The nicely recessed front element largely eliminates the need for a lens hood. Maybe.
One standing by, just in case.
Lenses seem to be this month's fascination. I can't imagine a better camera for me than a Leica SL2 so I've given up even reading camera reviews --- by anyone. This has allowed me to concentrate more completely on the most fun part of photography gear, the ever interesting subject of camera lenses!
The current fascination mostly started on a lark. I was looking at L mount lenses at B&H's website with the idea of finding a small, light, cheap but good lens to take with me on a vacation to Vancouver last November. I didn't like the options I found for the L mount; or I already owned a number of them and was looking for a different set of compromises... whatever reason I stumbled across lenses over in the Leica M mount section. That was okay because I knew I could adapt any of the M lenses to the L mount with a simple adapter.
I found a lens that was small, fast, reviewed as being sharp and interesting, and available, on sale, at a very affordable price. It was the 40mm f1.4 Nokton Classic, with multi-coating (apparently, if you like flare and some additional artifacts some Voigtlander lenses are available in a single coated version....) and it was priced at $399. It came in a classic M lens configuration with cams for rangefinder coupling and the cool little finger grip for fast focusing. I bought a lens hood and a B+W filter for the front (knowing I'd be out shooting in the rain a lot) and I took that lens with me as my only lens, paired with a Panasonic S5; the "early adopter" version, not the S5II.
I shot a couple thousand frames with the lens and really liked the way the files looked. There is a bit of uncorrected barrel distortion and the usual vignetting one sees from most fast and wide-ish lenses but for the most part it was great --- easy to focus and tiny. There is one fault with my copy that would have been a catastrophe for an M rangefinder user who doesn't test gear before traveling with it. The focus calibration is pretty far off. What that means is that when the lens hits its hard stop at infinity it's focused far beyond infinity (if that's theoretically possible) and what you gain past infinity you loose in close focusing capabilities. Oh, and the marked distance versus the focused distance are two wildly different settings. Used on a rangefinder you would always be focusing well behind your subjects. No big deal on a mirrorless camera. One of the charms of the mirrorless tech.
The one aspect of the 40mm lens I really liked was, in fact, the focal length. Nearly 45 years ago, when I was just a photographer child I scrimped and saved and bought a Leica CL. Not the digital one, obviously, but the original. It came with a 40mm f2.0 Summicron C lens. The lens was superbly sharp. Far sharper than any lens I had ever put on any of the Canon cameras I had been shooting for a number of years. I loved the lens and the focal length and could kick myself, hard, for ever selling it. But I had yet to gather my "extensive fortune" by that time (still trying). And so the lens went on the chopping block to pay for something else. But I never got over that focal length. It seemed, in some ways, so "right."
This Spring I realized that I had hit a milestone and, in the Leica cameras I'd acquired, I'd found a system that I haven't felt the least bit of motivation to move on from. Or to add to; camera-wise. I felt a stability creeping into my viewpoint on cameras that I hadn't felt for a long time. But as the desire for new cameras faded my brain compensated by increasing my desire to track down the "perfect" lenses for me. Not for you, or the sports photographer you know, or the photo-journalist you read about. Just the perfect lenses for me.
Unlike Leica, Sigma, Panasonic and others Voigtlander is not concentrating on making ultra-of-the-moment, best-in-class lenses. They don't make autofocus lenses, nor are any of their Voigtlander branded lenses featuring stuff like image stabilization. You have to focus by hand. And learn how to hold your camera and lens nice and steady. But what they are making is a collection of lenses that I would label: Romantic.
By romantic I mean that they provide a visual profile that's more similar to film era lenses than to the highly corrected lenses being made for digital. The centers are quite sharp at the first few apertures on the lens but the corners are much less sharp. The lenses's optical designs are simpler and the corners get nice and contrasty, sharp too, as one stops down toward the middle apertures. The lenses I am interested in are so similar to early, all metal Nikon lenses when it comes to dress and construction. And, incidentally, the lenses in which I am most interested are the ones that are currently (still?) available in the Nikon F mount.
