I begun to try the Voightlander 12mm (the new one) // It looks OK

[Benoit Petot]

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I got my 12mm last Friday (3 months late versus the Cosina announcement) and I did this Week-End my first trials. Until now it’s almost perfect. At least the value/price is very good and the results are better than I expected. Before sharing my thought, let me say that I’m an amateur and that I judging my stuff versus my own needs, expectations and real life photos and not from a theorical point of view.

 

1 – Picture Deformation

There is no deformation at my level of observation. To try the red corner I’ve taken a lot of pictures of a wall covered by square white tiles, when photographed horizontally the squares are squares even in the corners and even when taking the pictures from 0.5m (2 feet). Evidently when you’re not handling the camera straight or if the balance between foreground and background is too “unbalanced”, you’ll have “LA effect” but that’s a “point of view issue”, not a “lens issue”. If you avoid round or square objects in the corner of a foreground, everything is fine.

 

1 – Red-Corners & Coding

I tried first the lens as uncoded, then as a WATE then as a 21mm Pre-ASPH.

· I got red-magenta corners with the 2 firsts.

· At f5.6 (max aperture), the corners are very small & clear (perfectly acceptable)

· At f8, they are invisible

 

3 – Red border

At 5.6, I’ve red-border on the left, this border is very small (visible on +/- 2cm when printed on A3).

· This border disappears when I stop down of 0.5 EV

· It’s very easy to suppress with LR (Beta 3.2) by a adding a Yellow-Green Graduated Filter

 

Although this border is acceptable, I don’t understand why I’ve an asymmetrical defect:

· If the defect is due to the “global” performance of the lens we should have it in the 4 corners

· If it’s due to a defect of “centricity” (alignment of all the glasses), I wonder if the defect is specific to my lens or if it is within the tolerance margins of the manufacturing. Does anyone observe a similar defect ? I’ll check that with my reseller either by checking with another lens or asking to the Voightlander-Cosina Technical Support.

 

3 – Aperture

The 5.6 aperture may seem small, but:

· No so long ago this was the standard aperture for the High-Quality LA

· As the focal is very short, we can use very low speed (I took picture hand-held at ¼ second and they are still very sharp)

· With this type of lens we are not looking for short DOF (Bokeh ?)

· As the M9 behaves very well at 600/1200 Iso, I find this aperture acceptable. I did pictures in my cellar (short distance & poorly light), and I can still print over A4.

 

Moreover, I do prefer a smaller lens (lighter, with less surface sensible to flare …) and discreet than a “big lense”. With this lense & its viewfinder the M9 (I’ve a black one ) is still very “leicahish”.

 

4 - View-finder & Rangerfinder-Coupling

The coupling of the rangefinder works well, but do we need it as the DOF as full-aperture is already large enough to cover all the distance between 0.7m & inifinity.

 

The dedicated viewfinder is very sharp and very clear (with and without eyeglass).

· It’s small, black & round.

· It’s by far better than my 24mm Leica finder.

 

5 – Real-Pictures tests

I’ve taken pictures in very different conditions

 

Inside with:

· fluo lighting (office environnement),

· standard tungsten

· natural light thru the windows

· & low light (my cellar & my photolaboratory).

Outside:

· Early shoots to see how the lens behaves with a high difference of color & intensity between east & west

· Within a shaded area

· Standard june Paris sun

 

I’v even taken pictures of people and the are interesting (not ridiculous).

 

Everything is fine and acceptable.

 

6 – Light measurement & exposition

That’s probably the biggest issue. With the very broad field covered by the lens, my first pictures were often over or under exposed.

I did the last batches using the “preshooting measurement” and it’s fine.

 

Anyway it’s not difficult to think a little before shooting or use a +1 / - 1 bracketing.

 

7 – Post-Processing

I do almost all my pictures in RAW, process them with LR and print with an Epson 3880. Why use a 18Mpixel camera if it’s to publish the pictures in Landscape only 12” 800*1200 LCD screen ?

 

The Post-Processing allows to correct very easily all the color defects.

 

But the largest interest is the perspective control (in the waiting of the final LR 3, I’m using ShiftN). I corrected this way between 15 & 25% of my pictures:

· Either to reduced the “convergence of verticals to an acceptable degree

· Or to redress completely the perspective.

After this operation (and the cropping induced to get a rectangular picture), the lens is equivalent to a 15-18 mm with two additional benefits:

· A perfect geometry (almost the decentring of a 90mm on a 4”x5” Large Format camera)

· No red corners at all (they are cropped)

 

And still you can print at A3 in color & A2 in Black & White

 

8 – Lessons learned & does it worth to buy it

It’s not an easy lens to work, but It’s not very difficult either. It’s a bit harder to control than the 24/2.8 but it’s easier than the 75/1.4 (if compare an LA & a tele-portrait means something).

 

The lens cost less than 1000€ (690 for the lens & 300 for the finder). As it will weight for 2 to 5% maximum of my pictures (25% on the 35, 25% on the 24, 25% on the 75mm & 10% on the 50%) that’s a good ROI.

 

Do would I prefer a Leica one ? Probably not (except if I won at the lottery): I believe that this 12mm + the new 35mm are, for 5000€, a better set than 2 medium lenses at 2000€.

 

I definitely would advise to buy it (after the 24mm). It brings for not too much money a new dimension to your M9.

 

Let look at my next pictures with it.

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[Nikkor AIS]

Thanks for the information , have you got some photo's to share? Im presently using the 15 4.5 ASPH and would love to go wider still.

 

Gregory

[Benoit Petot]

I'll convert some ASAP. But I'm a paper guy so I usually don't do Jpeg, and I'm doing lab job only the week-end. So you'll have to wait a little.

[adan]

"3 – Red border....

Although this border is acceptable, I don’t understand why I’ve an asymmetrical defect:

· If the defect is due to the “global” performance of the lens we should have it in the 4 corners

· If it’s due to a defect of “centricity” (alignment of all the glasses), I wonder if the defect is specific to my lens or if it is within the tolerance margins of the manufacturing. Does anyone observe a similar defect ?"

 

Yes - the asymmetry shows up with some Leica-made lenses as well. No one has come up with a single accepted explanation yet, just theories.

[Alnitak]

I've had one of these since they first hit the US about two months ago. I'm eventually going to be writing up a review, but at the moment life has intervened. Here's a set of images taken with both the new M-mount version and the old screw-mount version:

 

Voigtlander Ultra-Wide Heliar 12mm f/5.6 - a set on Flickr

 

Most of your observations agree with mine. As for red edge, that's been beat to death here. In my experience, stopping down has no effect on this problem with any lens. Otherwise I would say our experiences are similar.

 

However, I would personally recommend the screw-mount version. It focuses closer (0.3 vs. 0.5m), its much smaller, and after trying over half a dozen copies, its sharper in the corners--a LOT sharper. This even though the M version has the same optics. My suspicion is that implementing the M version has introduced some variable that makes the M versions softer in the corners.

 

Jeff