15 F4.5 Voigtlander lens

colyn

ישו משיח
Local time
4:10 AM
Joined
May 31, 2006
Messages
4,531
Location
CowTown, Texas
I just ordered the 15 F4.5 Voigtlander ASPH super wide Heliar with finder and caps along with a 50/75 screw to M-mount adapter.
I will have it in hand Tuesday and plan to test it over the Thanksgiving Holiday while visiting my sister and parents.
Any hints?? I've never used a lens this wide.
 
colyn said:
I just ordered the 15 F4.5 Voigtlander ASPH super wide Heliar with finder and caps along with a 50/75 screw to M-mount adapter.
I will have it in hand Tuesday and plan to test it over the Thanksgiving Holiday while visiting my sister and parents.
Any hints?? I've never used a lens this wide.

Just use it and find out what it can do for you.
That's the fun of a new lens.

Cheers,

Michiel Fokkema
 
Congratulations!
You're gonna love it, BUT- learning to its perspective effectively can be challenging at first. Stick with it!
Do a search- there's a lot of information and observations posted here about this lens.
Enjoy!
 
The widest I've shot is 21mm so it should be interesting to see what this lens will do.
And I'll be able to use it on both my screw Leicas and M Leicas.
 
you will get a little more on the sides than the finder suggests (in my experience), which might make your first shots seem a bit vacant. i had one for a short while and sold it, but i'm in the market for one again, and this time i'll hang onto it.
 
SolaresLarrave said:
Is this lens RF coupled? Just a thing to keep in mind in case it isn't.

The Leica will only rangefinder focus with lens from 21mm-135mm.
This lens is scale focus..
 
you will get a lot of shots with your feet in them. My gf has the canon 15mm fisheye and I once got a shot of my gut in there, icky...
 
Watch you feet and fingers (they are easy to get in the picture by accident).

Tilt happens on many plains so keep it level and straight.

It is a fun lens, sharp and unique.

Focus is not an issue, spees is a bit slow, but the size and price are both great.

Think about a cable release and perhaps a table top tripod if you do anything indoors.

Enjoy, she is a great lens.

B2 (;->
 
If you don't enjoy strongly converging vertical lines in your shots, you'll have to work really hard at keeping the camera level. Any (and I do mean even the very slightest) tilt, and the verticals will converge like crazy. Unfortunately the aux. viewfinder has a lot of barrel distortion (shows straight lines as curved - just the viewfinder - not the lens), so it isn't easy to judge this in the Viewfinder.

I've often considered getting the swank Voigtlander double-shoe accessory and one of those really nice Voigtlander eye-level levels, in spite of the buck$$$ that that setup costs. In the meantime,I've had good success with taking my eye out of the finder just before making the shot, and looking at the camera to make sure there's no tilt.

That's my only gripe. The lens is very sharp, has massive depth of field (1 meter to infinity wide open ), and is nearly flare-proof. I've read that on some cameras, or with some LTM-M adapters the lens doesn't line-up exactly at 12 o-clock, which is a problem since the non-removable lens hood will then cause vignetting, but I've also read that it's easy to re-align the lens by loosening 3 set screws. Mine works fine with the Voigtlander adapter.

BTW, it focuses down to 30cm (about a foot), so you can do some neat close-up stuff with it too, though you're pretty much guessing at the framing at that range.
 
I have one which I keep permanently on my Bessa-L, which I guess makes it a bit OT in this forum. I am still learning how to use it properly; two things I have learnt with regard to composition are to try to avoid having known verticals (buildings, poles, etc.) too close to the right and left edges, and to try to have something in the near foreground, and I mean near foreground, to give the picture depth. Focus is never a problem in daylight: the hyperfocal distance at f8 is 1m at which the depth of field is from 0.5m upwards. With regard to the mounting position and the fixed lens hood, mine was off by a few degrees in all screw mounts when I first bought it, but it caused no vignetting; any problem was only cosmetic. Recently I learnt that the rear mounting flange of the lens can be unscrewed (four screws) and there are three alternate sets of tapped holes to screw it back in to. Now it is completely straight and vertical, a five minute job.
 
You will love the lens - I sold a 21mm/2.8 and bought this lens and I don't regret it at all. The above advice is excellent, for landscapes I use the CV double shoe and a Hama spirit-level ($30) to make sure everything is right (using a tripod with it can be tricky 😉 ). The lens is wonderful for pics in tightly enclosed spaces like cars or small plane cockpits.

Welcome to the forum sam_m! 🙂
 
Here's the very first photo from an L+15 combo that I acquired last spring. It really wasn't difficult to get reasonable shots with. Wild angles are really part of the fun of it!
 

Attachments

  • 581925-R1-006-1Aaweb.jpg
    581925-R1-006-1Aaweb.jpg
    148.2 KB · Views: 0
Hello,

I know this thread is a bit old, but i was wondering: are there any filters available for this lens on the market, in order to protect it, and improve image quality?
 
kloudags said:
Hello,

I know this thread is a bit old, but i was wondering: are there any filters available for this lens on the market, in order to protect it, and improve image quality?
This lens comes with a hood attached. You could probably rig up a filter if you really wanted some special effect. I seem to remember reading about a guy who made his own filter, I think it was 72mm in size! 😱 The lens has a terrific hard coat and can take it. I know how you feel I have UV filters on all my lenses. 🙂
 
This was my first CV lens bought in 1999, and still my favourite. Very sharp, comparatively flare free and great colour saturation. People think sometimes I have used a polariser with it!!! There is no provision on it for attaching filters although the filter holder for the 12mmCV can be modified to fit.
My best advice is to exploit the huge D of F, try to make sure you picture has foreground interest as well as background.
See attached, shot with the lens on a Leica CL, on Foma100.
 

Attachments

  • DNA.jpg
    DNA.jpg
    221.9 KB · Views: 0
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom