Japanese Lens maker Cosina is introducing a new ultra-large aperture aspherical lens for Sony’s E-mount cameras.
The Voigtlander Nokton will be a 50mm f/1 prime edition with many similarities to a similar edition from the brand that was announced in February of 2023 for Canon RF cameras.
With this new lens, Cosina is once again using its own in-house-ground aspherical glass and claims that this lets the company keep lens configuration simple while delivering high performance regardless of the 50mm’s fast aperture.
“By adopting an in-house produced GA lens, this ultra-large aperture standard lens achieves the brightest f/1 among Voigtlander’s full-frame interchangeable lenses, while also achieving a toned-down style,”
Cosina also claims that at its full aperture of f/1, the lens produced lots of excellent bokeh for maximum expression of a subject that’s in focus.
Sample image from Cosina taken with Voigtlander Nokton 50mm f/1 for Sony E-mount
Unfortunately, the new lens will only be capable of manual focus but it will have electronic contacts for communicating with the Sony cameras its designed for and transferring EXIF data.
Internally, the lens also comes with a distance encoder that’s compatible with Sony’s fixe-axis in-body image stabilization technology. This same apparatus will also activate the digital zoom in a Sony camera’s viewfinder to help with effective, rapid manual focus.
In terms of optics, the new lens is made up of nine elements in seven groups that include the aspherical GA element we mentioned above, at the front of the 50mm Nokton. At the back of the lens there is another aspherical element too.
Cosina has given the front filter of the lens a 67mm size and a minimal focus distance of 0.45 meters or 17.72 inches. It can magnify up to a ratio of 1:6.9.
This Voightlander Nokton offers an aperture range from f/1 to f/16 and has a 12-bladed diaphragm. Its aperture settings can be controlled through a de-clicked ring at the front of the lens, though this doesn’t come with an automatic option for control from a camera body.
Sample image from Cosina taken with Voigtlander Nokton 50mm f/1 for Sony E-mount
Cosina further claims that the new Voigtlander Nokton has an optical design that’s ideal at maintaining high resolution right to the edge of the screen in the Sony E-mount cameras it’s built for. The lens also suppressed phenomena such as color cast according to its maker.
Cosina will be releasing the Voigtlander Nokton 50mm f/1 for Sony E cameras as of March, 2024 for an expected retail price of $1,600, or 240,000 yen. We don’t yet know what kind of international availability it will have outside of Japan.
Image sources: Cosina
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