coming back to the
topic of the alleged superiority in image quality of the fabulous non
aspherical Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1 at widest aperture over the Noctilux-M 50 mm
f/1.2 Asph at widest f/1.2 aperture, reported by some testers, sincerely, I
don´t think so in vast majority of the 2,450 units made of the Noctilux-M 50 mm
f/1.2 Asph, because at the moment in which Leica launched into market this
first aspherical lens ever in 1966, the German photographic firm needed to show
its optical prowess before the unstoppable advance of the Japanese photographic
industry from early sixties, and top priority was to get an ultraluminous
first-class 50 mm f/1.2 standard lens, whose performance at widest aperture in
the center wasn´t simply acceptable but really very good and professional in
terms of resolving power, sharpness, contrast and color rendition.
Particularly the yielding
of excellent contrast was very important, because from early fifties Nikon had
launched into market highly luminous standard lenses like the Nikkor-S.C 5 cm
f/1.4 delivering great image quality in the center and superb contrast, whose
mission was to optimize the acutance and visual feeling of sharpness of the
images in symbiosis with excellent coatings, so when the pictures made with
them were reproduced in the illustrated magazines of the time, they often
seemed sharper than better German lenses from Leica and Carl Zeiss yielding
more resolving power but not as good contrast, as happened during the Korean
War with Nikkor lenses used on LTM39 mount Leica (David Douglas Duncan, Miki
Jun) and bayonet Contax (Horace Bristol, Carl Mydans, Margaret Bourke-White) 24
x 36 mm format rangefinder cameras.
Optical scheme
of the Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1.2 Asph, featuring 6 elements in 4 groups and a
diaphragm with 16 blades, enabling it to get very beautiful bokeh and portraits
at widest f/1.2 aperture. The two aspherical surfaces (one in the front element
and another in the rear one) featured by the Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1.2 Asph meant
a pivotal instant not only in the history of Leica but also in the sphere of
photographic lenses broadly speaking, since it paved the way for significantly
reducing the dimensions, weight and number of elements and groups of
ultraluminous lenses in comparison to spherical designs featuring larger size,
weight and more elements. In addition, aspherical lens surfaces started to
stand out in mid sixties as a very efficient way to reduce optical aberrations,
so their mileage in these regards would become a future trend and mainstay in
the German firm assortment of highly luminous lenses from 1990 onwards, when
new technologies of precision molding (used for wideangle lenses) and CNC
controlled grinding and polishing machines (optimized for standard 50 mm and
longer lenses) enabled to manufacture aspherical lens surfaces with a much higher
degree of precision.
© Leica Camera AG
Therefore, the Noctilux-M
50 mm f/1.2 Asph was an all-out effort made by Leica to prove its leading-class
position in the scope of the design of highly luminous lenses, with an optical
performance at widest aperture that was utterly professional in terms of image
quality and with which it managed to significantly up the ante in 1966, after
having dabbled into aspherical lens surfaces production for the first time nine
years before, in 1957.
Obviously, the 7 elements
in 6 groups and 10 diaphragm blades Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1 from 1976, designed by
the optical wizard Walter Mandler, is a stratospheric level lens even to
current standards, but the approach was different : fully aware that the
production cost of the Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1.2 Asph was huge and virtually
impossible to implement a rational manufacturing program and uniformity of
imagery performance in each lens of every batch, he designed a non aspherical
and extraordinary 50 mm f/1 lens featuring one more element than the aspherical
pioneer, with three main goals : to reduce the production cost, to ease the
series production and to get splendid image quality from f/1.4 onward and a
unique aesthetics of image at widest f/1 aperture, with a wonderful bokeh.
Id est, Mandler´s design
was mainly based on a cost effective philosophy through which the lens had to
yield excellent optical performance between f/1.4 and f/8 and a usable image
quality at widest f/1 in terms of resolving power, sharpness and contrast, but
enhanced by an exceptional bokeh in the out of focus areas, with a really
unique look.
On the other hand, Leica
had a much more solid economic position in mid sixties, when it launched into
market the Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1.2 Asph, than in 1976 when it introduced the non
aspherical Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1, to such an extent that in mid seventies, the
German photographic firm was fighting for its survival, particularly focused on
the preservation of the Leica M lineage of cameras and lenses, which was about
to disappear and only the tremendous insight and product knowledge of Walter
Kluck (President of Ernst Leitz Canada factory in Midland, Ontario, who after
the failure of sales of the Leica M5, convinced the Leitz Wetzlar management to
renew the Leica M breed with a further production of 4.000 new cameras,
and was able to get 9,000 orders, until
the new Leica M4-2 was announced at Photokina 1976, the same year in which the
Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1 was presented).
