Voigtlander 35/40mm f1.4 SC or MC??

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4 hours ago, timo01 said:

the „SC“ is my all time fav lens!!! I really enjoy the flares. 

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Nice!! 

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On 2/19/2025 at 3:48 PM, pippy said:

The inherent barrel distortion of the 35 Nokton was (as I've mentioned previously) the main reason I opted for the 40 as this lens has none worth mentioning.

As far as 'Glow' is concerned? I'll come back to that in a moment!

Unfortunately I can't comment on the 35mm as I've never owned one so have no personal experience with the lens.

My memory of just how 'bad' focus-shift was where the 40 Nokton is concerned was very hazy (pun) so I've just spent an hour or so carrying out focus tests on that lens as well as seven others all in the 35mm to 50mm range. The results were very interesting (for those who like this sort of thing!) and had a few surprises in store.

The first surprise was the extent of the 'Glow' inherent in the Summilux from f1.4 down to f2.8; FAR greater than I had expected and MILES more pronounced than seen with the Nokton. By f4.0 things had returned to what might be termed 'normal'.

The second big surprise was the performance of my 1953 50mm f1.5 Summarit (M). Quite 'Glowy' wide-open but very sharp by f2.8 and bitingly crisp below that mark. Astonishingly good performance; especially considering its particular optical design is nigh-on 100 years old(**)!

I won't go into all the details the tests showed-up but - as its germane to the thread - I will post some of the results obtained with the 40mm Nokton. Four tight crops of a test chart. The camera was set to 1m(*) and these shots are the results. Starting from top row left / right then bottom row L / R  at f1.4; f2.0; f2.8 and f4.0.

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On basis of these results there is nothing which would give me a moments worry when shooting at any of these apertures.

Hopefully this might have been of some interest.

Philip.

* The reason the distance was set to 1m rather than 0.7m was due to a few of the lenses having an MFD of 1m and I wished to keep things as standardised as possible.

** The Summarit was essentially (see italicised bit slightly below) a re-named post-WWII Xenon. That lens had first been released by Leitz in 1936 but the optics used a 1930 design by Horace William Lee who was an optics designer for Taylor, Taylor and Hobson. Leitz had licensed the use of the TTH design for their Xenon in order to be able to compete against the recently-made 50mm f1.5 Sonnar from Zeiss.

(To be completely pedantic there were actually 103 examples of the Summarit made before the outbreak of hostilities but the vast majority of the 74,000 lenses made dated to post-1949.)

EDIT : Just for the sake of info here's the full-frame set-up to give an idea of the crop area;

>>The inherent barrel distortion of the 35 Nokton was (as I've mentioned previously) the main reason I opted for the 40 as this lens has none worth mentioning.

Very good point!

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I went for the 35mm V2 MC version because I thought I could always slap a BPM filter or similar on it to reduce contrast, but cannot really do the other way around.