VIDEO: THE NEW LEICA 75MM LENS WILL BLOW YOUR MIND

Leica's latest release takes exclusivity to a new level. For the price of a year-long backpacking trip around the world, you can now own the fastest-ever 75mm aspherical lens. The Noctilux-M 75mm f/1.25 is a US$13,000 piece of glass with a monster aperture and a razor-thin depth of field to deliver dreamy out-of-focus bokeh.

The new portrait lens uses nine elements in six groups, including a floating element, and can focus as close as 85cm away while offering impressive low-light performance and extreme sharpness on a super-thin focal plane.

"We pulled out all the stops we had at our disposal in the creation of this lens," Leica's head of optics development, Peter Karbe, said in a blog post. "Our predominant purpose in designing fast lenses is to give photographers the ability to achieve distinctive compositional effects with the aid of a shallow depth of field.
The 75mm focal length lens makes it possible to fill out the frame when shooting from a sufficient distance, while emphasizing parts of the image through a conscious application of the depth of field, depending on the subject and creative intention.

"This is what the aperture is for – its purpose should not, by contrast, be to control the exposure. Also, there is no need to stop down in order to increase the imaging quality: our lenses are essentially designed to offer maximum performance at a fully open aperture."

The lens is part of the M-series, which will allow for it to fit the Leica M10 digital rangefinder body, but it is also well-matched to the US$7,450 Leica SL mirrorless for those who wish to preview the look they are getting out of that super wide aperture.