Friends • Laowa Argus 35/0.95 • Laowa Argus 28/1.2 • Leica Noctilux-M 50/1

Three Ultra Bright Lenses

I call my "Noctilux class lenses" - because they are pretty extreme in many regards. So, i thought i take all three of them out for photography of Claudia, Tiziana and Sal - on our way to "Blå Dörren" (Blue Door) Swedish restaurant at Slussen. In order to see how those lenses perform in the real world, with real people.

Or better said; how these lenses render images. I find that all three have that classic older style of "Leica Noctilux & Summilux" image rendering style. Which means, that when using these different brand lenses - still they have that same image style character.

It gives me flexiblity, too. Now it isn't just the Noctilux 50mm, but also wider version like 35mm and 28mm wide angles. I absolutely love it.

While the lenses do turn very sharp when stopped down - I personally use them at wide open aperture almost always.

Character of the background blur

I can directly say, that it isn't always I like the blur in the background the Laowa Argus 35mm ƒ0.95 lenses produces. And that might perhaps be a little bit too much expected that a 35mm wide angle lens would produce that much of background blur...

So, the character of the background blur varies dependent on how far away your subjects are from the camera - and how far away the background is located.

However, in the relatively closer portrait range (1-1.5 meter), i think the Laowa Argus 35/0.95 lens produces a wonderful atmosphere of people. Or at least, most of the time it does. Especially in black & white, it appears to be better when the background is on the darker side.

Portraits tend to become more magic.

When the backgrounds are light

If the background is mainly bright/white/light - things look a bit different. Perhaps not as magic or special. That i noticed with portraits i took of my colleagues working at the Högdalen depot. When the lights are on in the offices, the walls are mainly white. Then the images looks... well, less magic. But when the background was dark - things looks more mystical, enchanting.

Overall however, I think those lenses are fun as much they are challenging (given that they exhibit only manual focus).

Leica Noctilux-M 50/1

The legendary classic "Mandler" Leica Noctilux 50mm ƒ1 lens did well inside the restaurant. This time however, I wasn't restricted to it's nominal 1 meter min focus distance, because a couple of months ago, i bought a (non-brand /generic) Leica M to RF adapter, with built-in helicoid. (Which works admirably well for the little money)

Which allows me to focus the Noctilux closer than 1 meter. And that did the trick, to take a photo of Sal who sat next to me, certainly closer than 1 meter !