MS-Optics is the company belonging to Sadayasu Miyazaki. Miyazaki-san, now an octogenarian, worked out of small office near Tokyo, and for a “retirement job” hand-assembled (and individually numbered) lens in the Leica M-mount. The M-mount lenses were a comparatively easy target for a one-person optical scientist as they have no focusing automation, feature a small mount size, and have excellent and published optical designs going back to the earliest years of 20th Century photography.
The focus of Miyazaki’s optical designs (pun intended) was always to revive distinguished optical designs from the past, and to keep form factor small and lightweight. So compared to the much larger and more expensive lenses from Leica with the same nominal specifications, these lens certainly have pluses and minuses.
On the pro side, the MS-Optics lenses are certainly less expensive than the Leica’s Noctilux line (if you can find a Miyazaki lens at all, because he doesn’t seem to be making new ones, so those available are used and mostly in Japan). Also, the size and weight are extremely manageable.
On the other hand, I have no doubt that any lens made by Leica is more sturdily built, easier to manipulate, and likely much more critically sharp.
Although the Miyazaki lenses have a toy-like appearance and feel, optically they are quite real, and provide a distinctive look.
For the images shown in this story, I used my Leica 11MP. Between the camera and the MS-Optics ISM 50mm f/1.0 I added the Leica Macro-Adapter-M to be able to get closer. I photographed all images with the lens wide-open (slightly wider than the stated maximum of f/1.0, some something like f/0.97) hand held, getting very close to the subject. With the image of a blade of grass (at the top of the story), this meant getting down on the ground. Critical focus was difficult but not impossible using the camera’s focus magnifier and the Visoflex 2 EVF viewfinder.
The pleasing and distinctive partially focused images remind me a bit of the results from my Lensbaby optics, which I have also used on my Leicas via and an Novoflex adapter to the F-Mount.