Sony Alpha Rumors is reporting on a 50mm f0.95 lens that will released soon by the company Mitakon. The lens will be the first true 50mm optic for the system and will also be the first super fast optic. Getting anything in focus at f0.95 is going to be quite tough to do even with Sony’s peaking feature. All of the company’s lenses are manual focus optics with a real aperture ring and a working distance and depth of field scale–very much like the Voigtlander optics made for Micro Four Thirds. To get the best use out of them you’ll probably want to use the zone focusing system unless you choose to use the magnify setting on Sony’s A7 and A7r.
Mitakon creating this lens makes us wonder how the bigger player, SLRMagic will respond. Last year, the company stopped making their lenses in Leica M mount because of a debacle on a forum where a customer (we believe wrongfully) lied about the company’s customer service policy. The A7 and A7r dip into that market a bit, but we believe that SLRMagic with their large list of hyperprime lenses should surely tackle this sector.
As an aside, Rokinon and Samyang are also getting into the game: though they aren’t Chinese made optics–they’re manufactured in Korea. Rokinon and Samyang also have the advantage of being carried in many photo specialty retailers while SLRMagic is only on Amazon, eBay and Adorama.
No official word on pricing yet, but it should be coming next year.
