15mm HELIAR sharpness

erikhaugsby said:
Hey Joe, where did you take that shot at? My first thoughts go to the Kennedy Center but I'm confident that I'm incorrect about that.
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That's Lincoln Center in New York last night. It's about to undergo a major re-do and so may not look like this much longer!

back alley said:
wow!
wow!

used a tripod i assume?
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Nope, that's 1/4 sec handheld! (I did wrap my arm around a street sign, tho)
 
Dingo-
Looking through that series makes me want to break my seemingly religious dedication to B+W.
Neat concept, excellent execution. Thanks for showing us that series.
 
wow joe, Dingo, those are very good shots! ok, since meeting with Sevres, we both took turns shooting around with both our RD1s (thanks again my friend, it was very nice meeting you). We both ended up with some decent shots, but infinity seemed to be a problem sometimes, and we could not figure it iout.

Quick question: when you guys use this lens do you scale focus, or hyperfocal? the latter has given me no good results as yet at any aperture. I will take the camera and shoot by focusing to the subject, but regardless, I was surprised to see a shot taken at f.11 and having no focused points at all. I would have thought at that f stop "something" 😀 would be dead on....

...so I am left with a great excuse to pick up the camera and head out for a long "testing shoot"...yeah right, twist my arm LOL!

I am having great expectations on making this lens a permanent fixture o my RD1.
cheers.
 
I think it could be sample variation, as my CV 15mm is pretty sharp. Here's one hand held, shot on slide film.


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As I learned from Rich Cutler with the R-D1 you cannot use the DOF marks on your lens as you would with a normal RF. Instead you have to use nearest stop open as a mark. With the Heliar I try to use f8 in all my shots. I focus it so that the infinity mark is at the (non available) f5.6 position, very very slightly nearer to th f4 mark. This gave me sharpness from around 0.6m to 0.7m to infinity. For nearer subjects I just estimate the distance and do the same thing with the close distance. Like this I had a feeling like using a point and shoot camera, focusing almost unnecessary.

B&W is from old industrial site, the second was taken during a sailing trip in the netherlands (thanks to Stepen Gandy I got the Heliar in time, so the sail is one of the first photos taken with it 😀).

(Finally I managed to get the attachments right; strange, yesterday it didn't work...)
 

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georgef said:
I am having great expectations on making this lens a permanent fixture o my RD1.
cheers.
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This lens vignettes heavily on the R-D1 so it's best to shoot RAW and then process in Epson PhotoRAW which can undo the vignetting very effectively.
 
If there were an election (only CV lenses), no doubt the CV15 would be the most 'interesting' lens to use because of its size, angle of view, framing difficulties, distortion, contrast issue (with smaller apertures), filter problems, vignetting,... you name it, that I think everyone of you should own one and explore it yourself, if you see yourself as a CV user.

Is such an election possible, BTW ?
 
mn4367 said:
As I learned from Rich Cutler with the R-D1 you cannot use the DOF marks on your lens as you would with a normal RF. Instead you have to use nearest stop open as a mark. With the Heliar I try to use f8 in all my shots. I focus it so that the infinity mark is at the (non available) f5.6 position, very very slightly nearer to th f4 mark. This gave me sharpness from around 0.6m to 0.7m to infinity. For nearer subjects I just estimate the distance and do the same thing with the close distance. Like this I had a feeling like using a point and shoot camera, focusing almost unnecessary.quote]

Thats how I used the 15mm as well Michael.
The shot below was shot at f.11, with the infinity set to just over f.8. I have enlarged snips from all diff distances, and they are all soft. comparing that same shot to my Eos 1D with 4mp and the 17-40L, the shot is much sharper.



I guess my difficulty is in my expectations: I expect to zoom into the 6mp image and have pixelation come evident before out of focus does.

