jlw
Rangefinder camera pedant
Hello, all --
I had a good month last November with my only paying client, the local art museum -- and since much of what I shoot for them involves low light, I decided to send some of the proceeds to Stephen and invest them in a 35mm f/1.2 Voigtlander Nokton to use on my R-D 1.
So far I've been really pleased with my purchase! Of all the ultra-speed lenses I've ever owned (for me "ultra" means faster than f/1.4) this one is by far the least quirky and most headache-free.
Now, I do enjoy the distinctive look provided by some of my older ultra-speeds, such as the 50/0.95 and 50/1.2 Canons... but sometimes you want a lens that does NOT put such a vivid "signature" on your images! The Nokton is great at this; when I look at the results, I tend to think, "That's a nice picture" rather than "What an interesting effect"...
It's also nice to have an ultra-speed that approximates a "normal" field of view on the R-D 1, rather than the short tele effect of the 50s; sometimes I just can't back up far enough to use a 50. One example of this is the studio rehearsal I attended this afternoon for the Omaha Theater Ballet's upcoming production of Coppélia; I thought I'd post a few of the photos from it to show a couple of reasons why I'm so enthused about the 35/1.2 Nokton:
It's quite sharp even off-axis.
Most of the older ultra-speeds I've used do a good job of rendering a sharp image right smack in the center of the frame... but usually the image gets more "atmospheric" the farther away from the center you get.
The Nokton, on the other hand, gives me more freedom in where I position the subject. I wanted this sweet little girl's eyes to be sharp, but I also wanted to show what she was wearing and how she was sitting -- so I was glad I could compose the picture the way I wanted without being restricted by the lens:
Here's a detail view. All these were at EI 1600 in raw mode, by the way:
It seems very resistant to flare and artifacts from backlighting.
I like dramatic lighting situations, but most of my older ultra-speed lenses don't. At best, they usually flare out and lose contrast, and sometimes they produce exotic-looking optical artifacts. This can be very effective at evoking the atmosphere of, say, a smokey jazz club -- but you don't want everything you shoot to look like a smokey jazz club!
The Nokton seems to pretty much shrug off the effects of shooting into the light. Late in this afternoon's rehearsal, the sun had gotten around to the point where it was coming straight into the windows behind us; I knew I'd be testing my luck to keep shooting, but decided to keep at it because sometimes these "pushing-the-envelope" pictures are more interesting than a technically correct image!
In this case, I decided to use the bright window and foreground shadows as elements in the picture's design. I knew the window and its reflection on the floor would burn out to white (I'm not sure I could have saved them even if I had been shooting on film rather than digitally) but I wasn't too worried about that. What I did want to do was retain detail in the tambourine girl's face, and I'd say the Nokton brought home the bacon:
Here, the backlight wasn't so much an effect I wanted as something I just had to deal with -- the dancers were between me and the window, and I couldn't move, so it was backlight or nuthin'. The rim light around the heads was a nice bonus, but I mostly just wanted to be able to see the action and expressions. Again, I was pleased with the way the Nokton bailed me out:
I've now got fast Voigtlander glass for all three focal lengths covered by the R-D 1's framelines: a 28/1.9 Ultron, the 35/1.2 Nokton, and the 50/1.5 Nokton. These make a very nice combination for the vast majority of my picture-taking; I still enjoy using my "vintage" lenses, too, but now I can reserve them for times when I want to take advantage of their distinctive peculiarities!
I had a good month last November with my only paying client, the local art museum -- and since much of what I shoot for them involves low light, I decided to send some of the proceeds to Stephen and invest them in a 35mm f/1.2 Voigtlander Nokton to use on my R-D 1.
So far I've been really pleased with my purchase! Of all the ultra-speed lenses I've ever owned (for me "ultra" means faster than f/1.4) this one is by far the least quirky and most headache-free.
Now, I do enjoy the distinctive look provided by some of my older ultra-speeds, such as the 50/0.95 and 50/1.2 Canons... but sometimes you want a lens that does NOT put such a vivid "signature" on your images! The Nokton is great at this; when I look at the results, I tend to think, "That's a nice picture" rather than "What an interesting effect"...
