What are your experiences with the Voigtlander (spelling?) lenses? I just bought a new m6-TTL (after years of shooting hassy, not to replace, but to complement) and the V 35mm 1.7 aspher. lense (mainly due to price and a few people who told me they actually prefer it to the leica 35mm lenses). The lense works well, but it will be some time before i can draw any absolute conclusions, much less any relative ones to leica lenses. Are there other sites i might look into for threads on this subject. thanks, tony.

-- tony roth (chebaby@hotmail.com), February 24, 2000

Answers

Tony,

I recently bought the 15mm Heliar for use with my M bodies. So far, I'm very impressed with the negatives. Cannot say I've used it enough to really get a good feel for the capabilities, but my initial evaluation is that it's a very good, well made lens. And the viewfinder is wonderful.

Samy's Camera had a really low price on it, substantially lower than either B&H or other NY stores.

BTW, I asked a similar question on this site before buying the Heliar , asking for others' experiences, and it went unanswered. Oh, well.

Wish you better luck, Sergio.

-- Sergio Ortega (s.ortega@worldnet.att.net), February 26, 2000.

To follow up on Sergio's point - most Leicaphiles buy Leicas for the lenses - quite right too, so putting other manufacturer's lenses on it rather defeats the purpose - hence I suspect the lack of responses. Certainly there is no doubt that the Heliar is a great deal though - I too contemplate buying one. However I think it would be a mistake to think that it will really seriously compare to either the Hologon for the Contax or the Super-Elmar-R 15mm (or 19mm Elmarit- R). I think if you are set up for this then you will not disappointed. I suspect it will not be good wide open at the edges and I too wonder about vignetting. Voigtlander want to make money on this lens so I do feel that its low price must indicate that it is not really of current Leica quality. This will not stop me buying one - but I do not think you will get something for nothing. I have a 21mm and find the performance of that noticeably inferior to the 28mm Elmarit and 50mm Summicron, so I suspect that a non-Leica 15mm will be worse. Don't expect miracles - but buy it for fun.

-- Robin Smith (rsmith@springer-ny.com), February 28, 2000.

I appreciate both your responses. Robin, you are actually the first person that I have heard compare the voigtlander negatively to the leica. I have heard ancecdotal evidence that the voigtlander is a bit more contrasty than the leica, but not heard anyone say that one is better than the other overall in terms of actual performance. Indeed, I would have thought that Leica devotees would be actively interested in comparing notes on high-performance, alternative, low cost lenses.

In any case, I just purchased the 90mm 2.0 apo asph leica, and I would be very curious to compare its performance to a voigtlander, but i don't think they currently are producing a lense of that length. Too bad, since it might perform similarly and would probably cost 1/4 the price!

-- tony roth (chebaby@hotmail.com), February 29, 2000.

Tony

To clarify, I have the Leica 21mm which is not as good as the 28mm or 50mm Leica lenses - hence my degree of scepticism about the Heliar. It might well be a good 15mm, I don't know, but ultra-wides are devils to make. The Heliar offers such a lot for the price that I find it difficult to believe that it can seriously compare with such highly expensive lenses as the Super Elmar-R or the Hologon (for either the Contax or the original Contax/Leica). I don't mind - but do not expect miracles. I doubt that it will compare even vaguely with your 90mm ASPH Summicron which is probably now the best lens made by Leica (perhaps just beating out the 100mm Elmarit Apo-Macro- R). It stands to reason.

-- Robin Smith (rsmith@springer-ny.com), March 02, 2000.

You can find tests of the 15, 25 and 50 by well-known Leica expert Erwin Puts by clicking here.

The report is summed up by this statement in the review: All three give better imagery than first class lenses 10 years ago and clearly show the direction of the Cosina designers: Astounding value for the money.

Also, regarding comments above about vignetting with the 15 - all ultra-wide angle lenses have light falloff regardless of design, it's just physics. This is what the 15 exhibits according to all published accounts. I have one, but the M adapter is backordered, so I can't report on personal usage.

-- Jeff Spirer (jeffs@hyperreal.org), March 05, 2000.

Just a thing I've seen on the website www.tamarkin.com They sell the ZEISS 15mm f/8 Hologon with finder and caps for the Leica M system !! I sent an email at their technical support and they replied that this lens was modified by a Leica tech to fit the Leica M mount and it is supposed to work well... I donnot know what to think about it, however, here is the answer that I have from them:

" The Hologon is custom adapted by one of the world's leading Leica technicians. This requires removing Contax mount installing Leica mount with proper shimming, etc., and carefully milling away part of focus lever that otherwise hangs up onpreview lever, as well as part of rear lens collar so M6 meter will not be obstructed ".

Regards Minh Nhat

-- Minh Nhat (chrisminh@free.fr), March 08, 2000.

Apropos Erwin Putz's review. I sense that he is actually rather lukewarm about the 15mm and of course he has no Leica 15mm to compare it to. About the other Voigtlanders he seems much more positive. My feeling is is that I still stand by my prediction above about its quality.

Anyway, however you look at it, they are all great bargains and I am sure I will buy a 15 Heliar one day.

-- Robin Smith (rsmith@springer-ny.com), March 08, 2000.

I have both the 15mm and the 75mm Voigtkander lenses and I am very happy with them. They have a different 'quality' to the images when compared with my leica 35mm summilux asph, but they are good, usable lenses. I have had discussions with people who have met the cosina designer and he is a real enthusiast offering a real alternative for M users. The main criticism I have of the 75 is that it needs a focussing tab. The 15 is great but it needs careful use.

Julian

-- Julian Thomas (mimesis@btinternet.com), April 04, 2000.

