Introduction

While only lately f/0.95 fullframe lenses have become somewhat wider available and affordable, the first one that was commercially produced was the Canon 50mm 0.95 for the Canon 7 rangefinder cameras and that was in 1961. To put things into perspective, that was 47 years before Leica’s first f/0.95 lens, the Leica 50mm 0.95 Noctilux-M Asph, and 58 years before Nikon’s first, the Nikon Z 58mm 0.95 S Noct-Nikkor. Canon themselves called this the “Dream Lens”, so after already having reviewed most of these f/0.95 fullframe lenses, let’s get back to their roots and have a look at the original!
Big thanks to Camera Obscura Elburg for sending me the lens for this review!

Sample Images

Most of the sample images in this review can be found in full resolution here.

Specifications

The Canon 50mm 0.95 has the following specifications:

• Actual focal length: 51.6 mm
• Diameter: 79 mm
• Length: 46 mm
• Weight: 575g (measured, without caps)
• Field of view: 46.2° (diagonally)
• Filter Diameter: 72mm
• Number of Aperture Blades: 10 (inwardly curved)
• Elements/Groups: 7/5
  
• Close Focusing Distance: 0.65 m*
• Maximum Magnification: 1:12*
• Mount: Leica-M*
• Released: 1961

*the original minimum focus distance is 1.0 m, but this lens has been modified to allow for focusing closer, the bayonet has also been changed for M-mount

buy from ebay.com | ebay.de (affiliate links) starting at $2.000

Camera Obscura Elburg

Camera Obscura Elburg is located in the Netherlands, about 80 km east of Amsterdam. They run a webshop specialized in rangefinder cameras and lenses and they agreed to send me this Canon 50mm 0.95 for a review, which I am very thankful for.

As you may not be aware, there are two versions of this lens, one for the Canon 7 rangefinder cameras (introduced in 1961), and a “TV” or “Cine” version. The rangefinder version does feature a rangefinder coupling, but it has a significant cutout in the rear element for that.

To be used on an M-mount camera either one of these lenses needs to be modified though, as unlike the other Canon rangefinder lenses, this one does not feature a standard M39 thread mount, but a proprietary negative bayonet instead.

This “TV” version has been modified by Camera Obscura Elburg to not only feature a standard M-mount, but also a rangefinder coupling and all that without having to cut the rear element. But there is more, the minimum focus distance has also been improved to 0.65 m (from originally 1.0 m) and the inside surfaces have been painted black to increase its contrast.

If you want to have one of these lenses modified – especially when you are located in Europe and want to avoid customs hassle – this is a very good address for that.

Another interesting project they are currently working on are Helios 44-2 58mm 2.0 lenses modified for M-mount including a working rangefinder coupling. Martin already reviewed an unmodified Helios-44, if you want to know more about that famous lens.

Handling / Build Quality

The casing of this lens withstood the test of time pretty well. It feels like everything is made from metal with some parts painted black. All the markings are engraved and filled with paint.

The focus ring travels ~180° from infinity to the original minimum focus distance of 1.0 m and another ~80° to the modified minimum focus distance of ~0.7 m. The mechanical design is quite complex and the front element does not rotate on focusing.
The aperture ring has very distinct and equidistantly spaced full-stop click-stops. While this design is my personal favorite it should be noted that these click stops are a bit on the noisy side, so if you want to use this lens for filming this might be something that could bother you.

Unlike the Canon 50mm 1.2 LTM and the Canon 50mm 1.4 LTM this one does not feature an annoying infinity lock.

This is a really chunky lens, so unsurprisingly there is a lot of rangefinder blockage.

The lens closest in terms of external design is the Voigtländer VM 50mm 1.0 Nokton. It is slightly longer and a little bit thinner.

There are also adapters available that allow using this lens on pretty much any modern mirrorless camera. For E-mount there are also adapters available that allow for attaching the unmodified version of the lens. So if you are not planning on using it on an M-mount camera, you can save some money by buying an unmodified lens, which are usually significantly cheaper.

