Products

Leitz built the Noctilux 50mm f/1.2 in Wetzlar from 1966 to 1975, the only f/1.2 in the M line and the first series-production lens anywhere to use aspherical surfaces. Helmut Marx and Paul Sindel arranged six elements in four groups, two of them carrying aspherical faces ground by hand on a single purpose-built machine; that difficulty is what ended production. A 16-blade diaphragm runs from f/1.2 to f/16 in half stops and focus stops at 1m. Sources give totals from about 1,757 to 2,450 lenses.