35mm 1.4 with ND4 or 35mm 2.5 colour skopar

[fixedfocallife]

So I have the 35 1.4 at the moment. It's a MC copy and I use it on an M6.

I find the lens a little soft at times but I'm still not good enough to try and tell you the lens is not good enough for me.

I'm in Australia and to be honest at time f16 isn't slow enough with 400 film that I use a lot...

Better off selling lens and buying the colour skopar... Or using what I have and buying a ND filter? The colour skopar I think might be the better lens from my reading and if I was shooting at night I would push to 1600 and shoot at 5.6 where I can for the zone depth of field...

 

[Brian Legge]

I'd love to have that problem. Here in Seattle during the overcast time of the year (ie October through July or so), I'm often shooting around f4 with Tri X.

Honestly, I'd go with an ND filter for the additional exposure range. If you aren't happen with the sharpness of the lens I'd think about switching to Zeiss. The VC 35mm 2.5 is a solid lens but not that much of a step up over the 1.4 when it comes to sharpness relative to other options out there. Granted, there is plenty of sample variation in the earlier VC lenses so who knows. 🙂

 

[michaelwj]

I'm in Australia too, and have the skopar. That said, if I were you, I'd got the nd route. You can always take it off, but you can't open the skopar to 1.4. Its cheaper too, and I'd prefer to take a filter off rather than push the film to 1600. You can change the filter between shots, but you have to push the whole roll. Both lenses would be (for most purposes) the same at 5.6 anyway.
Michael

 

[jsrockit]

The color skopar is the better general purpose lens... and it's smaller. You can rely on the 2.5 completely at all apertures ... some of the softness you are seeing with the Nokton is focus shift (a known issue) between f/1.4 and f/4.