Buying Advice

These lenses have been made roughly between 1961 and 1970, so they are all at least 50 years old. Unfortunately there are several possible issues that can occur over time with these lenses, the most problematic ones are fungus and balsam separation. I have been looking for a good sample for a long time and believe me when I tell you: finding one is not easy.

Many shops that give a professional impression (or just call themselves professional) are not able to spot the balsam separation and you may end up paying 2-3 grand for a lens that produces hot garbage like this:

This is one of those lenses, I definitely wouldn’t buy from overseas, where there is no realistic return option.

These issues are also the reason for the sometimes massive price differences between samples, so if an offer sounds too good to be true, it is most likely because it is.

Light Transmission

Measuring the actual light transmission of lenses is not something that can be easily done. What is possible, is comparing different lenses to each other, to see, which one let’s in the most light. I did this for some 50mm lenses in my Comparison: Super Fast 50mm M-mount lenses. In that comparison the Voigtländer VM 50mm 1.0 Nokton proved to actually letting in more light than its f/0.95 competitors including the Leica 50mm 0.95 Noctilux-M.

This Canon 50mm 0.95 does actually let in a bit more light (in the center) than the Voigtländer VM 50mm 1.0 Nokton so it is the actually fastest M-mount lens I have used so far. Now I only need to get my hands on that SLRMagic 50mm T0.95 Hyperprime…

Vignetting

Light falloff

If it wasn’t for the tiny MS-Optics 50mm 1.0 ISM, this Canon lens would have set a new record with 4.2 EV light falloff at its maximum aperture.

It does improve fast on stopping down though and from f/2.0 is comparable to most of the other Super Fast 50mm M-mount lenses.

It is recommended to have a look at this article first to get an idea how this brightness graph works.

Optical vignetting

Fast lenses usually show a noticeable amount of optical vignetting, especially so the compact ones. Without going too much into technical details optical vignetting leads to the truncation of light circles towards the borders of the frame.
In the center of the frame almost every lens will render a perfect circle, but only lenses with very low optical vignetting will keep this shape in the corners.
So in the following comparison we move from the center (left) to the extreme corner (right) and see how the shape of the light circle changes.

I did shoot both lenses at the same distance – ensured by a test target – so the sizes of the circles are directly comparable.

There are a few interesting things we see here. First is, that the f/Stop at this focus distance is noticeably bigger than that of the Voigtländer VM 50mm 1.0 Nokton and definitely bigger than it should be going just by the numbers. The Voigtländer is an actual 50 mm lens whereas the Canon is a 51.6 mm lens though, so that also needs to be taken into account.

Whereas the Voigtländer’s light circles are very clean, the Canon does show some outlining, so we should expect busier bokeh rendering from it. It does not show the massive optical vignetting in the corners though, rendering a bit more natural shapes there.

Sharpness

Glow / Spherical Aberration

Spherical aberration is the only classic lens aberration that has an effect on the center of the image. It will make your image appear softer and add some additional “glow” to already bright parts of the image. It is also an effect similar to what you get when using a diffusion filter. This effect usually weakens when stopping the lens down.

This Canon 50mm 0.95 is surely one of those lenses as it shows a very notable glow at f/0.95. Probably this is also the reason for its nickname “Dream Lens”.
Some other lenses that show a similar glow are many of the fast MS-Optics lenses (esp. 35mm 1.3 II Slim, 50mm 1.1 Sonnetar and ISM 50mm 1.0) or the Light Lens Lab 50mm 2.0 SP II.

Stopped down to f/1.4 most of that glow is already gone, so I prepared a few comparisons where you can see the difference between using this lens at f/0.95 and f/1.4, for you to better judge if that is something you can or want to make use of in your photography.

Focus shift

As we have seen this lens shows strong spherical aberration at its maximum aperture and often lenses like this also struggle with severe focus shift.

Indeed this Canon 50mm 0.95 shows one of the strongest focus shifts I came across so far. Between f/0.95 and f/2.8 the plane of ideal focus shifts about 1 cm per stop. This is definitely a lens where I would use liveview to focus with the lens slightly stopped down if possible.

