Voigtlander 28 f2.0 VM lens

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thegadsby

RD-1 M6 M4-P Hexar RF M2
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Hi there

Looking to get a new 28 mm lens for my RD-!

Does anyone have experience of the new 28 F2.0 VM voigtlander lens?

Comments welcomed
 
Thanks for that

I had the 28 F1.9 but found it a little large for the camera

I think that the f2.0 a bit shorter and may like more

I loved performance of the 1.9 and am sure the f 2.0 will be great too
 
Yes there is no problem at full aperture. Also no problem at f/11 of course due to the wide DoF.
 
Just got a RD1s today and try to get a 28 lens to go with it. It seemed the in-between aperture will get you into focusing trouble with 28f2 (and 35f1.4 plus 40f1.4 ..., see the link above) according to Sean. Would try to get 28f1.9 instead.

Give up the RD1s due to rangefinder alignment problem and got a moment of lost in faith, exchange for M8 instead.

I try the 28F2 and does not see any focus shift. Also, given that it is 28, I really have to go back to read Sean Reviews what is the issue about. It seems to be that there is a technical focus shift between f2 and smaller aperture like F8/F11. But does it matter in real life photograph?

Have to trust Sean though, I guess.
 
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For the record, my 28/1.9 focuses beautifully wide open but behind the subject as it is stopped down. I find I can work round this in practice by deliberately focusing just in front of the subject, more or less by the margin of error in the R-D1's less-than-super-accurate rangefinder, when I stop down.

This may sound all sound horrible, but the bonus is that the Voiglander lens gives a lovely tonal range when operating with the R-D1's digital sensor – and it costs a fraction of the price of Leica optics. I've taken some of my best pictures on the 28/1.9.

It's also quite a handsome lens, in its own retro-styled way.
 
I owned both 1.9 and 2 and resold them. The F2 was a perfect match for the R-D1 yet when I went to the M8 I found the 24+35mm combination was a better one so I sold it. The new version was an improvement over the 1.9. Shorter, lighter and better performance wide open. I did not mind too much the focus shift as I shot either at F2 or F8, but if you do a lot of 2.8-4-5.6, it might bother you.
 
Thanks for all thefeedback I was very happy with performance of the 28/1.9 but felt it was a bit big for the RD-1 I sold my lecia 24 f 2.8 asph for the same reason too big for the body.

I think I will go for the 28 f2.0 VM thanks again for the feedback
 
Just picked up a 28 F2...

Just picked up a 28 F2...

I sold my Elmarit to fund a Summicron 28 but before jumping to the cron at $2500 used, I just HAD to try the CV 28 F2 at $500. Got it today and my 1st impression is not a good one. Soft corners, dull looking color, soft, and vignetting. My now sold Leica Elmarit ASPH kills this CV in every area.

These are just my 1st impressions. I will use it for a while and see how it goes in the real world, but I am 90% sure it will be going back. Should of went with the cron right off the bat I guess, or kept my Elmarit!

I also bought a CV 35 1.2 which did not show up today but should tomorrow. Am hoping that one is a bit better as I was looking for a cheap fast 35 and this one seemed to fit the bill.

I love the CV 15, but this 28 just seems to render so dull without any of the sparkle or wow that the Elmarit had. I just needed a faster 28, so it looks like i will probably have to spring for the Cron. BTW, I am shooting it with an M8.
 
thegadsby said:
Thanks for all thefeedback I was very happy with performance of the 28/1.9 but felt it was a bit big for the RD-1 I sold my lecia 24 f 2.8 asph for the same reason too big for the body.

I think I will go for the 28 f2.0 VM thanks again for the feedback
Click to expand...

From the feedback here, it seems that either there are very different standards on what's "sharp" and "focused" or CV lenses have a high variability from sample to sample.

I own both cv 28s (the f2 and the f1.9) and the Leica Summicron 28/2 ASPH. Although the Summicron is better than the 28/2 Ultron, I'm sure I wouldn't have bought the Summicron if I had the 28/2 Ultron.

