club on south congress ave.
It's a new record for me. I got the Voigtlander lens last Wednesday and I'm just now getting out to walk around and shoot with it. The heat slows everything down but I can blame part of the delay on two photo assignments for a medical products company. Sadly, the job required real macro lenses and not the niche capabilities of a "normal" 50mm. On the days where the heat index exceeded 110° I decided to be practical, take everyones' advice and not attempt to overpower the sun with sheer will power. I think I would have come out on the losing end of that deal.
I attached the M mount 50mm to the Leica SL2 body with a Hoage M to L adapter that has some macro capabilities. I have two of these adapters and both of them are right on the money where infinity focus is concerned, and both do a good job reducing the minimum focusing distance that's typical for M mount lenses. Those lenses tend to be limited so they don't exceed the capabilities of the rangefinder focusing system in the M series Leicas.
I'm showing images here but have also put up an album of the same images on Flickr. Go there if you prefer looking at images there: https://www.flickr.com/photos/56796227@N02/albums/72177720309293343
It was a hot day. I'm showing temperatures above as overall temperatures of Austin as reported by my phone. My car says it was five to ten degrees hotter in the S. Congress Ave. location because of its proximity to the four lane wide street and the endless, paved parking. America's contribution to the concept of "heat sink."
I used the SL2 and its huge DNG so I could really look into the finished files once I got back to the studio. I was not disappointed by either the camera or the lens.
The lens has no electronic connection to the camera nor is it an autofocus lens. You have to operate it the old fashion way. The SL2 does work with the lens in the "A" mode for people desirous of some automation. My quick take on the lens is that it has a good bit of vignetting when used at f2.0 and f2.8 but it's largely gone by f4.0. If you enable the profile for the lens in Lightroom it goes a long way to correcting both the vignetting and the slight barrel distortion inherent in the lens.
It's a very sharp lens and resolves well enough to satisfy the 47.5 megapixel sensor. I have cropped into a few files below that are full frame in one image and then cropped to 100% in an adjacent image. They are worth looking at if you are interested in how much detail one can coax out of a such a physically small lens.
I'll try to caption where needed below. It was too hot to spend too much time out on the sidewalks but that didn't seem to stop a lot of tourists and natives from walking around, eating outside at various venues while getting soaked by fans that expel their own mists and, of course, the hordes looking for coffee....
I was hot so I stopped at Jo's Coffee to get an iced coffee and a whole wheat, blueberry scone. Both delicious. The coffee very refreshing. The one time of the year I drink iced coffee. But let's not make a habit of it....
a mural detail. punch in to see the texture.
old school austin business sign. charming.
shot wide open. focus is on the row of boxes next to the cars. second box in. yellow and teal.
a 100% crop of the blue cat is just below....
100%. cute kitty.
a rich Texas tradition. rounding up customers with the promise of air conditioning.
cold air conditioning.
this is the wide shot. full frame. the cropped (100%) detail is just below...
100%.
i used the adapter ring's magical close up powers to get this shot.
look at the glorious detail in the 100% crop, just below...
100%
thought i'd take a stab at shooting the Guero's logo at f2.0 and letting
the background fall where it may.
the best temporary signage of the day. by far. love it.
wide open aperture. focus on the white sign in the middle distance.
flowers at the hat shop. maufrais. See below for the 100% crop....
100%
hats. at maufrais. see the 100% crop just below.
punch in so you can see the incredibly fine detail in the portions of the material that are
within the depth of field. 100%. it's a sharp lens!
ample use of the close up adapter magic.
again. a full frame version which is followed by a 100% crop into the glasses at the top
right of the frame. The blue and yellow pair.
100%.
the wide shot. followed by....
the 100% crop. Yowza.
i often have breakfast tacos at torchy's. the bacon egg and cheese tacos are great
but the coffee is uniformly and consistently bad. Grab your stuff to go and get your
coffee down at Jo's.
intrepid and over-heated photographer in a full frame. window reflection.
100 % crop of photographer risking the heat to battle cabin fever.
bad choice of shirt. too dark for the harsh sunlight...
backwards. Here's the 100% crop. The full frame is just below.
love the way the camera "sees" red.
One of my Austin photographer friends just came over to the "dark side." His Leica SL2 arrived via Fedex today. He's a Carl Zeiss lens addict, adding to his inventory and coming from a Nikon D850. Five or six Zeiss Milvus lenses are a quick and easy adaptation to the Leica. He's pretty excited about it. Loves the look. Someone to share info with...
Power is still on. Too hot to cook. Off to our favorite little bistro.... hope you are staying cool.
Amazing lens without any brittleness or over-the-top, "eye-slicing" sharpness. But it is sharp. And smooth. What I would term "relaxed".
ReplyDelete"relaxed" Great description for this one! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI just picked up some bargains for µ43 (10/5.6 Brightin Star fisheye, TTArtisan 23/1.4 zebra, Lumix 35-100/2.8) to fill my gaps in prime FL and weather-sealed tele. All good stuff. The BS fisheye is locked at f/5.6 which should be fine, and the price is right! Time to walk around in my fleece in the 65°, marine-wind cooled sunshine.. oops now it's 60.
ReplyDeleteStunning! That's all I gotta say.