I experimented with my friend, Paul's nearly brand new Voigtlander 58mm f1.4 lens last month. At the time I thought the Sigma Contemporary series 65mm f2.0 was so close in focal length and so much better an all around performer that I would pass on Paul's offer to sell me the lens at a most advantageous (to me) price. But over time the samples I shot with that Voigtlander 58mm lens have grown on me. Made me realize that I grew up and learned my craft at a time when these lenses, or lenses like them, were our aspirational tools. I loved re-connecting with the feel and the visual structuring of this type of lens when I revisited the 58mm in March.
Last week I took delivery of a brand new Voigtlander 40mm f2.0 Ultron SIIs. It's the latest permutation of that lens, evolved over time, by the company, and looking so much like a metal focusing ring Nikon 50mm F lens from the 1960s. Even down to the "rabbit ears" aperture grabber on the aperture ring (used to connect to pre-AI camera metering systems from the middle ages of photography).
A couple of days ago I put up a quick gallery of images I shot with the lens on my first foray out with it. It balanced nicely on the front of an SL2 and I liked the images a lot. You can see them here: https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2023/04/stuff-photographers-worry-about-that.html just scroll down past the "gray space" (type).
My takeaway is that the lens does a lot of stuff just right. The focal length is between the 35mm that most prefer and the 50mm+ that I'm used to. It makes this lens wide enough to capture environmental portraits without a lot of elongation of noses or novel recessions of ears, etc. while getting enough of the background in to make an interesting image situated --- somewhere. The lens is quite sharp in the center of the frame which works well for portraits (and most other subjects) and then field curvature makes the far edges and corners less sharp and more nicely out of focus. Stopped down to f5.6 it's as sharp as anything I own.
The 40mm Ultron is currently available in a Nikon F mount for around $419 USD. I think it's a good value for the price. And my success with the 40mm pushed me to go back and look at samples I shot with the 58mm. In retrospect I like those images a lot. Especially the combination of the color and contrast; even with images done at the maximum aperture. Can't wait to try it out as an APS-C portrait lens on a CL.
I texted Paul today to ask if he still wanted to sell his 58mm. He was game. I asked why? He liked the lens so much that last time I was playing with it he was pretty sure I would want one and so, when he found a copy in just as good shape, and for a great price, used, he bought it as well. Now he's got two and I got the feeling that he was holding one back for me until I came to my senses and just bought it. We've both been buying and selling lenses to each other for about 25 years. I think he's got a good intuition about what I will eventually want to own....
In about an hour we'll meet for coffee at our favorite coffee shop. I have already written out a check for him. Sorry. No Venmo here. Just old school banking. We'll compare notes about life and work and then I'll leave with the 58mm, bring it home and put an adapter on it. Tomorrow I'll go out with the 58 or the 40 and spend some time playing around. It'll be a nice change since it feels like it's been raining for a month here and the weather is supposed to start clearing up.
Now, why the Nikon mount? Well, I look at it as today's universal mount because the flange distance is long enough to enable one to mount it on just about any mirrorless camera being made right now. Were I to suffer a severe concussion, wake up and for some reason want to buy a bunch of Sony A7xxx cameras I could use any of these current F mount Voigtlanders on those "cameras" just by switching out inexpensive adapters. Another reason is that these two lenses, as far as I know, are only available in Nikon F mounts or Pentax K mount versions and I'm thinking the Pentax mount is part of an ever shrinking market. Getting adapters for Nikon to L mount is simple right now --- not so sure about Pentax to L mount...
That's all the lens news I have for today. Stay tuned for a gallery or two of the results from both.
Resoundingly old school. Maybe bordering on "ancient school."
When you get really bored I would like a tutorial on lens adapters. There are so many and some are just junk. You are an expert in my mind on adapters since you use them so much and on variety of cameras.
ReplyDeleteKirk
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to the new galleries you will be posting with images from the new “old school” lenses.
Though, I must protest! The maladies you have blamed on your Voightlander lens, are really the fault of your adapter. Most adapter makers make the adapter barrel a little short by design. This makes us focus out to focus on a distant object (i.e. at infinity), at the cost of not being able to focus close; as you noted. The reason is everyone will complain if a lens won’t focus on a distant object, but almost no one will notice if you can’t focus at the minimum end of the scale.
