Recently I was trying to find a good Sonnar-design normal lens since I really missed my first m-mount 50mm lens: zm50 1.5. Came across this Nikkor-sc 5cm 1.4 ltm on eBay for auction and unexpectedly won the bid.
Tried it on film (Ektar 100) with my Hexar RF and I instantly fell in love with its vintage rendering:
This old lens is surprisingly good. I did some quick test and found that: while designed for films, this Nikkor 5cm 1.4 ltm actually fits with Leica M9's CCD quite well. Below I listed a 100% cropped comparison between this lens wide [email protected] mounted on M9 vs. on Leica SL:
You might see that the rendering from CCD is more solid and transparent. I guess this is why so many people stick with CCD despite all of its inconveniences. (There are countless posts arguing about the sensor differences. I'd argue that, for lenses with modern designs such as ASPH/APO, the difference between CCD and CMOS might be not that much; it's the vintage lenses that really shines on that Kodak CCD)
Oh, btw, the size for such a f1.4 lens is amazingly compact:
Some other points to consider: it can be very soft/glowy wide open but contrast improves a lot at f/2, and the bokeh rendering smooths out compared to how crazy it can be wide open. Supposedly this lens was optimized for nearer distance work, IIRC.
I have it in LTM and enjoy it, but I think I like the Zeiss Opton 50/1.5 Sonnar slightly better as an all-purpose Sonnar.
You’re right. Close down to f2 and everything improves a lot. Maybe being a little tired of all the ASPH/APO rendering, I actually start to appreciate the glowy look wide open. Though the harsh bokeh rendering at 1.4 is a bit too much for my taste.
I was initially looking for the zeiss option 50 1.5 but didn’t bother to add the adapter for my m-mount cameras. So I targeted at canon 50mm 1.5 ltm instead, and came across this nikkor 5cm 1.4 in ltm version.
Seems this lens is not well-known nowadays since I won the bid with the average price of a nikkor 5cm f2 ltm.
rscheffler wrote:
Some other points to consider: it can be very soft/glowy wide open but contrast improves a lot at f/2, and the bokeh rendering smooths out compared to how crazy it can be wide open. Supposedly this lens was optimized for nearer distance work, IIRC.
I have it in LTM and enjoy it, but I think I like the Zeiss Opton 50/1.5 Sonnar slightly better as an all-purpose Sonnar.
I have the 50/1.4 and 50/2 Nikkors in both LTM and S-mount. I prefer the Nikkor-H.C f/2 lenses since I’m not a fan of the glowy wide open f/1.4 look. The S-mount versions are generally less expensive because they’re not as readily adaptable to Leica M bodies. But the Amedeo S to M adapter that is now sold by Cameraquest is superbly engineered and a pleasure to use. Better still it reverses the “wrong” Nikon focusing direction to the correct Leica direction (this, of course, is not an issue with the LTM lenses).
Yeah most of time I also treat this 5cm 1.4 as a f2 lens.
Amedeo adapter has a really good reputation for its quality. If I have more than 1 Nikon s mount or zeiss contax rangefinder lenses I would happily pull the trigger for it.
genji wrote:
I have the 50/1.4 and 50/2 Nikkors in both LTM and S-mount. I prefer the Nikkor-H.C f/2 lenses since I’m not a fan of the glowy wide open f/1.4 look. The S-mount versions are generally less expensive because they’re not as readily adaptable to Leica M bodies. But the Amedeo S to M adapter that is now sold by Cameraquest is superbly engineered and a pleasure to use. Better still it reverses the “wrong” Nikon focusing direction to the correct Leica direction (this, of course, is not an issue with the LTM lenses).