ReplyDeleteEric
Love these; over to flikr to take a closer look 😁
ReplyDeleteYou have some really interesting store fronts, much more to grab your attention than the usual bland glass and chrome of the malls. G
Love that you are on Flickr! It's a great platform to present your work. Roger
ReplyDeleteI have been eagerly awaiting your 50mm Apo Lanthar review, as I just received my 35mm of same in Nikon Z mount a few days ago. I bought the manual focus lens to use on my recently modified Nikon Z7, which was converted to full monochrome status by Daniel Morrison at https://monochromeimaging.com/. Similar to Mike Johnston's monochrome Sigma FP, I now have a 45mp monochrome camera based upon my beloved Z7 platform. As a past owner of the original Leica Monochrom, I have been wishing for a pure mono camera for a while. After acquiring a Z7ii body, I had a spare Z7 lying around, so I took a flyer and sent it to Daniel for surgery. He did a great job and the resulting images (converted by Monochrom2DNG and imported into Lightroom) are... sublime. They have that endless tonal scale that large format film negatives have. The only downside of the conversion is that the Z7 autofocus is essentially kaput. It works, sort of, but I cannot trust it. I just spent 3 days photographing a family reunion, shooting 2,000 images with the Z7M and mostly a Z 35mm f1.8 lens. Even using manual focus assist, I found the haptic experience of manually focusing a fly-by-wire AF lens to be a bit.. foreign. So I ordered the Voigtlander 35mm f2 Apo Lanthar from Stephen Gandy at Cameraquest. I have only had it for a few days, but using it on the Z7M with its superbly crafted helical focusing takes me back to my days shooting with a Nikon F2. Simply wonderful and the results are, IMO, unobtainable elsewhere. OK, maybe the $9,300 M11 Monochrom could do. But at $1,200 for the conversion, I am very happy.
ReplyDeleteKent, I thought of that lens and bought the Zeiss ZM 35mm instead. Now that I've had some experience with the 50mm APO I'm thinking I may have made a mistake... The 35mm VM APO is, by all accounts, just as incredible.
ReplyDeletevoigtlander just made a 23mm f2 for fuji, I think it's specifically designed for x mount, there is 35mm f1.2 which I got excited about then peoples early images looked awful, but I have seen some since which look good, not sure how good it is wide open, the 23mm looks good, not sure if I can justify it, I've got a 23mm f1.4 already that I don't use much, but the voigtlander is a really small pancake lens
ReplyDeleteI've been traveling, and when I got home, found a Pentax Monochrome waiting for me. Several years ago, when my wife expressed an interest in photography, I immediately went overboard and bought her a Pentax K5 and six lenses. About fifteen minutes. later, she discovered phone photography and never looked back -- the Pentaxes were almost unused and I neglected to sell them because I kept thinking...maybe she'd get religion. She didn't. She manipulates that phone like HCB. But that meant when I got my Monochrome, I had three Pentax Limited lenses waiting for me, along with three zooms. I spent the morning walking around the yard taking photos of the dogs, trees, etc., and I'm kinda skizzed out by the images. I haven't really shot B&W since I got rid of my darkroom in the 90s and I don't see it anymore -- my photos don't look anything like Kirk's. Lot of work to do. Loving the lenses. Loving looking at the images big on Lightroom. Loving the detail. Little weird now hearing that mirror slap. Gotta spend some time with the 70. Bonus points: I bought two extra batteries when I bought the K5: they are identical to the batteries in the Monochrome.
ReplyDeleteJC, Well played! Everything from the judicious pre-order of the Monochrome to the re-use of system batteries and lenses. Now jealous!!! Toying with the idea of a used Leica M monochrom (model 246) but wavering at dropping yet another wad of cash for something I'll probably use like made for a week or two before moving back to something else. When you get tired of the Monochrome pack it up and send it over. I'd love to review it. I promise to send it back.
ReplyDeletere. your heat wave -- today's WAPO has a story that says the worst is yet to come in Texas -- and it will come in the next week.
ReplyDelete“Next week is going to be the real test,” said Joshua Rhodes, an energy research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. “Just about every single air conditioner in those regions is going to want energy at the same time.”
Might be time to think about a rooftop solar system and a Tesla Powerwall.
Downtown Austin has an area that's a "protected" part of the Austin electrical grid. The power never goes out there. Not even during our big ice storms. Not even in 2021. Coincidentally, the Four Seasons Hotel is right in the middle of the protected grid. My plan? If the power goes out I toss everything out of the refrigerator and into the garbage so I don't have to deal with it upon my return and then check into a corner suite at the Four Seasons until the power comes back. A couple of weeks of pampering, room service and spa visits should just about equal the cost of a Tesla Power Wall.... Or a nice car...
ReplyDeleteI will be interested to hear how JC likes the Pentax Monochrome, if he cares to share his experience later. I came so close to buying a barely used one but couldn't get off the fence. I still want one.
ReplyDeleteI've tried both a Leica M246 and Q2M. The Q2M was/is a superb image maker, but 28mm isn't my style. Make that camera with a 40mm or something close, and I will be begging my wife to release funds for it. Until then, the Pentax seems a very affordable way to play with pure black and white.
Hi Kirk,
ReplyDeleteRe: "Now that I've had some experience with the 50mm APO I'm thinking I may have made a mistake..."
I have both the Zeiss and Voigtlander 35mm in M mount. They are both exceptional. Some days I think the Zeiss out-resolves and is more rectilinear and other days the Voigltander. The colours are very, very, subtly different but both are gorgeous. They both render better than the Leica I have tried, except for the unobtanium 35 APO. I can't find to rent, buy or lend.
So I think you have not made a mistake and will be just as satisfied as with your Zeiss, but I know... The only way to cure an itch is to scratch it. :)