Voigtlander Nokton 50mm f/1.1

[PierreVandevenne]

I liked the review very much! Well written, and nice pics to boot (I feel there's probably a better crop for the excellent B&W portrait, but as far as lens capabilities illustration, it is successful). But what really struck me was this

<quote>My conclusion is that the shallow DOF look has clear application in photography of natural environments, but I question how long or how often a photographer can use it before he begins repeating himself visually.</quote>

This is so true! I have a couple of 1.2 Canon lenses and, while I was extremely excited when I got them, I discovered very quickly that I was constantly revisiting the same types of composition, to the point of boring myself!  Anyone here with links to visually creative examples of similar lenses used in the field?

[Ben Rubinstein]

It may be a one trick pony but modern wedding photography is kinda built on shallow DOF, one trick but an entire industry worth. It's like saying that the stopped down look gets boring, when the entire landscape photography market is built on it and has been for a century or so.

[stever]

after reading Nick's review, i re-read Lloyd Chambers (diglloyd.com) recent review of the Leica Noctilux which includes a number of examples and discussions of wide aperture landscape photography - following that there is some further discussion of wide aperture landscape photography in general (mostly in the subscription section)

i think there can be good results - for certain subjects and situations and worth spending a bit of time trying - a tool that's useful but not to be over-used.

i like Lloyd's examples best when there is minimal (or no) foreground as i find out of focus detail in the foreground bothersome (if the foreground is primarily textural to begin with, throwing it out of focus doesn't hurt).  

i also think the technique may be as appropriate to fast medium teles like a 200 2.8 as for normal or wide angle.  

since focus location for the subject is so critical, using a tripod and liveview is quite nice - don't see an M9 with Noctilux (or even Nokton) in my future, but if Voigtlander gets around to offering their Nokton 58 1.4 in Canon mount i'd be interested if it's significantly better than my Canon 50 1.4 wide open