Introduction

In 2025 you can find various f/0.95 fullframe lenses from different manufacturers and with different focal lengths – most (or all by now?) of which you can find reviews here. In 2013 that wasn’t the case though, you only had the Canon 50mm 0.95 Dream Lens from the 1960s, the Leica 50mm 0.95 Noctilux-M from 2008 for 10k and then this SLRmagic 50mm 0.95 Hyperprime. Not many people were willing to spend 5k on this lens from a rather unknown manufacturer and production ceased soon, so this is an extremely rare lens. I finally managed to acquire one, so let’s have a look at one of my white whales.
Tests are being done on the Leica M10, samples have been taken with various cameras.

Sample Images

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

Specifications

This SLRmagic 50mm 0.95 LM Hyperprime has the following specifications:

• Diameter: 74 mm
• Length: 94 mm
• Weight: 968g (measured, without caps)
• Filter Diameter: 62mm
• Number of Aperture Blades: 12 (rounded)
• Elements/Groups: 12/7
• Close Focusing Distance: 0.7 m
• Maximum Magnification: 1:12 (measured)
• Mount: Leica-M
• Released: 2013

good luck finding one of these on ebay.com | ebay.de (affiliate links)

History

The SLRmagic 50mm 0.95 Hyperprime hit the market at the end of 2013 and came in two versions, a cine version and a rangefinder coupled version – both with Leica M-mount. The cine version sold for $3000 and the rangefinder coupled version for $5000.

The lens I am reviewing here is an early “Concept” sample with rangefinder coupling. I cannot tell you if any changes have been made to the final production model, but that is pretty much irrelevant, as it is very likely that you will never come across one, as after only a short time the production and sales of this lens stopped.

There are a lot of rumors floating around and while I do not have any inside information, I will tell you what I think happened. While this lens was “only” half the price of the Leica 50mm 0.95 Noctilux-M Asph, that was still a whole lot of money for a lens from an “unknown” manufacturer. Keep in mind, that is more than a huge Zhong Yi 135mm 1.4 Speedmaster full of very expensive high diameter ED elements costs.

There was also a whole lot of backlash from the snobby Leica community. While in 2025 it is still very hard to believe for some of them, that a Japanese manufacturer (Cosina) has far surpassed Leica in the art of designing compact yet capable lenses (and even manages to sell them at justifiable prices), a Chinese manufacturer offering an M-mount lens challenging their holy grail 50mm 0.95 in 2013 was of course totally unacceptable to them.

Trying to use an f/0.95 lens (with notable focus shift) on a rangefinder camera – especially if you are an inexperienced user and haven’t used similarly fast lenses before – you are very likely to run into some issues with the rangefinder calibration. For many users it simply was the easiest way to just blame the lens’ manufacturer. Even though the camera might be out of calibration or you forgot that you are kinda working outside the limitations of the rangefinder mechanism with a lens like this to begin with. Keep in mind, the first M-mount camera with Liveview had only been released in 2013, so those were not very common at that time.

There are also some reports to be found regarding returns of this lens due to manufacturing issues. I have no idea if these were only related to the rangefinder coupling or if there have been other issues as well.

Even though I have no idea how many of these lenses have actually left the factory, this is probably the rarest lens I have reviewed so far.

Handling / Build Quality

As said before this is a concept version, so final production lenses might show some differences here.

Furthermore, when I received the lens, two of the three grub screws holding the focus ring in place were damaged – leading to a loose and wobbly focus ring. These screws had to be replaced and I decided to use normal screws instead, hence the more “industrial” look of this sample.

The lens seems to be mostly made from glass and metal and the markings are engraved and filled with paint. Its general build quality reminds me of the Zhong Yi lenses though and those sadly haven’t been the most reliable when it comes to longevity. The screws holding the bayonet in place are also frighteningly short.

The focus ring travels ~120° from infinity to the minimum focus distance of 0.7 m. Its resistance is quite okay and allows for precise focusing, but a lot of weight has to be moved and that is certainly noticeable.

The aperture ring is clickless and the stops are not spaced equidistantly, which doesn’t really fit this lens’ premium price tag.

The SLRmagic features a short retractable hood. Generally I am a big fan of those, as they don’t take up additional space and you won’t leave them at home. Sadly it doesn’t sit very tight and also cannot be locked in place.