It's also nice to have an ultra-speed that approximates a "normal" field of view on the R-D 1, rather than the short tele effect of the 50s; sometimes I just can't back up far enough to use a 50. One example of this is the studio rehearsal I attended this afternoon for the Omaha Theater Ballet's upcoming production of Coppélia; I thought I'd post a few of the photos from it to show a couple of reasons why I'm so enthused about the 35/1.2 Nokton:
It's quite sharp even off-axis.
Most of the older ultra-speeds I've used do a good job of rendering a sharp image right smack in the center of the frame... but usually the image gets more "atmospheric" the farther away from the center you get.
The Nokton, on the other hand, gives me more freedom in where I position the subject. I wanted this sweet little girl's eyes to be sharp, but I also wanted to show what she was wearing and how she was sitting -- so I was glad I could compose the picture the way I wanted without being restricted by the lens:
Here's a detail view. All these were at EI 1600 in raw mode, by the way:
It seems very resistant to flare and artifacts from backlighting.
I like dramatic lighting situations, but most of my older ultra-speed lenses don't. At best, they usually flare out and lose contrast, and sometimes they produce exotic-looking optical artifacts. This can be very effective at evoking the atmosphere of, say, a smokey jazz club -- but you don't want everything you shoot to look like a smokey jazz club!
The Nokton seems to pretty much shrug off the effects of shooting into the light. Late in this afternoon's rehearsal, the sun had gotten around to the point where it was coming straight into the windows behind us; I knew I'd be testing my luck to keep shooting, but decided to keep at it because sometimes these "pushing-the-envelope" pictures are more interesting than a technically correct image!
In this case, I decided to use the bright window and foreground shadows as elements in the picture's design. I knew the window and its reflection on the floor would burn out to white (I'm not sure I could have saved them even if I had been shooting on film rather than digitally) but I wasn't too worried about that. What I did want to do was retain detail in the tambourine girl's face, and I'd say the Nokton brought home the bacon:
Here, the backlight wasn't so much an effect I wanted as something I just had to deal with -- the dancers were between me and the window, and I couldn't move, so it was backlight or nuthin'. The rim light around the heads was a nice bonus, but I mostly just wanted to be able to see the action and expressions. Again, I was pleased with the way the Nokton bailed me out:
I've now got fast Voigtlander glass for all three focal lengths covered by the R-D 1's framelines: a 28/1.9 Ultron, the 35/1.2 Nokton, and the 50/1.5 Nokton. These make a very nice combination for the vast majority of my picture-taking; I still enjoy using my "vintage" lenses, too, but now I can reserve them for times when I want to take advantage of their distinctive peculiarities!
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roundg
Well-known
Very beautiful pics. Stunned by the quality of Nokton too. I like the first pic most, amazing.
back alley
IMAGES
very nice shots and great examples of what this is capable of.
joe
joe
VictorM.
Well-known
Beautiful pictures!
popstar
Well-known
Great narrative and visual back-up. Thanks for demonstrating what this lens can do in a necessary situation! Nice job!
tmessenger
Established
A refreshing and beautiful expression of photography, thanks for sharing.
tm
tm
S
Simon Larbalestier
Guest
Beautiful images - i purchased this lens a few days ago and haven't had chance to use it yet but most of the work i intend to use it for will be backlight so the examples you posted here demonstrate how well this lens copes in such difficult light. Thanks for posting.
pfogle
Well-known
jlw - super pix - as always from you! What aperture were you actually using for these?
another question: the crop doesn't look too grainy - is that C1 you're using?
another question: the crop doesn't look too grainy - is that C1 you're using?
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Abbazz
6x9 and be there!
Great pix jlw, thanks for sharing. The 1st one is nice: I love the expression of the girl, but the cropped legs behind her back kinda annoy me. The 3rd one is my favorite.
This Nokton is a great performer. Definition and contrast wide open as well as flare resistance are astonishing for a very fast lens.
Cheers,
Abbazz
This Nokton is a great performer. Definition and contrast wide open as well as flare resistance are astonishing for a very fast lens.