On its turn, the Noctilux
M 50 mm f/1.2 Asph appeared in 1966, with an instantly accomplished aim: to
become the best ultraluminous standard lens in the world at widest aperture,
and top goals were maximum feasible resolving power, sharpness, contrast and
excellent colours at f/1.2, with a truly professional image quality, and
extraordinary optical performance on stopping down from f/1.4, almost on a par
with Mandler´s Summilux-M 50 1.4 from 1959.
This lens was for Leica
what the 7 elements in 6 groups Noct-Nikkor 58 mm f/1.2 Asph featuring a hand
ground aspherical surface on the front surface of the forward element would be
for Nikon in 1977, id est, the jewel of the crown of the firm´s lineup of
lenses.
Walter Mandler knew
perfectly that designing a Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1 with extraordinary resolving
power, sharpness and contrast at such hugely wide aperture with aspherical
lenses would have meant a tremendous production cost for Leica, including the
use of highly exotic and expensive optical glasses, so he decided to generate a
dual purpose excellent lens featuring two main virtues:
a) An acceptable optical
performance at f/1, not specially great in sharpness and contrast, with
incredibly shallow depth of field, but with a top priority aim : a unique
swirling bokeh wonderfully yielding the out of focus areas with an amazing
impressionistic look and painterly quality, fruit of the wisely chosen degree
of different optical aberrations preserved by Mandler to achieve that visual
effect at the widest aperture, more typical of some old large format lenses.
This way, photographers
could leverage the short tele lens nature inherent to the 50 mm focal length in
both portraits and pictures in which they desired to enhance the persons or
objects in the foreground.
b) A very good optical
performance at f/1.4 and excellent from f/2 onward, using the lens as a normal
standard 50 mm objective.
This way, the Noctilux-M
50 mm f/1.2 Asph was the Leica benchmark in optical performance as to resolving
power, sharpness, contrast and colors at widest aperture among its
ultraluminous f/1 and f/1.2 standard lenses for forty-two years, between 1966
and 2008, when the Noctilux-M 50 mm f/0.95 ASPH, designed under the supervision
of Peter Karbe, was introduced.
THE FASCINATING EVOLUTIVE
TRUTH ON THE NOCTILUX-M 50 MM F1.2 ASPH UNVEILED DURING THE LEICA HISTORICA e.V
MEETING OF OCTOBER 2018 INSIDE THE ARCONA LIVING ERNST LEITZ HOTEL IN WETZLAR
© Paul
Robert
Dr. Wolfgang Vollrath
(former Head of Optical Design at Leitz Wetzlar between 1981 and 1990 and
creator of some world-class Leica lenses like the Apo-Macro-Elmarit-R 100 mm
f/2.8) imparted on October 14, 2018 inside the Arcona Living Ernst Leitz Hotel
in Wetzlar, as part of the programm of the Annual Meeting of the Leica
Historica e.V, a landmark lecture titled " How it all Began : Leica Lenses
with Aspherical Lenses, New and Unprecedented " , which elaborated on a
lot of greatly unknown and very interesting aspects related to the pioneering
aspherical lenses manufactured by Leica, as well as proving that the Noctilux-M
50 mm f/1.2 Asph lens designed by Helmut Marx and Paul Sindel was the fruit of
nine years of previous toilsome groundwork from 1957 and the evolutive pinnacle
of a breed which however incredible it may be was born in late fifties with two
impressive aspherical prototypes for the time:
© Paul Robert
a) The Summaron-M 35 mm
f/2.8 Asph prototype from 1958, featuring 2 aspherical surfaces, designed by
Helmut Marx through the symbiosis between his tremendous optical knowledge and
intuition and the help of an Elliott 402F computer controlled by a magnetic
drum with 4,000 32-bit words and being 150 times faster than the previous Zuse
Z5 with profusion of electromechanical relays (which had already accelerated
lens design at Leitz almost seventy times over manual calculations),
significantly saving manual time consuming ray tracing during the design stage
and enabling to fulfill a better correction of errors in sagittal areas.