Your shos were great by the way, same with Anhtu's.
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georgef said:
mn4367 said:
As I learned from Rich Cutler with the R-D1 you cannot use the DOF marks on your lens as you would with a normal RF. Instead you have to use nearest stop open as a mark. With the Heliar I try to use f8 in all my shots. I focus it so that the infinity mark is at the (non available) f5.6 position, very very slightly nearer to th f4 mark. This gave me sharpness from around 0.6m to 0.7m to infinity. For nearer subjects I just estimate the distance and do the same thing with the close distance. Like this I had a feeling like using a point and shoot camera, focusing almost unnecessary.quote]

Thats how I used the 15mm as well Michael.
The shot below was shot at f.11, with the infinity set to just over f.8. I have enlarged snips from all diff distances, and they are all soft. comparing that same shot to my Eos 1D with 4mp and the 17-40L, the shot is much sharper.



I guess my difficulty is in my expectations: I expect to zoom into the 6mp image and have pixelation come evident before out of focus does.

Your shos were great by the way, same with Anhtu's.
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Hmm, I'm not sure whether they are really soft, difficult to judge in the reletively small attachment. At least for crop 2 I'd say it is soft. Crop 1 is what I would expect from the R-D1 with that lens.

Which RAW Software are you using? I found that there are differences regarding the amount of detail beeing pulled out of the ERFs.

I could send you a private message with my email address. If you'd be willing to send me the RAW file you cropped, I could take a look at it to see if it is *that* different to my results.
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georgef said:
Hi everyone,
I just received a voigt 15mm f.4.5 HELIAR and tried it on my RD-1; none of the photos has come up remotely sharp. I set the camera to f.5.6 @ 125/sec at the hyperfocal spot, then I tried it at f.11 160/sec (attached images: CENTRE is centre, and SIDE is bottom edge) and not a single distance is in focus. I am baffled!!! The only thing I can think of is a faulty lens!

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

thanks, g
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Well, I recently bought a 15 CV Heliar and I would not say it's the sharpest lens of my collection on the R-D1s but it holds up very well for such an extreme focal, especially when closed-down (typically f8-16, for me).

I also tested it (5 min ago) with a CV adapter and a "chinese one", combined with hyperfocal focusing (more on that below) vs "correct distance" at f16. Found no difference whatsoever on the 4 shots, even pixel-peeping. Maybe I'm lucky... I can post the boring pics of a bookshelf.

Mind you, your shot was probably taken as JPG and high ISO (from the noise that's visible) and I used RAW and 200 ISO for the tests, something that does make a difference when looking at small details.

I also use the "minus one" rule for the aperture when shooting by hyperfocal. Doing the maths, it should be even more than one aperture, closer to two. But I live with it... 🙂

Nevetheless, I prefer the 12mm CV Ultra Wide I also own, in all regards. The biggest surprise was light fall-off: the 15mm is worse than the 12mm is this regard and requires a lot of work whenever a really blue mediterranean sky is on the frame... 🙂
 
As georgef mentions, I tried out his 15mm on my camera (and he also took some shots on his). We shot inside a Starbucks and out the window of the Starbucks. I made 9x6 prints of a couple fot he shots. I did my usual routine using Photokit sharpener, both capture and before printing. The interior shot of George, with the distance set to 4.5 feet was very sharp throughout, from George right through to the head on the back of the cafe which looks like it is growing out of George (You can tell I'm not used to shooting with wides). In fact I would probably pull back from the setting I used with Photokit sharpener. With respect to the other shot I printed, I'm not sure what to make of it (aside from the fact it is a crappy picture.) I shot at infinity, using F11. The building across the street is very sharp; the buildings a block away are not as crisp as I expected. I hope Georgef has had a chance to do more testing; it would be easier to evaluate with a subject one cared about and which one had photographed with another lens.

jvr, the light fall off issue is discussed in the Sean Reid review of wides on the R-D1 on Luminous Landscape. The 15mm is still the lens I want to get next (of course it has been for a while, but in the meantime I bought a Canon 35mm from Joe, and a Nokton 40mm from Cameraquest). I just think the 12mm, even with the crop, is too wide a view for me. From my very limited experience trying the 15mm, with georgef and at an RFF gathering, I believe I can live with the vignetting.

Georgef, it was good to meet you, and I hope you can make it to the next Toronto RFF gathering, when one is scheduled.
 
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