I have yet to see noticeable focus shift and the CV is almost as sharp as the summicron, wide-open. On smaller apertures, the Ultron is as sharp as I need from a lens to be used on the Epson or the M8: if I really need a lot sharper, I'll take my XPAN II and use it on a tripod... :)

The Summicron has better contrast, so jpgs out of the camera are more "poppy". Focus is also more accurate on the M8 (but that's not focus shift). Colour rendition is a bit cooler on the CV. To be really picky, the corners look better on the Summicron, even when OOF. Both contrast and colour are not a problem when using RAW or with a bit of Photoshop processing.

If you get a bad copy, I suggest you send it back and ask for another. A good copy of the new Ultron is a very good lens and, for the price, is a VERY good bargain.
 
SteveRD1 said:
I sold my Elmarit to fund a Summicron 28 but before jumping to the cron at $2500 used, I just HAD to try the CV 28 F2 at $500. Got it today and my 1st impression is not a good one. Soft corners, dull looking color, soft, and vignetting. My now sold Leica Elmarit ASPH kills this CV in every area.

These are just my 1st impressions. I will use it for a while and see how it goes in the real world, but I am 90% sure it will be going back. Should of went with the cron right off the bat I guess, or kept my Elmarit!

I also bought a CV 35 1.2 which did not show up today but should tomorrow. Am hoping that one is a bit better as I was looking for a cheap fast 35 and this one seemed to fit the bill.

I love the CV 15, but this 28 just seems to render so dull without any of the sparkle or wow that the Elmarit had. I just needed a faster 28, so it looks like i will probably have to spring for the Cron. BTW, I am shooting it with an M8.
Click to expand...

Steve,

I took a good read of your site/blog/review and I would say you were not very lucky with your copy of the Ultron 28/2. Although I fully agree that the Summicron is a better lens overall (it'd better be! :)) and I'm keeping mine, the tests with my own sample of the Ultron show a lot less difference between the lenses. It looks like your sample has a lot of decentering, in particular.

Tomorrow I'll try to post a few images. Although the corners of my Ultron are far from perfect, the results are more than acceptable, while yours even show some image doubling (something that also shows-up on my Ultron f1.9, wide-open at long ranges).

I guess this only serves to prove that CV lenses do vary a lot between samples :( and people should ask for a replacement, whenever a lens is not ok. Leica prices are steep but quality control and sample consistency probably have to do with it.

Looking to your images and my images, I would not say they were made with the same lens... :(

Regarding the Summicron, the images are really beutiful and show a very fine balance between smoothness and sharpness. It also has a way of pushing-up the tones and giving them more "luminosity" that reminds me a of the Hexar AF lens. Portraits in good reflected light, in particular, can look like the skin is lit from within. This is even more true when used on the M8, that by itself performs the same "trick". In a more subtle way, the CV 50/1.5 Nokton does exactly the same thing and I find them very "compatible" lenses. It's because of this character the Summicron has, that reveals itself in almost every well-lit shot, that my emotional brain has stopped, until now, my rational brain to sell the Cron and keep the Ultron...

I hope you also enjoy your new CV 35/1.2, I have one since the first day I bought the Epson and it has a way of gathering light that can be spooky. It's big and heavy (especially heavy... :() but is a low-light performer like no other (ok, there is always the Noctilux... :)). That is, if you get a good sample... :)
 
jvr said:
...the CV is almost as sharp as the summicron, wide-open...
Click to expand...
Interesting indeed. To me it was night and day but i tried the CV once only. Would you have some pics taken with the Leica and the CV at f/2 in the same conditions? Also at f/4 to show the focus shift or lack thereof?
 
LCT said:
Interesting indeed. To me it was night and day but i tried the CV once only. Would you have some pics taken with the Leica and the CV at f/2 in the same conditions? Also at f/4 to show the focus shift or lack thereof?
Click to expand...

