Voigtlander 50mm f/1 VM

[Adam Bonn]

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The bokeh balls one was shot at request of someone on another forum, the lux has always ‘enjoyed’ a rep for cats eyes

the fire truck one I posted to show the field curvature focus effect, its largely irrelevant what’s in focus on the truck it’s the things behind it that shouldn’t be so sharp that I’m pointing out.

1 hour ago, M Street Photographer said:

The portrait is wonderful, this shallow softness, the charm of the transitions, a touch of romance

Thank you, a 50/1 wide open isn’t the easiest lens I think… there’s getting it in focus and of course what’s not in focus will be a huge part of the image, the look of this part of the shot will depend on subject distance and of course what it is, (say a forest vs an empty beach) but when the background is empty, the subject is acceptably sharp then the image looks great and one forgives the times one pushed their luck with focusing and busy backgrounds 

and RE sharpness slum it at (say) f2 and the 50/1 is (imho) very sharp

 

[J S H]

As I use this lens more frequently for work, I'm liking it more and more. It's great for informal product & food shots. You can throw almost any background out of focus if you are near MFD. I'm planning to experiment with it on my Sony system using a helicoid adapter, when time allows.

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[M Street Photographer]

I won't leave you alone with testing 

M10R VC 50 1.0 all f 1.0

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[M Street Photographer]

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[M Street Photographer]

As hard as I've tried, I don't see any mid-diffraction, or it's not there.
In all photos, the AF is where it is recognizable.

The only noticeable thing is the purple color fringes. The photos are developed in C 1 and the color fringes are not corrected.

The lens profile in C1 is generic, so no special selected. This pic f 4.0

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Edited February 28, 2023 by M Street Photographer

[LarsHP]

19 hours ago, M Street Photographer said:

I'm sorry to have to disagree with Adam. When I click double on the image (black background), on my monitor ( 4k Benq) I can clearly see the focus on the front, the first left door of the fire truck, the ladder and the man on the ladder.
If you're focused on the writing on the front (are you sure about that?), then it's a slight shift in the focus point, but that doesn't bother you in the slightest.
As a test, I would focus on a subject twice:
With a range finder, starting with the infinity setting and once with the Visoflex to see whether it is you or the lens, after that you will have security.

Sorry, but I fail to see where you two disagree? There are obvious signs of field curvature if you look at the building in the background. In the top right-hand corner, the very top of the building (near the edge of the image) is clearly more in focus than in the center of the image, where focus is around the middle of the truck (as you point out).

[LarsHP]

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15 hours ago, J S H said:

As I use this lens more frequently for work, I'm liking it more and more. It's great for informal product & food shots. You can throw almost any background out of focus if you are near MFD. I'm planning to experiment with it on my Sony system using a helicoid adapter, when time allows.

I suggest using a high quality two-element diopter instead. Something like Canon 500D for instance. Going far beyond the MFD will surely reduce image quality, but with a suitable "close focus filter", you can get great results.

[BastianK]

vor 23 Stunden schrieb Adam Bonn:

But that's not to complain about this lens, all lenses have some trade off and we need to remember that this is an optic with an FLE, a ground glass aspherical element, F1.0 and costs less than a 50 summicron (a lens I love and own)

I haven't had too much time to play with it at night yet... but it really seems to shine in low light

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and F1 has a charm that certainly adds a sparkle to a photograp

 

Sadly my eyes always get caught up in the wrongfully in focus corners here.

[Adam Bonn]

17 minutes ago, BastianK said:

Sadly my eyes always get caught up in the wrongfully in focus corners here.

Front FieldCurvature Syndrome (or as I like to call it FFS 😅)

Jokes aside a crop and/or an empty bg are your friend with this (and many other) lens(es)

Will you review it for PR?

 

[Adam Bonn]

25 minutes ago, LarsHP said:

Sorry, but I fail to see where you two disagree? There are obvious signs of field curvature if you look at the building in the background. In the top right-hand corner, the very top of the building (near the edge of the image) is clearly more in focus than in the center of the image, where focus is around the middle of the truck (as you point out).

+1

Pretty sure I said that even to the point of posting the picture as a demonstration of FFS in action (yeah i want that to catch on...)

The one Bastian is commenting on (I assume the first of the two shots..) is a little less erm black and white (sic) because the stuff on the left is closer to the camera than the right. This image could be cropped.

I'm happy with this lens, it's a tool to do a specialised job and I was very aware of the constraints (largely because of the FM thread which iirc you were quite vocal in Lars) before I bought it.

When things come together to enable it to do its job it does it very well IMO

[BastianK]

vor 11 Minuten schrieb Adam Bonn:

Front FieldCurvature Syndrome (or as I like to call it FFS 😅)

I will consider helping to establish that term 🙂

  

vor 11 Minuten schrieb Adam Bonn:

Jokes aside a crop and/or an empty bg are your friend with this (and many other) lens(es)

Will you review it for PR?

