I've recently taken to shooting this lens on a Leica body using an Amedeo Nikon S to screwmount adapter. Prior to that, the lens was used exclusively on a Nikon S2 - another interesting camera body that I'll review soon (having used it for 3 years now, it's due for some comments).
The adapter itself has the build quality you'd expect if you were going to use it on a Leica - pure metal and impeccably finished. Since the 5cm f/1.4 is basically just an optical unit, the Amedeo adapter provides a mount plus a focusing helicoid. It also has the outer bayonet (used by the 35mm f/2.5 & 85mm f/2 PC, among others). My current plans are to use this on a screwmount Leica IIIF along with my M bodies, so I bought the screwmount version which I then couple with a LTM-M adapter (he also sells adapters that are native M mount).
My overall feeling on this lens is that it runs loops around the 50mm f/1.5 Summarit (another comparable lens from the same time period). Of course, my Summarit has a good amount of haze and some cleaning marks - a mint copy might be a better lens. Wide open, images are rendered with a pleasing "roundness" - stop it down and it becomes as sharp as any other lens. This is a low contrast lens - great for using with the Monochrom sensor as the RAW files give you a great palette to start postprocessing with.
I'll continue to update this post as I continue to use this lens:
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Nikon S2 - Fuji Acros 100
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Nikkor 5cm f/1.4 on Monochrom |
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Nikon S2 - Fuji Acros 100 |
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Nikon S2 - Centuria 400 converted to B&W |