Cheers,
Abbazz
jlw
Rangefinder camera pedant
pfogle said:
Thanks to all who liked the pictures. Some answers:
-- I believe all these were shot at f/1.2 or f/1.4. BTW, this is one of those situations in which manual exposure is quicker and easier to use than auto exposure. Short of going out into the middle of the room with an incident meter, it would be almost impossible to get meaningful meter readings in a situation with such a crazy combination of backlight, reflected frontlight, and glare bouncing off the floor, so I usually just do a test shot and look at the histogram and LCD preview. Fortunately, the light that counts (that which is falling on the dancers' faces) is fairly constant throughout the room. I started out with a basic exposure of 1/250 @ f/1.4 for the center of the room, then opened up to f/1.2 when the action was more toward the front of the room (away from the windows) or went up to 1/500 for the brighter areas in the back of the room (near the windows.)
-- The raw file conversions were from DNG files via Adobe Camera Raw with no special adjustments. The way I work is to come home from a session and use Adobe DNG Converter to batch-convert the files from memory cards into my picture library folder on my hard disk. Then I use either Adobe Bridge or, lately, the Lightroom public beta to do basic shot selection, cropping, and exposure adjustment. The Lightroom beta doesn't provide any obvious way to save both a full-frame and a 1:1 crop version of an image, though (maybe the release version will) so I had to take the picture of the little girl into Photoshop to do that.
-- Abazz, I agree with you about the feet behind the girl. (The other feet, in the upper left corner, I deliberately left in to provide context; they help show that it's a ballet rehearsal.) Still, this was a "take it or leave it" situation, so I had to take what was there, feet and all. (I tried another picture a bit later after the feet had walked away, but the position of her head wasn't as nice.) I suppose one option would be to "Photoshop them out," but I decline to do this in what's intended to be a documentary picture!
Didier
"Deed"
Does anyone have a picture of a 35 Nokton mounted on a R-D1? I'm just curious about the size relation.
Didier
Didier
dcsang
Canadian & Not A Dentist
The lens has always been touted as being "too big" for some.
It's not imho but ymmv.
I personally think this is a wonderful lens for the money. The only thing I would change about it, if I could, was to make it the size of the 50mm summilux. That of course, would be hard to do - seeing as how you'd lose the f1.2 aperture
Nice photos and I really think folks should try the lens out; especially if you can find it used.
Cheers
Dave
It's not imho but ymmv.
I personally think this is a wonderful lens for the money. The only thing I would change about it, if I could, was to make it the size of the 50mm summilux. That of course, would be hard to do - seeing as how you'd lose the f1.2 aperture
Nice photos and I really think folks should try the lens out; especially if you can find it used.
Cheers
Dave
jlw
Rangefinder camera pedant
Topdog1
Well-known
Sexy!
/Ira
/Ira
Didier
"Deed"
jlw said:
Thank you! This pictures make me believe my 35 asph summilux is a tiny lens, and the 75 lux not that big at all...
Didier
DwF
Well-known
very nice photos with the 1.2. thanks for sharing.
David
David
Nachkebia
Well-known
Excellent!!
nksyoon
Well-known
The first time a friend of mine saw it on my R-D1, he asked if that was a 90mm!
jlw
Rangefinder camera pedant
Didier said:Thank you! This pictures make me believe my 35 asph summilux is a tiny lens, and the 75 lux not that big at all...
Didier
The C-Vs do look pretty big, don't they? Keep in mind that I showed all the C-V lenses with their hoods attached. Since the hoods clamp on, and since the lens cap is designed to fit over the hood, the tendency is to leave the hood on the lens at all times.
Other manufacturers' lenses with collapsible or bayonet hoods make it easier to stow the lens with the hood removed. So if you consider "pack size," a lens with an easily dismountable hood may be significantly smaller, while if you consider on-the-camera size, they might be more similar.
I don't consider the semi-permanent hoods to be a disadvantage of the C-V lenses, since I'm mostly concerned with how the lens handles on the camera. (When I use a DSLR I'm usually lugging around an 80-200/2.8 VR lens, so any RF lens seems small!) But for someone who does a lot of walking around and wants to carry as many lenses as possible in as small a bag as possible, the size of the 35/1.2 might be a significant drawback.