Introduction
The Mr. Ding Studio 50mm 1.1 Noxlux M has sadly been out of stock for quite some time, but in the meantime the manufacturer updated its design and the lens is now available as this Mr. Ding 50mm 1.2 Noxlux Z for Z-mount – with electronic contacts, still something rare to see among the manual focus lenses from China. Let’s have a look together.
This lens is in many aspects identical to the Mr. Ding 50mm 1.1 M and Syoptic 50mm 1.1, so I will reuse a few sections of my reviews of those lenses.
Sample Images
Most of the sample images in this review can be found in full resolution here.
Contents
Disclosure
This Mr. Ding Optics 50mm 1.2 Noxlux Z was kindly provided free of charge by Mr. Ding Optics for reviewing purpose for a duration of 4 weeks.
Specifications / Versions
This general optical design comes in various forms under different names and we have reviewed it more than once:
- Mr. Ding 50mm 1.1 Noxlux (M-mount)
The original version which came in different iterations, the latest one with a hood design seamlessly integrated into the casing design - Syoptic 50mm 1.1 (M-mount/E-mount)
An OEM version of the aforementioned lens. Can sometimes be found very cheap but I also received some reports of the lenses arriving with severe defects - Artralab 50mm 1.2 Nocty-Nonikkor (Z-mount)
This lens is styled as a classic Nikon lens but features a very questionable mechanical design with completely bogus aperture markings
All these lenses feature the same optical design – no matter if they are labeled f/1.1 or f/1.2.
Unlike the Artralab, this Mr. Ding 50mm 1.2 Noxlux Z features electronic contacts to communicate with the camera. It has the following specifications:
-
- Diameter: 65 mm
- Field of view: 47° (diagonally)
- Length: 64 mm
- Weight: 474g (without hood, without caps)
- Filter Diameter: 52 mm
- Number of Aperture Blades: 12 (inwardly curved)
- Elements/Groups: 8/6
- Close Focusing Distance: 0.55 m (measured)
- Maximum Magnification: 1:8.5
- Mount: Nikon Z
You can buy this lens from the official Mr. Ding Studio shop (affiliate link) for $439
Handling / Build Quality
The design loosely resembles that of Nikon’s Ai-s lenses, but it doesn’t feature the colorful markings on the aperture ring and distance scale. Aperture ring and focus ring also rotate in the opposite direction and here the aperture ring is located towards the front of the lens. The aperture ring also rotates a bit past the f/1.2 mark, which I am not a big fan of.
The focus ring has a very nice and even resistance and rotates about 180° from the minimum focus distance to infinity. The aperture ring features rather soft half-stop click-stops between f/1.2 and f/8.0 and full-stop click-stops between f/8.0 and f/16. The stops are spaced mostly equidistantly.
What is special here: this lens features electronic contacts to communicate with the camera. However, the electronic design is rather basic: neither the currently set f/Stop nor the focus distance are transmitted to the camera.
In terms of size the Z-mount lens is very similar to the M-mount version. I have an older version of the M-mount lens that still has the aperture ring rotate in the other direction.
Vignetting
light falloff
| f/1.2 | 2.6 EV |
| f/1.4 | 2.1 EV |
| f/2.0 | 1.4 EV |
| f/2.8 | 0.9 EV |
| f/4.0 - f/16 | 0.5 EV |
The vignetting figures are a bit lower than those of the M-mount version, the wider Z-mount diameter could be the reason for that if the mechanical or optical construction was also optimized.
Compared to other super fast 50mm lenses these values are average.
It is recommended to have a look at this article first to get an idea how this brightness graph works.
optical vignetting
Very fast yet compact lenses usually show a significant amount of optical vignetting. 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.
Generally this lens creates very clean out of focus highlights. Stopped down we clearly see the effect of the inwardly curved aperture blades though. I clearly prefer the normal aperture blades of the M-mount version here.
Mr. Ding 50mm 1.2 Z-mount <—> Mr. Ding 50mm 1.1 M-Mount
I shot the lenses side by side and with a test target it was ensured they are focused at the exact same distance.
We see a few interesting things here. First is, these lenses have the same f/Stop. The difference between f/1.1 and f/1.2 is so small, I can’t possibly tell which one is correct. In my comparison of super fast 50mm M-mount lenses this looked more like an f/1.1 than an f/1.2 lens to me though.
Second thing is, this Z-mount version does show slightly less optical vignetting, which is always welcome.
The third thing is, that some parts of the aperture diaphragm can be seen at the edges of the light circles in the center of the frame, that wasn’t the case for the M-mount version.
Sharpness
Focus shift
50% crops, A7rII
With some lenses when stopping down the plane of optimal focus shifts to the back or the front. The Mr. Ding 50mm 1.2 is one of those lenses and the focus shift is noticeable when making the jump from f/1.4 to f/2.0 and even more noticeable from f/2.0 to f/2.8. For Z-mount users this should hardly be a problem though, as usually you will stop down first and focus afterwards.
As for the sharpness charts I did not adjust the focus setting on stopping down.
infinity (24mp Nikon Zf)
For an f/1.2 lens the performance in the center is surprisingly good at infinity as there is only a little bit of softness due to spherical aberration visible. It seems we do see the effect of focus shift here as f/2.8 looks a little bit worse than f/2.0.
There is a noticeable midzone dip present at f/1.2 to f/1.4, as we are used from similar lenses like the Voigtländer VM 50mm 1.2 Nokton or the TTArtisan 50mm 0.95.
The performance in the corners reminds me a lot of the Voigtländer VM 40mm 1.2, which also showed a noticeable drop in resolution close to the extreme cornes. This is actually better visible in the coma section.
