Which Wide the 12 or the 15?

johnastovall

johnastovall

Light Hunter - RIP 2010
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I'm looking for something on the wide end which will give me a FOV that a 21mm does on FF. With the R-D1, this looks like either the 12/5.6 Heliar or the 15/4.6 Heliar with respective FOV of 19 or 23.

I'm not doing lanscapes but rather want a wide lens for capturing indoor scenes in cafes and people.

Any thoughs on these or how they work for what I'm thinking about. My real worry is they will be too slow.
 
I have a 24mm and it's great for tight situations or where you have a really strong foreground subject that you are very close to. Since you are (rightly) concerned about speed I think the 15mm might be the best choice. It's also cheaper than the 12mm I believe.

I use a CV 15mm on a film camera and it is optically excellent BTW.
 
I use the 15mm Heliar on my RD-1 with the 21mm CV finder - it works great - esp. with the Epson RAW converter - it corrects the vignetting of the 15mm automatically when you specify the used focal length.

I have no experience with the 12mm, but the 15 is plenty wide for me.
 
15 is closest. Also a better lens and cheaper. Attaching filters is a problem.

12 has two good apertures, 8 and 11 with 8 being better. Still it is good lens and does what no other will.
 
I use the 12. Does a great job outside but its a bit slow for interiors unless you bump up the ISO a fair bit. It vignettes less than the 15 but as others have said if you are shooting RAW then the Epson tool will correct that for you. You can modify the 12mm filter adapter to fit the 15 if you need a glass filter...
 
summilux said:
the 12 heliar has the same nice black paint as the nokton 35, its viewfinder is the brighest there is.
Click to expand...
... and an added bonus is that the v/f is not bright-line, so you can easily adapt it for the R-D1 by simply masking the front element with some tape - works a treat! :)
 
Don't know much about a cropped 12, but full frame it is a quite difficult lens to use, you need to stand on a single pilar pedastal to make good pictures and then only if the total scene is right for a 12. And anything above a size 6 shoe will get captured on the image as well. As most wide angles it will only work if you shoot an image with some sort of a frame close by to accentuate the depth
 
I'll second what folks are saying about the 15. In fact, it's kind of a no-brainer. If you own a RF camera you should get this lens.

I picked a minty used one up for $269 at B&H last fall. Terrific. A steal in fact.

Don't have much shot with it up on the net, but here are two shot with the R-D1. Neither was corrected for vignetting as I didn't want to, but the black and white one is about 1/3 of the original frame, heavily cropped from a horizontal shot.

310266763_58ca186535.jpg


319228687_b46e43e1a0.jpg
 
I'm actually going through the same dillema, but my worries are different: I'm worried that the 23mm equivalent of the 15mm is not *that* wide that one can scale focus consistently... In fact, even the CV 21mm is coming rangefinder coupled soon. Experiences on that aspect, anyone?

- Cesar
 
crusius said:
I'm actually going through the same dillema, but my worries are different: I'm worried that the 23mm equivalent of the 15mm is not *that* wide that one can scale focus consistently... In fact, even the CV 21mm is coming rangefinder coupled soon. Experiences on that aspect, anyone?

- Cesar
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the CV 21 is already rangefinder coupled (LTM version) - it's the 25, 15 and 12 that aren't.

But you've got a point, even with the 12mm, you can't just take it for granted that everything will be in focus - the first click is at 1m, but I almost always keep mine set at 2m as it gives better sharpness for distant objects that way. Even at f8...
 
Joe Mondello said:
As to whether the 15 is wide enough, check out these threads comparing it to the WATE on the M8 (of course the M8 has a lesser crop factor 1.33x to 1.54x)

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1038&thread=22907772

Also Luminous-landscape has a review of the CV 15

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/lenses/15mm-voigt.shtml
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thanks Joe, after seeing that thread, there's no way I'd fork out for the WATE - I don't know if it's just me, but if you didn't label the photos, I doubt if anyone could reliably say which is which!

Which is saying a lot for the CV...

I must say, I get the feeling (never really checked it out) that the 15 is better than the 12. I went for the 12 because of the vignetting of the 15 on the R-D1. If I'd got an M8, I would definitely go for the 15mm.
 
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