Sorry, all my posts tend to get long these days :( And this one is no exception :( I have to quit doing this... But since I wrote it, I think I'll hit the button... Please feel free to ignore everything below the first paragraph... :)

Yes, I'll do that ASAP. I have a couple of photos that I used for a quick test, and last night I went and took a few more. I will try to shoot something to see about the focus shift (that hasn't been a problem in "real life", until now, unlike the 35/1.4 Nokton, that came and went in 2 days). I will give my best to do it on the weekend (btw, one of the tasks in my agenda reads "compare all my 28mm lenses and post results on RFF" and has been there for a few months... Really! :)) FWIW, I will try to add to the mix a few shots from my Nikon D700 and my old 35/2 AF Nikkor, just to get some perspective on "image quality".

-------- Ignore from now on, unless you have some spare time -----

We have to bear in mind a couple of things:

1) probably the Ultron has a more curved field than the Summicron, so when we photograph flat subjects (ex: a test chart), the Summicron will look sharper in the corners. But in real life, that hasn't been a problem at all. DOF at f2, even with a 28, is thin enough, camera-shake will creep in, subjects will move, etc, so the small loss of sharpness in the corners hasn't been bothering a lot (make that none at all, to be fair). ex: even on a test shot of a shelf with books (more or less flat) one of the corners will be better on the Cron, on another it will be almost the same.

2) the Ultron has more fall-off wide-open than the Summicron but I would say that's to be expected from a fast RF 28 that is so small and inexpensive. The Summicron is better? Yes. Will I keep mine? Most probably. Is it perfect? No. But it's not a big problem. Again: in real life (unless when we have a lot of sky in the picture) I seldom find perfectly lit flat walls. I tend to use f2 when there is low light and no tripod. That means "by night and artificial lighting" and lighting is always going to be point sources. So, even with a perfect lens in terms of fall-off, I would get darker zones that look like fall-off from the lens. (btw, even a "fair" test for fall-off will require a careful setup, the kind Sean Reid does).

3) although (good) lens behave more or less the same way on perfectely focused zones, they seldom do the same on OOF and on the transition. Both my f2 and f1.9 Ultron have a way of rendering OOF zones in the corners that can be bothering, with images getting almost a "camera-shake" movement that's surprising (I have been complaining about this effect on my f1.9 Ultron since I subscribed to RFF and you may remember that... :)). This character can also produce a kind of "vaseline" effect in those areas and in extreme cases (some focusing distances) it can even produce a faint double image. I can't say if this is a design or fabrication problem (decentering, because some corners tend to be more probelmatic than others), but it's something I never saw on a Leica lens. My f2 is much better than my f1.9 in this regard and it only shows once in a while.

4) looking at 100% on a 19in monitor, from 50cm, is a different business than looking at a "normal" (30cm x 40cm max) print from a "poster" distance. Most of the differences in resolution and sharpness that show up
at 100%, will be very much "squashed" by the low-frequency sharpening that a good digital print needs.

The other stuff (colour rendition, contrast - be it local or global, vignetting, etc) is usually dealt with on my normal workflow - DNG, CornerFix, CaptureOne Pro - plus a bit of tweaking on Photoshop on photos that deserve it (and 95% don't deserve).

So, while I can get photos I don't like from my Ultron f1.9 at f2, I have yet to find a "real life" photo from the Ultron f2 that I wouldn't want to print (from a technical POV).

I'll try to find the time to do a few crops (and I need to crop so that differences can readily be seen, something that tells me the lenses are comparable - you don't need a crop to tell the difference between my Jupiter 9 and my 75 heliar, both at 2.5...) and post them.

Again, please note that I'm not "defending" the CV f2, or "attacking" the 28 Cron (I keep both! :)). It's just that my sample of the CV f2 is good enough for me to ponder selling the Cron (albeit with some "heart shrinking"...) and I would never say that about my f1.9 CV (probably, THE bad sample).

