M9 and non leica lenses

[felix5616]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

I hope to be taking delivery of a Leica M 9 soon. My primary interest is to be able to use the following lenses:

Voigtlander 12mm f/5.6 lens

Zeiss 15mm. 18mm amd 25mm lenses.

what can i expect in terms of ease of use and performance? will i need to code these lenses? what might i need to do to optimize lens performance? has anyone used these lenses on a leica M9?, if you have i would like your insight/observations.

thanks

[lars_bergquist]

The 18 and 25mm lenses (both Zeiss, I suppose) work just fine on a M8 and will in all probability do so on the M9 too, but while coding is not absolutely necessary, you will soon tire of that lens menu. Have them coded.

 

The 12 C/V is reported to have problems; there is of course nothing comparable to code it as. So also with the C/V 15. The bizarre Zeiss is a no-runner: Very large, very heavy, very pricey, should be used with a center-graduated filter to counteract vignetting, which reduces actual light transmittance to 4.5, and no rangefinder coupling, which means you must really stop the thing down regardless!

 

The old man from the Age of the M2

[michali]

Welcome to the Forum.

 

Other than my arsenal of Leica lenses I've been using my M9 with the 12mm Voigtlander lens, the Voigtlander Nokton 35mm f1.2 and the Zeiss 50mm f1.5 Sonnar. All 3 lenses deliver excellent results, there's some slight cyan drift on the 12mm which I'm in the process of trying to find the best solution to. In fact I was out this morning experimenting with the M9 & the 12mm. I'll be posting some images later this evening.

 

In the mean time you can have a look at these 2 links:

 

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/leica-m9-forum/98466-m9-super-wide-135mm-samples.html

 

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/leica-m9-forum/99288-cyan-drift-c-v-12mm.html