Julian

"The 15 is great but it needs careful use"

Could you elaborate? Flare? Vignetting" optimum aperture. Putz says 5.6 is optimum. Anything else?

Thanks!

-- Robin Smith (rsmith@springer-ny.com), April 12, 2000.

When you get down to it, the only thing that matters is the photos, not the test reports or all the yacking on the net. So here's one taken with the 15mm. Oh, and ultra-wides always require more care, even a little real shooting will tell you that. There's light falloff and all the usual compositional issues.

This is cropped to a "panoramic" format because I was unable to keep the chain link fence out I had to shoot through out of the corners.

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), April 18, 2000.

Jeff

I take your point, but let us face it, it is impossible to tell from your photo how good the lens is as any screen image is hopeless at this. I have no doubt that the perspective of the 15mm produces interesting pictures, as yours shows, but I learn little from your shot as to whether I will be happy about the quality of the image.

-- Robin Smith (rsmith@springer-ny.com), May 04, 2000.

I think my point was missed.

The photo is good or it isn't. The presentation vehicle is not an issue unless it is a photo that doesn't present itself well in the given medium (very complex and very minimalist photos fail on the screen, for instance, and very complex photos also fail in small prints.)

Of all the photos I possess, my favorite is one that I found in a junk store for fifty cents. It was probably taken in the thirties, it had water damage and had been folded numerous times. I've had it over twenty years (and I recently did a copy and cleaned it up somewhat.) I have no idea if it was taken with anything better than a Brownie, but it doesn't matter.

One could make a good analogy with music. Most people listen to recorded music. One cannot identify the quality of a violin being used in an orchestra from a recording, yet most people will ooh and ahh over a great performance. Whether or not a great violin or a teaching violin was used (and this does happen, my grandfather used his teaching cello on a Toscanini recording) will not matter - in the hands of a master, the performance is what counts, and if it is heard on a recording instead of live, it is ultimately the total quality.

Many years ago, Andreas Feininger (who did use Leicas and also home- built large format cameras) published a book of his photographs in which all the photographs were taken with a cheap consumer SLR. He never told anyone until well after the book was successful and had been praised in many photographic circles.

I have strived to make photographs resembling pinhole shots with my Mamiya 7 (and succeeded, at least once), and have used disposables to make what I think are good architectural shots.

Once again, in the end, we only have photographs. And the Voigtlander lenses make fine photographs. If someone wants to drool over MTF charts and test slides, that's fine, but I don't think it has anything to do with fine photographs.

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), May 04, 2000.

Jeff

Well, of course, you are right, but we all know that there are many pictures where you feel it is important to have, say, edge to edge sharpness, others it matters not a bit. It is just a question of what you prefer. I agree art speaks and we listen, but probably 90% of photos I take are not "art" in the sense that you mean, but are pleasant composition/record types of shots that mean something to me and may be interesting to others, or may not. For these it is always best to start off with a well-corrected lens.

"Leica folk" are famously obsessed with optical qualities - it is a small vice in the grand scheme of things I think. It isn't really saying anything more or less about Art with a capital A. After all some artists were obsessed by image sharpness and contrast too, Ansel Adams comes to mind - others are/were not, Walker Evans or Cartier Bresson come to mind here. Which one of them is better?

-- Robin Smith (rsmith@springer-ny.com), May 05, 2000.

Are all "Leica folk" obsessed with optical qualities? I don't think so. A primary motivator is the feel of the camera, and as the only small rangefinder (and I do not include autofocus cameras in this category) that was reasonably rugged over the last thirty years, there were a whole lot of other reasons to use it than optical quality.

Regarding sharp vs not sharp, I find Adams' images to be very sharp and ultimately, very boring. Sharpness (and other technical qualities) do not make a photograph interesting. And many Leica photographers like Abbas, Scianna (I'm guessing on Scianna's camera, but I can't imagine being wrong on this), Maraini (whose new book has a very unsharp image on the cover) frequently have unsharp images, sometimes their most effective images. I was initially attracted to Scianna's work because of one of his images, a Sicilian penitent crawling up stairs, not sharp anywhere and further blurred by subject motion. One of the greatest images I have ever seen.

And when I'm really concerned about technical qualities, which I am sometimes, I shoot 6x7. It's a whole lot better than 35mm in terms of optical qualities.

Here's an interesting comparison of two photos taken at the same location. Tony is familiar with these, and we have had an exchange on it. One is technically pretty terrible by the standards of the Ansel Adams crowd. The other is technically pretty good, although it needs to be scanned better since I burned out the highlights on the scan (these are both neg scans.) I know which I like better.

Post-Nuclear, )2000 Jeff Spirer, Hexar RF, 50/2 Hexanon

The Auditorium, )2000 Jeff Spirer, Mamiya 7, 43mm

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), May 05, 2000.

I've got both the 15 and the 35. The 15 is amazingly good for what it costs and what it does. I don't find it defective in any sense, and it's a lot of fun. The thing you have to be careful of is putting important objects near the corners, where they can get real pulled out of shape (that's a function of w/a lenses which aren't fisheyes. It's perspective, not distortion.)

The 35 is not quite good enough for me wide open, but I got it thinking it would be OK at f/2, and it is. Stopped down just a bit further it's great. Tests seem to place it ahead of the less recent Leica lenses, and comparing shots to an old 35 Summilux I used to have, the Voigtlander is definitely superior wide open.

Both lenses are built extremely well, and the finders rival the Leica finders and are cheaper. If I buy a Leica 28 I'll probably buy the Voigtlander finder to go with it.

-- Michael Darnton (mdarnton@hotmail.com), May 11, 2000.

Whoops, forgot to close the center tag.

Sorry.

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), May 11, 2000.