As a matter of comparison, I had a 50/2 Summicron (the new version) and a 35/2 Summicron ASPH and I sold them. Between the very, very good (I would say, surprisingly good) 50/1.5 Nokton and the collapsible Summicron I have, the 50 was redundant, unless I was pixel-peeing and doing test charts (or shelves) everyday (I don't). Ditto on the 35/1.2 Nokton + 35 UC-Hexanon and the 35/2 Cron ASPH that went out the door. And yet, I still keep the 28 Cron... :)

I would definitely say that the CV f2 Ultron (at least a good copy), easily qualifies as a "poor man's" 28 cron asph. I can't say that about my copy of the 28/1.9 Ultron and I said even more than that about the 50/1.5 Nokton (I sold the cron). On the other hand, a lot of people (sean reid included) find it the other way round and prefer the old version. Since the "disagreement" is so strong, I would say that probably we have a case of both different taste AND different samples... :) BTW, I haven't sold the CV 28/1.9 either, I use it for B&W on the CLE and the M3 and really like it.

So... Like in audio, nothing like using the lens for a while and trust both our eyes AND the manufacturer claims: if it's much worse than we thought, maybe we got a bad sample. Let's return it and get a new one. The manufacturer thanks, because the alternative is getting "stamped" by a few bad reviews, that could easily be triggered by bad samples. When I bought the 35/1.4, I had high hopes for the lens (and I was planning to sell the 40/1.4, mainly because of framing). The sample I got was misfocusing by inches and had a lot of focus shift. And I sent it back. The reason why I didn't ask for a replacement, is because I found out I would not gain a lot by getting the 35/1.4 instead of the 40/1.4 (on my CLE, the 40 is even better for framing), so I skipped the hassle of selling the 40/1.4 AND dealing with the replacement and (who knows?) another defective lens on the mailbox. But I am fully convinced that the "CV 35/1.4" (that is, the lens designed by Cosina...) is better than the lens I got and further production runs will take care of the inconsistencies that can and will creep in when assembling something like a 35/1.4 lens that smal, light and inexpensive.

Leica has a way of engineering lenses that enables them to produce, in a very consistent way, lenses that come up to spec and are still light and small, not to mention that absolute image quality is outstanding. They sometimes opt for a "worse" theoretical optical formula but that allows the lenses to be produced within the tolerances of THEIR fabrication process (of which they know very well the limitations), including glass production.

Moreover, they do heavy QC (we have a factory in Portugal - I guess the only one out of Germany - that I visited three times and I have to say I was impressed. REALLY impressed.) and adjust each lens individually. On the same vein, you should check the thread on Leica Users on the Anatomy of a Leica M8 (http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/leica-m8-forum/21331-anatomy-leica-m8.html - crazy thread!!!): sensors are individually shimmed, for perfect alignment, with shims that can be 0.01mm thick, and get different shims for each corner. That's QC and attention to detail...).

All this R&D and all this QC cost money. I don't think leica lenses are as cost-effective as a CV, especially if you are lucky and/or have the patience to go through the process of buy/send back until you get a "perfect" sample. But you can be pretty sure that the Cron you will receive in your house will be much more like Steve's copy and (even better!) more like the "ideal" 28 Cron designed by Leica engineers, than two copies of "new" (as in "production bugs not yet ironed-out") CV lenses.

If you have the money, Leica lenses will be more "reliable" (in this sense) than CV lenses (at least in my experience and - as I read it - also from the experiences of lots other people). And they will _probably_ be "better" in absolute terms than the CV counterpart (but don't count on it as a "faith" issue).

That said, my respect for CV has been growing in the past few years (in fact, since I bought the Epson). I use Leicas since... I don't know, since I remember... A M3 DS, with the 35/3.5 Summaron, the 50/2 Summicron coll and the 90/4 Elmar is in the family since the 50s - all of them still going strong - and everybody switched to SLRs in the 70s, so lucky me... :). And my idea of CV lenses was "they are cheap but good value".

I really changed my opinion: CV makes very good lenses and, as a bonus, they are very inexpensive when compared to Leica. Some of their lenses are better (the 75/2.5 and the 50/1.5 come to mind), some are worse (the 50/2.5 Skopar, while very sharp stopped-down, doesn't really cut it at even f4). Some of their samples are good (I was definitely lucky with my 50/1.5 - I've seen crops from other people that I, fortunately, can't reproduce), some are worse (my 28/1.9 Ultron is not on the same breed as the ones Sean uses, that's for sure).