 

After Brexit it is more difficult for us to get Voigtländer review samples.
So since then some lenses I just bought to be able to write a review (e.g. 28mm 2.0 Type I),
but with a rather exotic 1.0/50 with a minimum focus distance of 0.9 m (not a fan!)
that has way less bokeh in the corners at the distances I care about than the smaller/way cheaper 1.2/50
I am not too keen on putting down a huge chunk of money to do that here.

So long story short: if someone decides to send me one for a few weeks: yes. Otherwise: not anytime soon.

Edited February 28, 2023 by BastianK

[Adam Bonn]

1 minute ago, BastianK said:

After Brexit it is more difficult

As a bloke who's lively hood is in the UK, yet lives in Europe don't get me started about Brexit difficulties...

Quite surprised that CV don't have a friendly German based dealer?

I suspect the 50/1.2 is the better optic from all I've read... however I have a 50 Lux ASPH (maybe it's better than that?) so I wanted a 50 with a full stop difference. Plus back when I was trying to do the M on a budget (ahahaha) I have very fond memories and some very shitty pictures from the 7artisans F1.1 so I fancied having that sort of thing in my life again...

AKAIK... (and I think you'd have the superior knowledge here...) very few 50mm lenses are blessed with a flat field of focus. (Of course large aperture ones exasperate the effect)

7 minutes ago, BastianK said:

I will consider helping to establish that term 🙂

👍

[BastianK]

vor einer Stunde schrieb Adam Bonn:

AKAIK... (and I think you'd have the superior knowledge here...) very few 50mm lenses are blessed with a flat field of focus. (Of course large aperture ones exasperate the effect)

Not sure this is the perfect place to discuss this as I guess most people come here to find out more about the VM 1.0/50,
but I will waste a few lines on this topic nevertheless.

Generally there are two main influence factors that determine how far out of focus the corner/border regions are compared to the center of the frame:
a) optical vignetting
b) field curvature

By my experience the latter is the more important one, but the first can make things even worse.

For optical vignetting one of the main influence factors I made out over the years is the diameter of the rear element.
Fast Leica M lenses are at an disadvantage here, the M-mount diameter isn't huge to begin with and additional space
is needed for the rangefinder coupling.
Leica's own super fast lenses (0.95/50, 1.25/75) are using pretty fancy mechanical designs to allow for a bigger diameter rear element,
Mr. Ding 50mm 1.1, MS-Optics 50mm 1.0 and Zhong Yi 50mm 0.95 M are pretty much using their (big) rear element as rangefinder coupling.
This design principle only works with 51.6mm lenses though.

I reviewed 16 different 50mm M-mount lenses over the years, 9 of those faster than f/1.4.
Out of those the Mr. Ding 50mm 1.1 shows the flattest field and also the (to my eyes) most pleasing bokeh.
It is followed by the VM 50mm 1.2 and MS-Optics 50mm 1.0.
The Zhong Yi 50mm 0.95 and TTArtisan 50mm 0.95 also do a surprisingly good job (they have other issues though).
Canon 50mm 1.2 LTM and MS-Optics 50mm 1.3 Sonnetar Slim are so so, with only the outmost corners being affected.
7Artisans 50mm 1.1 and MS-Optics 50mm 1.1 Sonnetar show this to a very high degree (from what I have seen so far
I would put the VM 1.0/50 and the Leica 1.0/50 in the same category).

For those that are really interested I put together a small comparison between MS-Optics 50mm 1.0 ISM and 1.1 Sonnetar,
two lenses of similar size, similar amount of optical vignetting but vastly different field curvature characteristics leading to
vastly different bokeh rendering:
https://phillipreeve.net/blog/bokeh-explained/#Field_Curvature

I haven't used the Voigtländer 50mm 1.1 and the super fast Leica lenses yet, so cannot comment on those in great detail.
Same is true for the other exotic vintage lenses like Canon 0.95/50, Hexanon 1.2/60, Fujinon 1.2/50 or Zunow 1.1/50.

Edited February 28, 2023 by BastianK

[Adam Bonn]

This coming Saturday will see my five week anniversary with this lens... I've used it a lot. (about 1900 frames)

I've taken some photos I'm really pleased with, some where F1 really made the image pop, others where I stopped it down and I probably could've used a different 50.

I've also taken a lot of oh I wonder what that would look like at F1 type photos and a quite a few I wonder if I can actually nail focus on that or not type photos too, often with surprising results, today three times I nailed focus on a moving cat at a couple of meters or so - on Monday I didn't quite get a fecking massive stationary fire truck in focus... Funny old world isn't it? 😅

I've had a lot of fun. The lens had fun, hell even the cats had fun 🙂

I've stubbornly stuck with the 50 when the 35 in my bag by my side would have been so much better (not that I went anywhere or did anything I can't easily repeat)

Today I got my turista para Portugal vibe on and went on a massive walk down through Ribeira to Gaia (the pretty bit you'll see if you google image search Porto) all the way down to Afurada (and back).