As you can see from the following picture, this is the biggest f/0.95 M-mount lens, so be prepared for a lot of rangefinder blockage. Generally I don’t recommend relying on the rangefinder to accurately focus a lens like this, but surprisingly I found the calibration of this sample to be very good.

This lens is even bigger and heavier than the Leica 50mm 0.95 Noctilux-M Asph and the Zhong Yi 50mm 0.95. It is also double the weight of the much shorter Voigtländer VM 50mm 1.0 Nokton. Featuring no less than 12 elements, this SLRmagic is also the one featuring the most complex optical design though.

There are also adapters available that allow using this lens on pretty much any modern mirrorless camera. With the help of the TTArtisan 6-bit adapter you can also add Exif information.

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 lets in the most amount of light. I did this for some 50mm lenses in my Comparison: Super Fast 50mm M-mount lenses and since added the Canon 50mm 0.95 Dream Lens and this SLRmagic 50mm 0.95 Hyperprime to the following table.

SLRmagic claimed this lens to have a T-Stop of 0.95, which would have meant a bigger f/Stop than f/0.95, but I am not really seeing that here, as the Canon 50mm 0.95 Dream Lens as well as the Voigtländer VM 50mm 1.0 Nokton both are letting in more light. The optical diagram of this SLRmagic lens has never been disclosed to the public, but I am guessing there are a lot of high refractive elements being used that lead to worse transmission values.

Vignetting

Light falloff

Let’s directly compare these values to those of the other Super Fast 50mm M-mount lenses.

This SLRmagic 50mm 0.95 Hyperprime shows vignetting figures very similar to the Leica 50mm 0.95 Noctilux-M Asph. The Zhong Yi 50mm 0.95 M shows the lowest vignetting figures of all the f/0.95 M-mount lenses, the Canon 50mm 0.95 Dream Lens the highest.

What is also noteworthy: while the Voigtländer VM 50mm 1.0 Nokton has a very high transmission, it also shows higher vignetting in the corners, especially in the f/1.4 to f/2.0 range.

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 not shoot all these lenses side by side, so the sizes of the circles are not directly comparable.

All the f/0.95 lenses for the narrow M-mount show strong optical vignetting, but we still see very obvious differences. Generally the closest match to this SLRmagic is the Zhong Yi lens. After the Zhong Yi this SLRmagic shows the lowest amount of optical vignetting compared to the other lenses and they also create similar shapes off center. This SLRmagic’s highlights look a bit cleaner though, with better defined edges and less light spill.

The Leica, Voigtländer and Canon show noticeably more optical vignetting with tiny highlights in the corners. The Leica and Canon also show a lot of outlining which usually is a sign of busier bokeh.

Sharpness

Focus shift

Many of these super fast M-mount lenses show a notable amount of focus shift and this SLRmagic is no exception.

In this category the Leica 50mm 0.95 Noctilux-M Asph is actually the best, showing no relevant focus shift on 24mp. Next are this SLRmagic and the Zhong Yi 50mm 0.95 M followed by the Voigtländer VM 50mm 1.0 Nokton. The Canon 50mm 0.95 shows by far the highest amount of focus shift.

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 Leica M10, 42mp Sony A7rII)

I refocused between shots at wider apertures to account for the focus shift.

None of the super fast 50mm M-mount lenses looks amazing in this category. They all need to be stopped down a lot for even across frame performance and they are all generally a bit softer at their maximum aperture. If you want an f/0.95 lens with a flat field at f/0.95, your only option is the Nikon Z 58mm 0.95 S Noct-Nikkor – and the price to be paid for that is very high.

The center starts to look very good at f/2.8, the midframe at f/5.6 and the corners look best at f/8.0. The last few pixels in the corners never look great though.

Differences between using this lens on the Leica M10 with its thin filter stack and the Sony A7rII with its thicker filter stack aren’t exactly huge here.

How does it compare to the other fast M-mount lenses? The corners of the Canon 50mm 0.95, TTArtisan 50mm 0.95 and MS-Optics 50mm 1.0 ISM always look bad, even stopped down to f/11. The Leica 50mm 0.95 Noctilux-M Asph looks pretty good across frame when stopped down to f/8.0 and the Zhong Yi 50mm 0.95 M was a big surprise, as it shows a very even performance already at f/2.8.