But I find it very interesting that I need to do 100% crops to really see a difference (aside from things that are trivially corrected in digital) between two lenses almost 7x appart in terms of price (let's remember that RW sells the Ultron for 360£, while the Cron goes for almost 2000£, before taxes). And that's wide-open. At, say, f8, I guess my "testing" technique is more of a culprit for differences than the lenses... :) Please take into account that this would be the same as getting a car that is so close to a, say, Mercedes E-class, that you would have to take it to a special track and do very special tests on the systems to find a difference. And yet, that hypothetical car would cost 7x less than the E-class (in Portugal, that would be 10k€ vs 70k€). I think that everybody would buy that car and Mercedes would almost be out of business... :)

To finish, another of my "pet peeves": digital is a different animal than film. A sensor is not a film. It's totally flat, so "real" field curvature will show up in *****s (film can curve and hide/exacerbate field curvature. Usually, hide.). It's razor thin, so either images forms EXACTLY on the surface or it will be blurred (film has thickness, so images can form some microns below the surface and either the enlarger or scanner lenses will be able to correct with some DOF). Sensors are much more reflective than film (and flat, remember?) so reflections from the sensor will stress the coating/shape of the rear element. Some sensors do have low-pass, IR filters. This means there will be some refraction that will depend on the angle and create weird patterns in the corners, espcially with the typical RF lenses. Sensors collect light in a "vertical parallel" way and RF lenses are designed to be small and light (not to be tele-centric). Etc.

I am positively sure that, if Leica or Cosina really wanted to create a line of lenses tottaly commited to digital, they could forget things like "ultimate resolution" (a sensor is very much limited in terms of resultion, at least the sensores we get on the M8 ad the Epson) and focus on things like "very good coating on the rear element". Or trade a bit of fall-off (easily corrected by software) for, say, more flatness of field. Or lack of distortion ofr coverage (small sensor). Etc.

But the question is, Leica and CV can't live on money just from digital RFs, so, they have to compromise. I would expect Leica and CV to slowly incorporate these new challenges (and degrees off freedom) into their R&D in the next years.

So, again, I find it remarkable that lenses designed with so much constraints perform so well in digital. Getting a (very) substantial part of that performance for 7x less money is an Engineering feat that I have to admire (I'm an engineer... :). So, maybe that's the profound reason why I am "defending" the CV f2 after all, and why I am reluctant to sell it... :)

Yikes, this got long!!!!! :(
 
LCT said:
Interesting indeed. To me it was night and day but i tried the CV once only. Would you have some pics taken with the Leica and the CV at f/2 in the same conditions? Also at f/4 to show the focus shift or lack thereof?
Click to expand...

Ok, LCT, here you have some photos... :)

Disclaimer: these are NOT scientific tests. I can't assure I can reapeat these tests exactly in the same way. I'm of course not claiming that this a good way to test lenses. YMMV. Caveat emperor. Etc. :)

I used my normal workflow with the M8: shoot in DNG, develop in Capture One Pro (version 3.7, as I prefer this interface to the new version 4. Unfortunately, I'm forced to use the version 4 with my Nikon D700. Fortunately, my D700 JPGs are so good I seldom use RAW :)).
No IR filter, tripod, self-timer 2s. I skipped CornerFix (I really only use it from 21 down or when fall-off is REALLY bothering), so you people can see the fall-off in all it's glory.

I compared both Ultrons to the Summicron, all at f2 and f8, at around 1.5m, 5m and infinity (well, to tell the truth, I didn't shoot the Ultron f1.9 on infinity. When you see the 5m photos, you'll see why). I picked full-size crops from the center, some corners (because of lens fabrication tolerances, corners are not all created equal) and some interesting details.
Sounds like a bit of work and it was. Maybe that's why I kept postponing this thing for some months... :)

Ok, let's start with 5m, F2. First, a full frame to see where crops come from. Since RFF doesn't allow attched pictures to be bigger than 600x600, the first problem is that I really can't tell the difference, so I'll just show the _worse_ full frame picture (always the Ultron f1.9... :() from now on...

(a suivre)
 

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