This is another lens famous for its bokeh rendering. There are two versions of the Nokton f1.5, the later being of a completely different optical design with an aspherical element with a Leica M mount. The earlier version was designed for the Prominent camera, in which the camera body had an inbuilt focusing helicoid accepting interchangeable lens heads. So the Prominent version is only a lens head with diaphragm. This lens is a variant of the classic double gauss design, except instead of being six elements in four groups is seven elements in four groups, the difference being that the first element is a cemented doublet instead of a simple singlet. It is very similar to the Aires Coral 4.5cm f1.5 in design and performance, with the exception that the latter had the standard second group cemented, while the Nokton had an air spaced second group. In practice, I find the look extremely similar, though the Nokton does seem to have slightly better contrast. In practice, both create a very “spiky” bokeh with sharp ring-type highlights, although the rings are not circular as with the Meyer Trioplan.