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

The performance in this category is very important to me, as this is where I would typically use a lens like this.

This SLRmagic 50mm 0.95 actually shows a good performance here. Even in the outer midframe – where many of these lenses struggle – it doesn’t have any problems with Astigmatism.

The Zhong Yi 50mm 0.95 M shows a rather bad performance at this distance in general and the Leica 50mm 0.95 Noctilux-M Asph looks pretty awful in the outer midframe, too. The TTArtisan 50mm 0.95 also looked surprisingly good in this category, if we also have a look at f/1.0 lenses the Voigtländer VM 50mm 1.0 Nokton easily outperforms all of the f/0.95 ones.

When we compare the Leica and Sony crops, we mainly see the effect of the Sony having much better liveview than the Leica, which makes focusing easier.

Close 0.7 m (42mp Sony A7rII)

The Leica 50mm 0.95 Noctilux-M Asph and the Zhong Yi 50mm 0.95 M both feature a minimum focus distance of 1.0 m and the Voigtländer VM 50mm 1.0 Nokton of 0.9 m, both of which I find rather limiting when it comes to a 50mm lens. Luckily this SLRmagic 50mm 0.95 Hyperprime features a 0.7 m minimum focus distance. Unlike the Leica and the Voigtländer it does not feature a floating elements design though.

Out of all these lenses only the Voigtländer actually looks good at its minimum focus distance wide open. But then this isn’t a particularly fair comparison, as it doesn’t focus as close.

Either way, for really crisp results stopping down a few stops is recommended, but then, for some people the softer look is also part of the appeal of lenses like this.

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 only around 2024 the lenses from the Chinese manufacturers started to be able to compete with the higher end lenses made in Japan. Now this SLRmagic is from 2013, so I don’t have particularly high expectations.

At f/0.95 we see a significant loss of contrast and also some ring flares.

Usually those ring flares disappear on stopping down slightly, and that is in fact the case here as well.

Stopped down the situation is certainly better. There is still a loss of contrast and we can also spot some blue ghosts, but I certainly have seen worse when it comes to the f/0.95 lenses.

The built-in hood also cannot save the day. In the sample above it was fully extended, yet there is a whole lot of veiling flare.

Hard to say which of the super fast M-mount lenses is the best in this category. I am tempted to say the VM 50mm 1.0 Nokton, which also creates some artefacts, but its contrast doesn’t suffer as much. Also the Leica 50mm 0.95 can show artefacts and ghosting under certain conditions, but here the contrast usually stays on a high level in backlit scenarios or those with stray light coming from the sides as well.

This SLRmagic and the Zhong Yi 50mm 0.95 M certainly have more problems and the Canon 50mm 0.95 shows a completely abyssmal performance by today’s standards.

Coma

For an f/0.95 lens the Coma correction actually isn’t that bad. If we compare this performance to the other f/0.95 M-mount lenses, the Leica 50mm 0.95 Noctilux-M Asph clearly looks worse with much bigger artefacts and same is true for the TTArtisan 50mm 0.95. The Zhong Yi 50mm 0.95 M looks similar and I rather not talk about the Canon 50mm 0.95 from the 1960s, which just looks awful.

Distortion

This SLRmagic 50mm 0.95 Hyperprime shows a rather high amount of barrel distortion for a 50mm rangefinder lens. Luckily it is uniform and can easily be corrected by dialing in +8 in Lightroom/Photoshop.

Bokeh

These days the bokeh rendering is the sole reason to buy and use a lens like this. The narrow M-mount diameter certainly is a challenge and many of these super fast 50mm M-mount lenses struggle with field curvature and optical vignetting – especially at longer focus distances. Will that also be the case here? Let’s find out.

Close distance

The performance at closer distances was a pleasant surprise to me, especially considering its comparably good 0.7 m minimum focus distance. While the Zhong Yi 50mm 0.95 M prototype (that still had a 0.7 m minimum focus distance) and the TTArtisan 50mm 0.95 were very soft at closer distances, this SLRmagic performs way better, surprisingly good even, with a clearly defined focal plane.

The Leica 50mm 0.95 Noctilux-M Asph and the Voigtländer VM 50mm 1.0 Nokton only offer a 1.0 m minimum focus distance, so they cannot even compete here.

Mid distance

Mid distances are what this lens seems to be optimized for. Here you can definitely feel the difference compared to most of the cheaper f/0.95 lenses, as this one is fully usable at f/0.95 even with the focus point far off center.

Long distance

At longer focus distances it is certainly a good idea to pay attention to the background. Here things can get a bit busier, but it is still my favorite among the super fast 50mm M-mount lenses. Only the Zhong Yi 50mm 0.95 M creates a smoother bokeh here, but it lacks the well defined focal plane of this SLRmagic lens.

Sunstars

With twelve rounded aperture blades the alignment of the blades must be exceptional to yield well defined sunstars and surprisingly that is the case here. They are not as well defined as those created by the Voigtländer lenses featuring twelve straight aperture blades, but they are mostly symmetrical, which is always welcome.

Compared to some of the other super fast 50mm lenses (e.g. Canon 50mm 0.95, Leica 50mm 0.95 Noctilux-M, Zhong Yi 50mm 0.95 M and the Voigtländer VM 50mm 1.2) we can also observe that spherical aberration is corrected better here, as we do not see distinct purple halos around the point light sources at f/0.95.

Chromatic aberration

lateral

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

longitudinal

Strong bokeh fringing doesn’t really come as a surprise. In the background it is a bit more yellow instead of the typical green though, which I think does make it a little less distracting. Stopped down to f/2.8 only little outlining is left.

When it comes to purple fringing the situation is similar, with strong outlining at f/0.95 and f/1.4.

If you have a look at my comparison of super fast 50 M-mount lenses you will see that none of them showed a great performance in this category and there weren’t huge differences, this one fits right in with them.

Conclusion

Looking at the table above, you may get the impression this isn’t a particularly good lens, but it is in fact my favorite among the f/0.95 M-mount lenses.

When conducting my comparison of six super fast 50mm M-mount lenses, I really liked the bokeh rendering of the Zhong Yi 50mm 0.95 M, but it was simply lacking too much when it comes to resolution and contrast and its transmission is actually also pretty bad. Now resolution and contrast – at all distances thanks to its floating elements design – as well as transmission are the strong suit of the Voigtländer VM 50mm 1.0 Nokton, but it shows too high optical vignetting and field curvature, leading to less pleasing bokeh at longer focus distances. I also wasn’t super happy with the 1.0 and 0.9 m minimum focus distances of these lenses.

This SLRmagic 50mm 0.95 Hyperprime combines very appealing bokeh (at least to my eyes) with good resolution and contrast at portrait distances. It also comes with a 0.7 m minimum focus distance and it is actually usable at that distance, unlike the prototype of the Zhong Yi 50mm 0.95 M I had for its review, that still featured a 0.7 m MFD, too.

Considering all this, I personally think it is sad only so few of these have been made. But at the same time I doubt there was ever a big enough market for an almost 1 kg heavy 50mm M-mount lens being sold at 5 grand – at least when it doesn’t feature a red dot or a blue badge.

good luck finding one of these on ebay.com | ebay.de (affiliate links)

Alternatives

Many of the obvious alternatives are covered in my comparison of six super fast 50mm M-mount lenses, especially the Leica 50mm 0.95 Noctilux-M, the Zhong Yi 50mm 0.95 M and the Voigtländer VM 50mm 1.0 Nokton. I also reviewed the Canon 50mm 0.95 and the TTArtisan 50mm 0.95.

If you like the bokeh rendering of this SLRmagic 50mm 0.95 Hyperprime – but you are looking for a lens that is actually available today – the Zhong Yi 50mm 0.95 M is the closest match, as it also renders a smooth and undistracting bokeh with somewhat tamed optical vignetting and field curvature. It is noticeably less sharp at portrait distances and doesn’t focus as close though.

Sample Images

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

Further Reading

• All M-mount reviews
• Bokeh explained
• Review: Zeiss 16mm 8.0 Hologon
• Review: Voigtländer VM 35mm 1.2 Nokton III
• Review: MS-Optics 73mm 1.5 Sonnetar

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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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