Night Vision Lens

Band playing in a pebble stone alley
1/125 sec | f/2 | ISO 6400 | 50mm

I still owe you the images from the second night of “Viggiona by Night”. Different bands, different street food. I wanted to shoot with a different lens, and put my night vision lens, the TTArtisan 50mm .95 prime “Nifty Fifty” to a real test. I attached the M-Mount lens via adapter to the L-Mount Leica SL2-S. I was really curious how the manual focus 0.95 China built lens would perform vs the Leica Vario Elmarit zoom I used the previous night in the same conditions. See the results below…

Old men band playing in a small alley during a street festival
1/160 sec | f/1.7 | ISO 2000 | 50mm
Lady looking on to a guitar player
1/160 sec | 0.9 | ISO 5000 | 50mm
Casual observers in an alley
1/160 sec | f/2.8 | ISO 5000 | 50mm
The dancer
1/160 sec | f/0.95 | ISO 1600 | 50mm
Curtain in a dimly lit alley
1/10 sec | f/0.9 | ISO 100 | 50mm
a dog and a baby
1/100 sec | f/2.4 | ISO 3200 | 50mm
Cook lifting pasta out of boiling water
1/1250 | f/2.8 | ISO 3200 | 50mm
Selling wine on a festival
1/320 sec | f/2.4 | ISO 3200 | 50mm
Young people having fun at a street festival
1/320 sec / f/1.2 | ISO 3200 | 50mm
A tented bar at a festival
1/80 sec | f/2.4 | ISO 3200 | 50mm
People enjoying a night festival
1/80 sec | f/2.4 | ISO 3200 | 50mm

It is noteworthy that the respective M-Mount lens from Leica, the legendary Noctilux F/0.95 sells for 12.000 USD / EUR. The price tag of the TTArtisan is less than 5% of that. While I never had the chance to use the Noctilux, I’m sure it has superior optics. But looking at my results, I’m getting an awesome image quality from my China manufactured 0.95 “nifty fifty”.

After this night in the dark alleys of Viggiona, I’m totally sold on my TTArtisan 0.95 50mm prime. On my Leica SL2-S, it is a true night vision lens. It is liberating being out on the streets at night with equipment that gives you total confidence to be able to shoot in really low light conditions without having to worry you get 90% blurred and unusable images.

All images were RAW converted and post-processed in Lightroom Classic.

More tips and inspirations around night- and concert-photography you can find in the links below and in my free Learning Center

Have a great Saturday!

Marcus

Related Posts:

Viggiona by Night

Jordan explored – Petra by Night

The Classic Seattle Night Shots

Namibia Starry Night (and how I photographed it)

20 thoughts on “Night Vision Lens

Add yours

    1. Thanks, Jack, so much appreciated! No, all was shot handheld. The IBIS (in body image stabilisation) or the SL2-S plus the .95 lens allow for fast enough shutter speeds to leave the tripod at home 😉

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Up ↑

%d bloggers like this: