{"id":1089,"date":"2012-08-05T06:53:27","date_gmt":"2012-08-05T11:53:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/?p=1089"},"modified":"2012-08-05T06:53:27","modified_gmt":"2012-08-05T11:53:27","slug":"a-surprising-lens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/a-surprising-lens\/","title":{"rendered":"A surprising lens…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Voigtlander Nokton 17.5mm f\/0.95<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’ve got the Voigtlander Nokton 17.5mm f\/0.95 in hand for evaluation (thanks to my friends at LensRentals.com<\/a>), and I’m running it through its paces at the moment.\u00a0 I will have a full in-depth review sometime in the next week,but for now I just wanted to share a few thoughts.\u00a0 This lens is an all manual lens, with manual focus and aperture, though I’m rather used to that from using legacy glass on my Micro 4\/3 cameras and my Canon DSLRs before that.\u00a0 It’s a heavy beast of a lens (well, for a m4\/3 lens), but it’s beautifully crafted and feels wonderful to operate.\u00a0 Now, you’ll notice that the title of this post says that this is a surprising lens.\u00a0 Here’s why:<\/p>\n

If you’re not familiar with this lens, you may be thinking ‘f\/0.95…that can’t be right.’\u00a0 Well, it is the second f\/0.95 lens from Voigtlander for the Micro 4\/3 format (the other being the 25mm f\/0.95).\u00a0 Most people have never shot with a lens this fast.\u00a0 I know I haven’t before I received the lens.\u00a0 Now, if you’ve had experience with ultra-fast lenses in the past, you know that it’s rare that they are flawless wide open.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In fact, most are quite soft wide open with major aberrations until you stop down a stop or two.\u00a0 There are exceptions, of course, like Canon’s 85mm f\/1.2L and even the Canon 35mm f\/1.4 isn’t bad wide open.\u00a0 However, lenses faster than f\/1 are extremely rare, and the only ones that have tended to be good wide open cost north of $5,000.\u00a0 As a result, I expected the Voigtlander to perform OK wide open…usable, but not great.\u00a0 Well, the surprising part is simply how sharp it is at f\/0.95.\u00a0\u00a0 And it’s sharp from about 2 feet to infinity at f\/0.95.\u00a0 There are some color aberrations in contrasty light at that aperture…it fringes easily and has some visible longitudinal chromatic aberrations, but those can often be dealt with in post processing.\u00a0 While it’s not going to break records wide open…this lens is quite sharp, and I’ve been shocked at the quality of the images I’m getting at f\/0.95.<\/p>\n

Check back in a few days for the full review!<\/p>\n

A few quick sample images:<\/p>\n

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Immigrant Statue – Voigtlander Nokton 17.5mm f\/0.95 @ f\/0.95<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Playing Makeup – Voigtlander Nokton 17.5mm f\/0.95 @ f\/0.95<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Up close – Voigtlander Nokton 17.5mm f\/0.95 @ f\/0.95<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve got the Voigtlander Nokton 17.5mm f\/0.95 in hand for evaluation (thanks to my friends at LensRentals.com), and I’m running it through its paces at the moment.\u00a0 I will have a full in-depth review sometime in the next week,but for now I just wanted to share a few thoughts.\u00a0 This lens is an all manual […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[15,22],"tags":[163,164,11,10,162,161],"class_list":["post-1089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photos","category-shop","tag-f0-95","tag-fast","tag-m43","tag-micro-43","tag-nokton","tag-voigtlander"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p28RGq-hz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1089"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1094,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1089\/revisions\/1094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}