The only reason to buy this lens is to use it at f/0.95 though, so for most users I do not think the focus shift would actually be an issue.

infinity (24mp Nikon Zf, 42mp Sony A7rII)

By a hair the lens did not reach true infinity on my Leica M10, so I am using the Nikon Zf here instead, as it also uses a comparably thin filter stack.

As we can see, it doesn’t really matter what camera you are using, this isn’t really a lens designed for infinity shooting. This is also not what people buy it for.

The center starts to look really crisp at f/4.0, but already the midframe never manages to catch up to that and the corners are simply nothing to write home about.

We should keep in mind here, that the corners of the much newer TTArtisan 50mm 0.95 and MS-Optics 50mm 1.0 ISM also still look bad stopped down to f/11.

portrait 1.4 m (24mp Sony A7III/Leica M10)

Let’s see what the performance is like at a typical portrait distance for a 50mm lens of ~1.4 m, which is what I would think a lens like this would be optimized for.

We will be looking at 100% crops from the 24mp Sony A7III and the Leica M10. Both cameras do not have an anti aliasing filter in front of the sensor.

Leica M10 <—> Sony A7III

For an f/0.95 lens released in 1961, I think this Canon 50mm 0.95 is actually surprisingly sharp in the center of the frame at these distances. If we move away from the center things get softer, as was to be expected.

Stopping down to f/1.4 already increases the contrast noticeably and to f/2.0 even more so.

When we compare the Leica and Sony crops we mainly see how hard an undercorrected lens like this is to focus – even under controlled conditions from a tripod – as there isn’t really a clear pattern: sometimes it looks better on Leica, sometimes on Sony.

Close 0.8 m (42mp Sony A7rII)

A minimum focus distance of 1.0 m is not particularly great for a 50 mm lens, so I am glad the minimum focus distance of this sample has been improved.

Unsurprisingly also here it is pretty soft at wider apertures, improves fast on stopping down though. Between f/0.95 and f/2.0 it feels a bit like you are starting with a strong diffusion filter and moving towards a weaker one.

For some people this is the main appeal of these vintage lenses compared to modern designs, which look kinda the same at their maxium aperture and stopped down.

Flare resistance

This is a category where the f/0.95 lenses usually struggle (except for the Nikon Z 58mm 0.95 S Noct-Nikkor). And vintage lenses (like the Canon 50mm 1.2 LTM and 50mm 1.4 LTM) also usually struggle. This being a vintage f/0.95 lens, I guess we already know what to expect.

At f/0.95 we see massive artefacts, no matter where a strong light source is located in the frame (or if it is outside of it).

I can’t say that at f/11 the situation is any better.

This is a category, where we have seen significant improvements when looking at some of the modern super fast lenses (e.g. VM 50mm 1.0 Nokton and VM 50mm 1.2 Nokton). Many of the cheaper ones (e.g. TTArtisan 50mm 0.95, any Zhong Yi 50mm 0.95, Mr. Ding 50mm 1.1) still struggle, but also they don’t show as massive artefacts as you can create with this Canon lens.

Coma

With such a simple optical design you can by no means expect this lens to be well corrected for Coma at wider apertures and already the sharpness section gave us an idea what to expect here.

From f/0.95 to f/2.8 we see massive artefacts. It actually takes stopping down to f/8.0 to get rid of the Coma, but as we can see quite well here, there is also some field curvature making this lens look worse in the corners.

Distortion

For an old 50 mm lens this Canon shows a rather high amount of barrel distortion. To my surprise there is even a correction profile available in Lightroom (the lens is listed as Canon 50mm f/0.95 LTM there, which isn’t perfectly correct, as it never had a thread mount).

Bokeh

These days, this lens’ rendering will be the number one reason to buy it. And I mean especially the soft rendering at f/0.95. We will also have a look at the bokeh qualities stopped down a bit though.

Comparing the f/0.95 and f/1.4 pictures, we see there is actually a big difference when it comes to the look of the out of focus background areas and also when it comes to contrast in the focal plane. I did find this lens “easier” to use at f/1.4. Similar to the fast MS-Optics lenses.

Close distance

While many lenses draw a smooth bokeh at close distances even at their maximum aperture, this isn’t exactly the case here.

Some people will call it nervous and distracting, others may prefer using the terms painterly or artistic.

Mid distance

I think the pictures in this section show that this lens can actually be used at f/0.95. This is the distance range where I found it to work best for me at f/0.95.

Long distance

As is often the case with such lenses, a lot of interesting things happen at longer focus distances.

For full body portraits I wasn’t really happy with using it at f/0.95. The focal plane simply isn’t defined well enough for me here.

However, in dull light and in the dark the glow at f/0.95 can also have a beneficial effect, with the possibility of making the scene look more interesting than it would have, taken with a “normal” lens.

I think I have said it before: either you love this lens for its glow at f/0.95, or you will hate it for it.

Sunstars

As said before this isn’t exactly a lens for stopped down landscape or architecture shooting, it does still produce nice sunstars stopped down.

We also see strong spherical aberration at f/0.95 here, making itself felt by the purple halos around point light sources. Something we also know from e.g. the Leica 50mm 0.95 Noctilux-M, Zhong Yi 50mm 0.95 M and the Voigtländer VM 50mm 1.2

Chromatic aberration

lateral

Lateral CA are on a low to medium level and easily corrected in post.

longitudinal

Strong bokeh fringing also doesn’t really come as a surprise. Despite the strong spherical aberration we can still see noticeable outlining at f/0.95. Most modern super fast lenses are mostly free from it on stopping down to f/2.0, here that isn’t the case, stopped down to f/2.8 the oulining is still there.

When it comes to purple fringing the situation is similar.

If you have a look at my comparison of (modern) super fast 50 M-mount lenses you will see that none of them showed a great performance in this category, this Canon lens – unsurprisingly – does a tad worse.

Conclusion

In 1961 Canon did what no one else dared to do for decades to come: releasing a 50mm 0.95 fullframe lens.

With this review I tried to show you all there is to know about this lens. I am sure there are people among you who would rather pay two grand for this than for some new f/2.8 zoom, and I am also sure there will be people that wouldn’t have any use for it, even if they got it for free.

Obviously the latest f/0.95 mirrorless lenses made of way more special glass and aspherical elements show a better performance. And only going by its performance, of course I would have to tell you this lens is not exactly great value.

That is only one side of the coin though. This Canon lens will always be the first commercially produced and sold 50mm f/0.95 fullframe lens. Together with its signature dreamy rendering the main reason this is still a highly sought after lens to this day.

From my personal experience I also know that finding a good sample is not easy and I fear those in really good condition will only get more expensive in the future.

buy from ebay.com | ebay.de (affiliate links) starting at $2.000

Alternatives

I reviewed a lot of 50mm M-mount lenses all of which you can find listed here.

There isn’t really a direct alternative to this lens available, combining an f/0.95 maximum aperture with a similar dreaming rendering. The Canon 50mm 1.2 LTM can be a cheaper alternative – also here it is difficult finding a good sample though.

The MS-Optics 50mm 1.0 ISM is similarly soft at wider apertures, which is also true for the MS-Optics 50mm 1.1 Sonnetar. These are also quirky lenses, so be sure to check out their reviews.

You can also have a look at my comparison of six super fast 50mm M-mount lenses which includes some modern fast 50mm M-mount options, the Leica 50mm 0.95 Noctilux-M, the Zhong Yi 50mm 0.95 M, the Voigtländer VM 50mm 1.0 Nokton, MS-Optics 50mm 1.0 ISM, Mr. Ding 50mm 1.1 and Voigtänder VM 50mm 1.2 Nokton.

Sample Images

Most of the sample images in this review can be found in full resolution here.

Further Reading

• All M-mount reviews
• Analogue Adventures Landing Page
• Bokeh explained
• Review: Zeiss 16mm 8.0 Hologon
• Review: Leica 90mm 2.0 Summicron-M pre Asph

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BastianK

My name is Bastian and I am your expert here when it comes to ultra wide angle lenses, super fast portrait lenses (ranging from a 50mm f/0.95 to a 200mm f/1.8) and I also have reviewed way too many 35mm lenses. Don't ask me anything about macro or wildlife shooting though.

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