I played with wide open focusing (and stray cats) at a variety of distances. I tried to notice and learn when I might have problems with FFS and when not (still getting my head around that one)

I've made a LR lens profile (using adobe lens profile creator) that removes a nice big chunk of the vignette without correcting any distortion (DM* me if you want it)

On the whole to me this lens has been a resounding success, it does wide open things that my Lux can't quite manage, it's really very sharp and I've become very acquainted with the chomat cromat** erm purple haze Jimi Hendrix tool in LR, more so than any other lens I've ever had I think... 😏

This weekend I'm going away to a place that's not so repeatable.

Having considered it carefully.... 

I'm done playing with the 50/1 now. I own it. It's a tool to do a job when I need it. I have other tools.

This weekend it's staying at home. It'll probably be all 28/35 anyway and I'll chuck the 50 cron in the bag just in case I want a 50.

If anyone is reading this and wondering if this is the fast fifty for them... Well go read the Fred Miranda review and see what you think... 😁 But for my €0.02...

This probably couldn't be my only 50 on an M it's big, it's heavy it blocks a LOT of VF real-estate... it's not a one trick pony, not in the slightest and if one wants a modern ASPH/FLE performance on a fast 50 then this will tick a lot of those boxes and all for less coin than a new 50 cron costs..

...if however shallow DOF isn't of great concern, or not the highest priority then I suspect you would be better served with an alternative.

For me, for the first time in erm maybe ever, my GAS balance was in the black and I wanted to treat myself to something that normally I wouldn't really be able to justify, something a bit special and the FM review seduced me by showing that the CV outperformed the Noctilux in both physical size and IQ oh yeah and cost 😂 and I thought why the hell not 

If you're in a similar frame of mind then you'll probably be happy with it.

Here's some screen shots (so I can fit more images in one post) from today. All wide open or thereabouts, all shot using a 2 stop B+W ND filter.

*If you want just drop me a line on the forum.

** I can spell chromatic aberration really. Honest.

 

 

 

 

 

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[Adam Bonn]

ok two more

 

 

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Edited March 1, 2023 by Adam Bonn

[Ray Vonn]

The thing is, this lens is now becoming natively available for the Canikon mirrorless systems.  So if, like me, you also own a Nikon Z camera, the one or two perceived advantages such as the pinpoint 200% magnified focusing/ simple focus peaking and 0.45 MFD does make you wonder whether to go that route rather than the rangefinder.  On the other hand, the rangefinder provides the nicer experience and makes one think and prepare more, which more often than not will result in a better image.  I'm finding it difficult deciding which mount to invest in with this lens to be honest.

[Adam Bonn]

I had no clue about that Ray.

Well on the one hand the VM mount will adapt to other systems, but not vice versa however 0.45MFD is a big upgrade over the 90cm of the VM - to put that in perspective (sic) if you’re sitting across the table from someone in an intimate restaurant and you want that lovely candle lit portrait.. you’d better hope there’s some room to slide your chair back a bit if you want a head and shoulders picture, or else it’ll just be the head and no one needs a close up of their dandruff… 😁

The only real fly in the soup IMO ( it’s restaurant analogy week) is the FFS.. you can’t really un-see it once you’ve noticed it.. (and the purple fringing but that’s par for the course, even APO lenses can PF and at least there’s a tool to fix that in LR etc), you can crop it out, possibly dick around with a radial gradient mask and negative clarity/sharpening values to mitigate it… but it’s a massive PITA

If the canikon versions do anything to address this, then that might be reason enough to chose that mount

 

[BastianK]

vor 8 Stunden schrieb Adam Bonn:

If the canikon versions do anything to address this, then that might be reason enough to chose that mount

On Fredmiranda I actually found a picture of the RF version from the back: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1797443

Looks to me like it has the same small rear element as the M-mount version.

So my guess for the RF/Z versions: not a complete redesign, just adjusted element spacing while using the same
lens elements to accomodate for different filter stacks as best as possible considering these design restraints.
This is not unusual (also makes sense from a business PoV) and has been the case for most of the Cosina
lenses that are available for different mounts (exception: 50mm 2.0 Apo-Lanthar, but you have to go to
the Japanese Cosina page to find this out, as information on German/English Voigtländer page is wrong).

So long story short: I expect very similar performance from the Z and RF mount versions but
I would definitely recommend to get these native ones if you want to use them on those Canon/Nikon cameras,
as the difference in filter stack will make things worse when using the unoptimized M-mount version here.

Edited March 2, 2023 by BastianK

[Ray Vonn]

11 hours ago, Adam Bonn said:

FFS

I had to Google that, as you know that has a rather different meaning where we're from.

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[Adam Bonn]

42 minutes ago, Ray Vonn said:

I had to Google that, as you know that has a rather different meaning where we're from.

Whenever I see one of my pictures affected by Front FieldCurvature Syndrome I find myself thinking “oh FFS” 😅 (in both senses of the expression)