A solid performance for a compact and affordable f/1.2 lens if you can live with the reduced sharpness in the extreme corners. I wouldn’t mind using this lens stopped down to f/8.0 or f/11 for architecture/landscape shooting,
portrait distance 1.4 m (24mp Nikon Zf)
For portraiture it isn’t so important how flat the field is, it is more interesting to see what the sharpness is like when focused at different parts of the frame to take field curvature out of the equation.
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.
f/1.2 <—> f/2.0
This Mr. Ding 50mm 1.2 is one of those lenses where the focal plane with highest resolution is not necessarily the one with highest contrast, which makes it a bit harder to focus.
Also at this distance we see some spherical aberration and some astigmatism when moving towards the corners.
Putting this into perspective with other lenses I checked at this distance: better than Zhong Yi 50mm 0.95 M and MS-Optics 50mm 1.1 Sonnetar, similar to TTArtisan 50mm 0.95 and MS-Optics 50mm 1.0 ISM, worse than TTArtisan 50mm 1.4 and Voigtländer VM 50mm 1.5 Nokton II.
close (0.55 m, 1:8.5, 24mp Nikon Zf)
Already in the review of the M-mount version we noticed this lens is not a great performer at close distances. For this Z-mount version the minimum focus distance has been improved, which means we see an even high amount of spherical aberration (glow) at its maximum aperture. It takes stopping down to f/2.8 to get really crisp results at these distances. This kind of performance is very typical for a fast 50mm lens without floating elements.
Flare resistance
As always evaluating flare is a complex matter since you can get any lens to look bad if you push it hard enough and a slight change of scenario can affect results a lot. That being said, the M-mount version wasn’t exactly a great performer in this category, so I was surely hoping to see some improvements here.
Well, at the maximum aperture we see a lof ot artefacts: ring flares, veiling flare and also huge ghosts. Do things improve on stopping down?
As we can see from the series above, things somewhat improve on stopping down, but not really enough to get excited about.
Does changing the position of the camera relative to the light source improve things stopped down to f/11? Well, not really, we can still see huge artefacts here.
In the field the performance was not as bad as it looks like here though, as can be seen from the many sample pictures with point light sources in the frame.
Differences between Z-mount and M-mount version
The Z-mount version has slightly higher contrast in some parts of the frame but also creates more rainbow artefacts. I cannot say the new Z lens performs better than the old M version here.
Coma
Nikon Zf | Mr. Ding 50mm 1.2 Z | 100% crops from extreme corner
From f/1.2 to f/2.0 there is noticeable coma visible. Stopping down to f/2.8 and f/4.0 improves the coma performance significantly, but now we can see that there is also some astigmatism in the corners present, which you can mostly get rid of by stopping down to f/5.6.
Distortion
The Mr. Ding 50mm 1.2 shows an absolutely minimal amount of distortion which should hardly be field relevant, even for architecture applications.
Bokeh
The performance in this category is the reason why I think this 50mm design is one of the most appealing out there.
Close distance
As usual with very fast lenses at close focus distances we can encounter very smooth and undistracting bokeh. With point light sources in the background you will be able to spot the optical vignetting, but the shapes still look comparably natural to me.
Mid distance
What really caught my eye at mid distances is the smooth transition from in-focus to out-of-focus and the smooth rendering even when dealing with complex backgrounds.
Long distance
Where it always gets interesting when it comes to the bokeh qualities is the performance at longer focus distances. When optical vignetting and field curvature overlap in an undesirable way the corners may look like they are in focus at longer distances, even when the center is very much out of focus. Just recently we saw such behaviour with the Laowa 45mm 0.95.
With the Mr. Ding 50mm 1.2 the situation looks better and even at longer focus distances the bokeh looks very appealing to me: no double edged structures, no obvious field curvature.
The smooth ouf of focus rendering is really the stand-out feature of this lens.
Sunstars
Nikon Zf | Mr. Ding 50mm 1.2 Z | 33% crops
This version features 12 inwardly curved aperture blades. It does not create as well defined sunstars as the Voigtländer lenses, but still creates very appealing sunstars from f/8.0 to f/16.
If you want to know more about sunstar rendering of different lenses have a look at this article.
Chromatic aberration
lateral
100% crops from corner
There are only minor lateral CA visible near the corners that are easily corrected in a raw developer like Lightroom by one click.
longitudinal
Unsurprisingly we see some bokeh fringing at wider apertures, but surprisingly the situation is not as bad as I would have expected, as I have seen many slower lenses that actually perform worse here.
When it comes to purple fringing we see a low amount at f/1.2 and f/1.4.
Conclusion
good
|
average
|
not good
|
This Z-mount version still has the qualities of the M-mount version with the addition of electronic contacts for easily enabling all the focusing aids of the Z-mount cameras.
This lens might be for you if your goal is not to find the lens with the highest resolution figures, but instead one that creates an appealing look – similar to the Nikon AF-S 58mm 1.4G or the Sony FE 85mm 1.4 GM. Out of the plethora of 50mm lenses I reviewed this is surely one of the few that stands out me because of that.
You can buy this lens from the official Mr. Ding Studio shop (affiliate link) for $439
Alternatives
If you also take into account adapted lenses, there is a near infinite amount of possible alternatives. Many of the interesting ones you can find in our Guide to 50mm lenses.
The closest alternative is probably the Voigtländer 50mm 1.2 Z Nokton, another manual focus lens with electronic contacts for the Z-mount. You can have a look at our review of the E-mount version here.
Sample Images
Most of the sample images in this review can be found in full resolution here.
Further Reading
- Review: Nikon AF-S 20mm 1.8G
- Review: Laowa 35mm 0.95 – The World’s fastest 35mm lens
- Review: Nikon Z 58mm 0.95 S Noct-Nikkor
- Join our Discord community
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