Yeah, you read that right: f/ zero point nine five. As in less than f/1, which was where Leica's legendary Noctilux was positioned before and as low as Canon goes with their 50mm f/1.0L glass, making it the world's fastest major consumer lens on the market today (f-numbers are logarithmic, so that's over a full exposure stop lower for over double the light of an f/1.4 lens). The new Noctilux was leaked by a French magazine with details of a Photokina release later this month, and it looks like it'll use Leica's standard M mount, so it will work with your M8 digital or any other M-mount camera (Epson RD-1s owners, all five of you!) to let you take pictures like this:
Yeah, that's candlelight only. Taken with the previous f/1.0 Noctilux, natch, so you could even swap it for an even smaller candle and still pull off the same shot, or try some insane depth-of-field bokeh effects. Awesome stuff, all for €8,000 ($11,260). And now that you're in a tizzy about super-fast, super-expensive lenses, take a look at the incredible story of the custom Zeiss lens Stanley Kubrick demanded for candle-lit scenes in Barry Lyndon. It opened up to a crazy f/0.7. Well worth the read. [Leica Rumors via Gadget Lab, Photo: lylevincent]