© Paul Robert
Dr. Wolfgang Vollrath
explained that Helmut Marx (who was then incepting the embryo stage of what
would result in his famous COMO program for lens designing optimization) took
the decision of using aspherical surfaces in 1958 to improve the performance of
the Summaron-M 35 mm f/2.8 Asph prototype (which was very advanced in 1959 but
wasn´t finally produced in series) after a lot of conversations with Walter
Mandler.
© Paul Robert
b) The six elements
Noctilux-M 52 mm f/1 Asph prototype, featuring 2 aspherical surfaces and
designed by Helmut Marx and Paul Sindel in 1959, whose aim was to beat the
optical performance of the non aspherical 7 elements in 5 groups and 11
diaphragm blades Canon 50 mm f/1.2, designed by Ito Hiroshi in April of 1956, a
very good ultraluminous lens for the Japanese brand cameras sporting M39 mount,
with a Planar design and whose selling price Canon had managed to reduce to
half in 1957, streamlining production stages, in addition to having been
extensively used by David Douglas Duncan in his essays on Pablo Picasso.
Helmut Marx and Paul
Sindel knew that though being a very good lens, the performance of the Canon 50
mm f/1.2 at widest aperture was poor in terms of resolving power, sharpness and
contrast, because the Japanese firm had to sacrifice a certain degree of
performance to be able to achieve such a huge maximum diaphragm, so Ito Hiroshi
had decided to optimize the f/1.2 aperture to get beautiful portraits with soft
and center emphasized images.
© Paul Robert
Anyway, Helmut Max and
Paul Sindel were not able to achieve the great image quality at widest aperture
they wanted with the Noctilux-M 52 mm f/1 Asph prototype from 1959 (which
didn´t go into series production either) and realized that the only way to
achieve it was with a maximum aperture of f/1.2.
© Paul Robert
On the other hand, both
optical designers felt that the evaluation of the only prototype sample of the
Summaron-M 35 mm f/2.8 Asph from 1958 was being very expensive and the advances
in optical performance in comparison with the non aspherical 35 mm f/2.8 Leica
lenses already in existence were very small and didn´t match the expectations
of the optical calculi, so after a thorough mesurement inside the Leitz
laboratory of optical tests in Wetzlar, it was discovered that because of the
prolongued polishing times, the out of tolerances variations of the forward
aspherical elements were much bigger than in the rear ones.
© Paul Robert
That´s why the front
optical elements were even more painstakingly manufactured again and measured
after the polishing and grinding,
© Paul Robert
which resulted in a major
improvement of the performance of four new Summaron-M 35 mm f/2.8 Asph
prototype lenses with 2 aspherical surfaces made in 1960.
But the production cost
had been enormous, with a 75% of rejected prototype samples from a total of
sixteen manufactured, id est, twelve of them whose attained image quality had
been between moderate and bad.
The upshot of it is that
stunningly, from mid fifties, roughly two years after the launching into market
of the Summicron-M 50 mm f/2 Dual Range in 1956, Leica was already trying to
create with unbridled enthusiasm a stratospheric for the time Summaron 35 mm
f/2.8 Asph wideangle lens boasting 2 aspherical surfaces and delivering
excellent image quality at its widest aperture.
This clearly suggest that
Leica top brass was fully aware in late fifties that 35 mm wideange highly
luminous lenses would soon replace the 50 mm standard lenses (that had reigned
supreme since mid twenties) as favourite lens among professional photojournalists,
and aside from the non aspherical Summarons 35 mm f/2.8 and Summicrons 35 mm
f/2 from 1958, they strove upon creating a Summaron-M 35 mm f/2.8 Asph with two
aspherical surfaces yielding an even better optical performance, but it wasn´t
impossible to implement a series production with the technology and
manufacturing methods available then.
Anyway, Helmut Marx and
Paul Sindel dind´t surrender, rose to the challenge and the great know-how they
had acquired designing the prototypes of the Summaron-M 35 mm f/2.8 Asph,
limping along with strenuous personal effort, suffering and sweating, would pay
off in very few years.
As a matter of fact, in
1962 a German photographer called Mr Seck got pictures in both different
streets of Frankfurt and some circuses with a Leica M camera coupled to a
prototype of a 6 elements Noctilux-M 52 mm f/1.2 Asph featuring two aspherical
lenses (made by Leitz optical designers Brück and Hoffmann, following Helmut
Marx´s instructions) obtaining very good results, but simultaneously, the huge
production cost, very time consuming manufacturing method, exceedingly complex
new ways of testing, very high rate of rejected optical elements out of
tolerances, etc, kept on turning the series production into something out of
the question.
