I purchased the 21/f4 Voigtlander about 3 weeks ago. This lens is excellent! Better than my 25 Skopar since the 21 is rangefinder coupled. I went to the D-Day Museum in New Orleans on Wednesday. I don't like to use flash, so I shot mainly wide open at f/4. I love the results. Better than I was expecting since this is not a Leica lens. Well, I could not afford the 21/f2.8 Elmarit. I posted some photos on photo.net.

Anyone else used this lens yet???

http://www.photo.net/photodb/presentation?presentation_id=87594

-- chris a williams (onetreehillclw@compaq.net), June 09, 2001

Answers

Chris:

Very nice photos! I want to see more! Have you shot any slides yet with this lens

-- Muhammad Chishty (applemac97@aol.com), June 09, 2001.

Chris,

Thank you for the photos. I am considering this lens simply because I might only use it 5% of the time, and I could not justify the price of a real Leica lens in this focal length. Your environmental "real world" shots look very good. Have you done any testing of the lens' ability to render straight lines accurately? The first shot with the flag shows some keystone effect, but that might have been induced by the camera angle... right?

Thanks again for the post.

-- Al Smith (smith58@msn.com), June 09, 2001.

Here is a response a Leica-User, whose opinion I value highly: ------------------------ I tried out Tom's lens a little while ago. In general it seems excellent, with good contrast and resolution right from wide-open. Only in the center does the SA 3.4 seem a bit sharper. Under most circumstances it is quite flare resistant, but very occasionally severe flare can be induced by having the sun in just the right place in the picture. The 21 ASPH is very similar in overall performance (my 21 SA has a bit higher resolution in the center) but is better at f/4 and of course at f/2.8, and is definitely better with respect to flare control. However, the ASPH has some definite distortion of the compound curve variety, a typical characteristic of retrofocus designs, while the 21 Cosina is almost as good as the SA. The 21 Cosina is, of course, also slightly retrofocus, but a lot less so than the 21 ASPH. The interesting thing is that the Cosina has about as little light falloff as the ASPH. All in all a very good performance. These comparisons were made on just 3 rolls of Delta 100, so not very exhaustive.

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Cheers,

-- John Collier (jbcollier@powersurfr.com), June 11, 2001.