Night Vision Lenses • Streets of Nuremberg • Street Photography

The band played on the cobblestone alley
1/125 second | f/2 | ISO6400 | 50mm

I still owe you the pictures 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 to the test, the TTA Artisan 50mm .95 prime “Nifty Fifty”. I mounted an M-Mount lens via an adapter to an L-Mount Leica SL2-S. I was really curious how the manual focus 0.95 Chinese made lens would perform vs the Leica Vario Elmarit zoom I used the night before under the same conditions. Check out the results below…

Old man band playing in small alley during street festival
1/160 second | f/1.7 | ISO2000 | 50mm
Lady looks at the guitar player
1/160 second | 0.9 | ISO 5000 | 50mm
The casual observer in the alley
1/160 second | f/2.8 | ISO 5000 | 50mm
Dancer
1/160 second | f/0.95 | ISO1600 | 50mm
The curtains in the alley were dim
1/10 second | f/0.9 | ISO 100 | 50mm
a dog and a baby
1/100 second | f/2.4 | ISO3200 | 50mm
The cook lifts the pasta from the boiling water
1/1250 | f/2.8 | ISO3200 | 50mm
Selling wine at festivals
1/320 second | f/2.4 | ISO3200 | 50mm
Young people having fun at street festival
1/320 sec / f/1.2 | ISO3200 | 50mm
A marquee bar at a festival
1/80 second | f/2.4 | ISO3200 | 50mm
People enjoying night festival
1/80 second | f/2.4 | ISO3200 | 50mm

It is worth noting that the M-Mount lens from Leica, the legendary Noctilux F/0.95 retails for 12,000 USD / EUR. TTArtisan’s price tag is less than 5% of that. While I’ve never had the chance to use Noctilux, I believe it has superior optics. But looking at my results, I’m getting excellent image quality from my China production 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. Out on the streets at night with equipment that gives you total confidence in being able to shoot in very low light conditions without having to worry about you getting 90% blurry and unusable images.

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

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

Have a nice Saturday!

Marcus

Related posts:

Viggiona at Night

Jordan explores – Petra at Night

Seattle Classic Night Shot

Namibia Starry Night (and how I photographed it)

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *