voigtlander lenses

What are your experiences with the Voigtlander (spelling?) lenses? I just bought a new m6-TTL (after years of shooting hassy, not to replace, but to complement) and the V 35mm 1.7 aspher. lense (mainly due to price and a few people who told me they actually prefer it to the leica 35mm lenses). The lense works well, but it will be some time before i can draw any absolute conclusions, much less any relative ones to leica lenses. Are there other sites i might look into for threads on this subject. thanks, tony.

Tony,

 

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I recently bought the 15mm Heliar for use with my M bodies. So far,

I'm very impressed with the negatives. Cannot say I've used it enough

to really get a good feel for the capabilities, but my initial

evaluation is that it's a very good, well made lens. And the

viewfinder is wonderful.

 

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Samy's Camera had a really low price on it, substantially lower than

either B&H or other NY stores.

 

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BTW, I asked a similar question on this site before buying the Heliar

, asking for others' experiences, and it went unanswered. Oh,

well.

 

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Wish you better luck, Sergio.

To follow up on Sergio's point - most Leicaphiles buy Leicas for the

lenses - quite right too, so putting other manufacturer's lenses on

it rather defeats the purpose - hence I suspect the lack of

responses. Certainly there is no doubt that the Heliar is a great

deal though - I too contemplate buying one. However I think it would

be a mistake to think that it will really seriously compare to either

the Hologon for the Contax or the Super-Elmar-R 15mm (or 19mm Elmarit-

R). I think if you are set up for this then you will not

disappointed. I suspect it will not be good wide open at the edges

and I too wonder about vignetting. Voigtlander want to make money on

this lens so I do feel that its low price must indicate that it is

not really of current Leica quality. This will not stop me buying one

- but I do not think you will get something for nothing. I have a

21mm and find the performance of that noticeably inferior to the 28mm

Elmarit and 50mm Summicron, so I suspect that a non-Leica 15mm will

be worse. Don't expect miracles - but buy it for fun.

I appreciate both your responses. Robin, you are actually the first

person that I have heard compare the voigtlander negatively to the

leica. I have heard ancecdotal evidence that the voigtlander is a

bit more contrasty than the leica, but not heard anyone say that one

is better than the other overall in terms of actual performance.

Indeed, I would have thought that Leica devotees would be actively

interested in comparing notes on high-performance, alternative, low

cost lenses.

 

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In any case, I just purchased the 90mm 2.0 apo asph leica, and I

would be very curious to compare its performance to a voigtlander,

but i don't think they currently are producing a lense of that

length. Too bad, since it might perform similarly and would probably

cost 1/4 the price!

Tony

 

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To clarify, I have the Leica 21mm which is not as good as the 28mm or

50mm Leica lenses - hence my degree of scepticism about the Heliar.

It might well be a good 15mm, I don't know, but ultra-wides are

devils to make. The Heliar offers such a lot for the price that I

find it difficult to believe that it can seriously compare with such

highly expensive lenses as the Super Elmar-R or the Hologon (for

either the Contax or the original Contax/Leica). I don't mind - but

do not expect miracles. I doubt that it will compare even vaguely

with your 90mm ASPH Summicron which is probably now the best lens

made by Leica (perhaps just beating out the 100mm Elmarit Apo-Macro-

R). It stands to reason.

You can find tests of the 15, 25 and 50 by well-known Leica expert

Erwin Puts by clicking <a

href=http://www.imx.nl/photosite/japan/voigtl01.html> here.</a>

 

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The report is summed up by this statement in the review:

<i>

All three give better imagery than first class lenses 10 years ago

and clearly show the direction of the Cosina designers: Astounding

value for the money.</i>

 

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Also, regarding comments above about vignetting with the 15 -

<i>all</i> ultra-wide angle lenses have light falloff regardless of

design, it's just physics. This is what the 15 exhibits according to

all published accounts. I have one, but the M adapter is

backordered, so I can't report on personal usage.

Just a thing I've seen on the website www.tamarkin.com

They sell the ZEISS 15mm f/8 Hologon with finder and caps

for the Leica M system !!

I sent an email at their technical support and they replied

that this lens was modified by a Leica tech to fit the Leica

M mount and it is supposed to work well...

I donnot know what to think about it, however, here is the answer

that I have from them:

 

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" The Hologon is custom adapted by one of the world's leading Leica

technicians. This requires removing Contax mount installing Leica

mount with proper shimming, etc., and carefully milling away part of

focus lever that otherwise hangs up onpreview lever, as well as part

of rear lens collar so M6 meter will not be obstructed ".

 

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Regards Minh Nhat

Apropos Erwin Putz's review. I sense that he is actually rather

lukewarm about the 15mm and of course he has no Leica 15mm to compare

it to. About the other Voigtlanders he seems much more positive. My

feeling is is that I still stand by my prediction above about its

quality.

 

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Anyway, however you look at it, they are all great bargains and I am

sure I will buy a 15 Heliar one day.

I have both the 15mm and the 75mm Voigtkander lenses and I am very

happy with them. They have a different 'quality' to the images when

compared with my leica 35mm summilux asph, but they are good, usable

lenses. I have had discussions with people who have met the cosina

designer and he is a real enthusiast offering a real alternative for

M users. The main criticism I have of the 75 is that it needs a

focussing tab. The 15 is great but it needs careful use.

 

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Julian

Julian

 

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"The 15 is great but it needs careful use"

 

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Could you elaborate? Flare? Vignetting" optimum aperture. Putz says

5.6 is optimum. Anything else?

 

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Thanks!

When you get down to it, the only thing that matters is the photos,

not the test reports or all the yacking on the net. So here's one

taken with the 15mm. Oh, and ultra-wides always require more care,

even a little real shooting will tell you that. There's light

falloff and all the usual compositional issues.<p>

 

This is cropped to a "panoramic" format because I was unable to keep

the chain link fence out I had to shoot through out of the corners.<p>

 

<img src=http://www.spirer.com/images/tirespan.jpg>

Jeff

 

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I take your point, but let us face it, it is impossible to tell from

your photo how good the lens is as any screen image is hopeless at

this. I have no doubt that the perspective of the 15mm produces

interesting pictures, as yours shows, but I learn little from your

shot as to whether I will be happy about the quality of the image.

I think my point was missed.

 

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The photo is good or it isn't. The presentation vehicle is not an

issue unless it is a photo that doesn't present itself well in the

given medium (very complex and very minimalist photos fail on the

screen, for instance, and very complex photos also fail in small

prints.)

 

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Of all the photos I possess, my favorite is one that I found in a

junk store for fifty cents. It was probably taken in the thirties,

it had water damage and had been folded numerous times. I've had it

over twenty years (and I recently did a copy and cleaned it up

somewhat.) I have no idea if it was taken with anything better than

a Brownie, but it doesn't matter.

 

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One could make a good analogy with music. Most people listen to

recorded music. One cannot identify the quality of a violin being

used in an orchestra from a recording, yet most people will ooh and

ahh over a great performance. Whether or not a great violin or a

teaching violin was used (and this does happen, my grandfather used

his teaching cello on a Toscanini recording) will not matter - in the

hands of a master, the performance is what counts, and if it is heard

on a recording instead of live, it is ultimately the total quality.

 

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Many years ago, Andreas Feininger (who did use Leicas and also home-

built large format cameras) published a book of his photographs in

which all the photographs were taken with a cheap consumer SLR. He

never told anyone until well after the book was successful and had

been praised in many photographic circles.

 

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I have strived to make photographs resembling pinhole shots with my

Mamiya 7 (and succeeded, at least once), and have used disposables to

make what I think are good architectural shots.

 

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Once again, in the end, we only have photographs. And the

Voigtlander lenses make fine photographs. If someone wants to drool

over MTF charts and test slides, that's fine, but I don't think it

has anything to do with fine photographs.

Jeff

 

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Well, of course, you are right, but we all know that there are many

pictures where you feel it is important to have, say, edge to edge

sharpness, others it matters not a bit. It is just a question of what

you prefer. I agree art speaks and we listen, but probably 90% of

photos I take are not "art" in the sense that you mean, but are

pleasant composition/record types of shots that mean something to me

and may be interesting to others, or may not. For these it is always

best to start off with a well-corrected lens.

 

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"Leica folk" are famously obsessed with optical qualities - it is a

small vice in the grand scheme of things I think. It isn't really

saying anything more or less about Art with a capital A. After all

some artists were obsessed by image sharpness and contrast too, Ansel

Adams comes to mind - others are/were not, Walker Evans or Cartier

Bresson come to mind here. Which one of them is better?

Are all "Leica folk" obsessed with optical qualities? I don't think

so. A primary motivator is the feel of the camera, and as the only

small rangefinder (and I do <i>not</i> include autofocus cameras in

this category) that was reasonably rugged over the last thirty years,

there were a whole lot of other reasons to use it than optical

quality.<p>

 

Regarding sharp vs not sharp, I find Adams' images to be very sharp

and ultimately, very boring. Sharpness (and other technical

qualities) do not make a photograph interesting. And many Leica

photographers like Abbas, Scianna (I'm guessing on Scianna's camera,

but I can't imagine being wrong on this), Maraini (whose new book has

a <i>very</i> unsharp image on the cover) frequently have unsharp

images, sometimes their most effective images. I was initially

attracted to Scianna's work because of one of his images, a Sicilian

penitent crawling up stairs, not sharp anywhere and further blurred

by subject motion. One of the greatest images I have ever seen.<p>

 

And when I'm really concerned about technical qualities, which I am

sometimes, I shoot 6x7. It's a whole lot better than 35mm in terms

of optical qualities.<p>

 

Here's an interesting comparison of two photos taken at the same

location. Tony is familiar with these, and we have had an exchange

on it. One is technically pretty terrible by the standards of the

Ansel Adams crowd. The other is technically pretty good, although it

needs to be scanned better since I burned out the highlights on the

scan (these are both neg scans.) I know which <i>I</i> like

better.<p>

 

<center>

<img src="http://www.spirer.com/images/aud2.jpg"><p>

Post-Nuclear, )2000 Jeff Spirer, Hexar RF, 50/2 Hexanon<p>

<img src="http://www.spirer.com/images/aud.jpg"><p>

The Auditorium, )2000 Jeff Spirer, Mamiya 7, 43mm<p>

I've got both the 15 and the 35. The 15 is amazingly good for what it

costs and what it does. I don't find it defective in any sense, and

it's a lot of fun. The thing you have to be careful of is putting

important objects near the corners, where they can get real pulled

out of shape (that's a function of w/a lenses which aren't fisheyes.

It's perspective, not distortion.)

 

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The 35 is not quite good enough for me wide open, but I got it

thinking it would be OK at f/2, and it is. Stopped down just a bit

further it's great. Tests seem to place it ahead of the less recent

Leica lenses, and comparing shots to an old 35 Summilux I used to

have, the Voigtlander is definitely superior wide open.

 

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Both lenses are built extremely well, and the finders rival the Leica

finders and are cheaper. If I buy a Leica 28 I'll probably buy the

Voigtlander finder to go with it.

</center>Whoops, forgot to close the center tag.

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Sorry.