Also, the infinity marks on our favorite legacy lenses were not much more than an approximation. All of the manufacturers had quite a bit of excess travel between the mark and the hard stop to allow for manufacturing tolerance variations between the camera body and lens. Though, some manufacturers were better it it than others.
PaulB
Can you recommend a great M to L adapter? I don't mind paying a premium if that's what it takes.
ReplyDeleteKirk, I use the Leica M to L adapter which is expensive but works flawlessly.
ReplyDeleteRe "vintage" lenses: I can't remember if I have already posted that I finally adopted Oscar Wilde's solution to temptation and gave into it by buying a M11. Along with it I bought two used reissued vintage lenses - a Summaron 28mm f5.6 and a Summilux 35mm f1.4 "Steel Ring". Their drawing is like nothing I have experienced before - sharp yet soft, vignetty yet bright. I am absolutely besotted with them and am using them on everything - M11, SL2, CL, S5 and I think I may give you heart attack by trying them on Sony.
Kirk
ReplyDeleteI tried three different inexpensive no-name adapters from Amazon, and had issues with all of them.
So rather than prolong my trials and errors, I went straight to the Leica M to L-mount adapter. It was more expensive than I was hoping to spend. But it works like you would expect a Leica accessory to work, and it does not suffer from the short comings described above. My non-Leica M mount lenses work with this adapter just as nicely as the Leica lenses.
The one exception to this was M39 (or LTM) mount lenses on worn LTM to M-adapters. The chrome coating was worn off exposing the brass underneath. With these lenses installed the exposed brass caused the SL2 6-bit code reader to go bonkers. I rarely used the lenses, so this was a reason to trade them. Though I suspect a strip of aluminum foil would have cleared the situation.
PaulB
PaulB
Bonjour Kirk, je vous encourage vivement à découvrir le 50mm f2 de voigtlander. C'est juste magnifique.
ReplyDeleteJoyeuse pâques de France
Well I have been doing the same thing, just in a different price bracket. I got the Minolta 45mm f2, Minolta 55mm f1.7, Minolta 58mm f1.4 and Minolta 58mm f1.2 lenses. All very cheap (under $50 each, except for the f1.2) and all fully cover my GFX 50S sensor. These old manual lenses are small and fun to manually focus on the 50S.
ReplyDeleteI switched out the MC/MD mount on the 58mm lenses for an EF-MOUNT so I can use both on more of my cameras.
So glad you are checking out the great Voigtlander lens line. I have been a fan ever since the Voigtlander MACRO APO-LANTHAR 65mm f/2 Aspherical came out in Sony E mount, now also available in Nikon Z. Cosina also manufactures most Zeiss lenses and, of course the classic lens you have. I also have the Sigma 65mm f/2 lens for times when auto focus is desired. So, the only exception I have to your description of Voigtlander is the comment around “best of class.” “Romantic” is indeed correct for a number of their lenses. However, the 65mm, 50mm and 35mm in the same series and all f/2 may be the finest lenses I’ve ever shot with at their focal lengths as far as image quality is concerned. Manual focus and no weather sealing may make them unsuitable in certain shooting situations, but the resulting images are glorious. I own a selection of Otus, Milvus, classic Zeiss and way too many others. Voigtlander doesn’t do “zoom” and lacks image stabilization along with my other comments. Still, these brass and glass gems have proven their worth over and over with superior imaging. The fact that they are almost all under $1k is incredible and represents a true value in todays inflated market.
ReplyDeleteI also dislike Sony Ax bodies, but have used them simply because of Voigtlander and Zeiss offerings in lenses. Now that we have Nikon Z mounts, I have other options regarding mirrorless camera bodies. I don’t know much about adapters.
Congrats for discovering the Voitgtländer 40 mm. I use it on a Nikon FM3a. And with what you call „respooled Russian movie film“. Defective 😅. And scanned professionally by https://silbersalz35.com/
ReplyDeleteIn my view it‘s not about being defectivey It‘s about notvlooking clinical, digita, whatever you want to call. I call it authentic and I accept most „defects“ of this concept.