© Paul Robert
But through perseverence
and very hard work, improvements went on being made until the Photokina of
1966, when after a two year stage of prototypes, the Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1.2
Asph with 2 aspherical surfaces was introduced by Leica as a series production
item, with detailed previous information on the lens provided by the publicity
department headed by Mr Jaeckel and a lot of tests made with some lenses
attached to Leica M cameras by professional photojournalists like Bob
Schwalberg.
Though being a tremendous
optomechanical revolution for the time and an accomplished tour de force,
Helmut Marx realized that a strong vignetting of 3.5 diaphragms in the corners
at widest f/1.2 aperture couldn´t be avoided.
This is a highly
significant aspect, because Professor Helmut Marx, a true visionary in the
scope of photographic optics, had clearly perceived from mid sixties that the
extraordinary four-part Leica M bayonet (exceedingly sturdy, with a diameter of
44 mm and a flange distance of 27.8 mm) designed by Hugo Wehrenfenning in
February of 1950 and whose shape was optimized to make possible that the
maximum amount of light coming from the optical system of the lens could reach
the outermost corners of the image) was too small to get rid of big levels of
falloff on the corners with lenses featuring f/1 and f/1.2 huge widest
apertures.
That´s to say, Helmut Marx
had envisaged with almost fifty years of anticipation the need to build larger
mounts with shorter flange distances to fully synergyze with f/1 and f/1.2
lenses to reduce vignetting at full aperture as much as possible, something
that would result in the inception of the Leica L-Mount bayonet (featuring a
diameter of 51.6 mm and a flange distance of 20 mm) introduced in April of 2014
with the excellent APS-C format Leica T as a starting technological platform
for the development of the formidable 24 x 36 mm format mirrorless Leica SL
System of digital cameras and telecentric lenses which would appear in October
of 2015.
This historical lecture
imparted by Dr.Wolfgang Vollrath also showed that after the launching into
market of the Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1.2 Asph, Helmut Marx didn´t rest on his
laurels, got up steam and tried along with his collaborator Mr Desch to design
a Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1 Asph, with three main possible routes to attain it:
© Paul Robert
a) An additional hollow
aspherical surface (in symbiosis with the two ones already existing) behind the
diaphragm, though practice proved it wasn´t feasible, so an alternative
solution was devised applying an aspheric surface to the convex surface of the
meniscus.
© Paul Robert
b) The introduction of
lateral lenses invented by Helmut Marx, creating an optical element made up by spherical annular lenses featuring different curved radii and kinds of glasses.
Those annular lenses would
only work in the diaphragm sector between f/1 and f/1.2, on the image center,
and because of the strong vignetting, they wouldn´t have any effect on the
image field.
© Paul Robert
c) An idea provided by
Walter Mandler: an aspherical flat disc inside the diaphram space.
All of these concepts were
put into practice until 1970, trying to design a Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1 Asph with
three aspherical surfaces, but the project was abandoned, because the
technology of aspherical surfaces was in its infancy, the production costs kept
on inevitably being very expensive, the measuring tools were still immature and
a homogeneity of optical performance unit by unit within each batch for series
production was virtually unfeasible for the time being.
Noctilux-M 50 mm
f/1.2 Asph beside a picture of Professor Helmut Marx, its main designer.
© jmse
But whatever it may be,
the design and manufacture of the legendary Noctilux-M 50 mm f/1.2 Asph,
launched into market in 1966, has undoubtedly been one of the greatest feats in
the history of photographic lenses, proving Leica unflinching level of
commitment with its worldwide customers and the indefatigable fighting spirit
to get unrivalled optical excellence with its highly luminous and top-notch
quality lenses, which has always been a significant part of the German
photographic firm hallmark, including its pioneering spirit on starting the
design and manufacture of aspherical lenses in 1957.
The author wishes to
express his gratitude to the Dutch photojournalist and travel writer Paul
Robert, who had the kindness of getting the pictures of Dr.Wolfgang Vollrath´s
milestone lecture in Wetzlar.
On the other hand,
obviously there is a myriad of aspects of all kind in the design and
development of this legendary lens that go far beyond my very limited
knowledge, so the only thing I could do was to fight trying to avoid errors.
I´m also thankful to
Westlicht Vienna for having allowed me to get pictures of one unit of this
lens.