p.47 #1 · Official: Voigtlander 15mm f/4.5 III E-mount
I received my copy (e-mount) today, and here are some real quick and dirty sample shots taken nearby me in the rain. These are handheld jpegs, adjusted for brightness and white balance in Windows photos program since I don't have my MacBook with me.
I included a series of corner-to-corner-along-horizon shots taken at various apertures.
Would be interested to hear feedback on how this copy compares with the others. These are low res, but if anyone is interested I can upload the original 42MP Raw files as well.
p.47 #3 · Official: Voigtlander 15mm f/4.5 III E-mount
rongwam wrote:
Awesome! Wish I had the tool and courage to do the same on my CV15!
SK Grimes in Woonsocket, RI will do the work for you. Fred had gotten a price which I can not remember. They are a great machine shop (quite well known) that do machining for photographers even now years after Steve's passing. Adam and crew do excellent work:
p.47 #4 · Official: Voigtlander 15mm f/4.5 III E-mount
naturephoto1 wrote:
SK Grimes in Woonsocket, RI will do the work for you. Fred had gotten a price which I can not remember. They are a great machine shop (quite well known) that do machining for photographers even now years after Steve's passing. Adam and crew do excellent work:
p.47 #5 · Official: Voigtlander 15mm f/4.5 III E-mount
k-h.a.w wrote:
Thanks Rich. Sorry for answering this late. Yup, it seems that way.
Hiep (alias hiepphotog) and I took landscape comparison shots of the WATE of my stock A7r2 and a Kolari version 2 modified A7r2m.
To our eyes the A7r2m images are a definite improvement over the A7r2 images. When pixel peeping one can clearly see a small improvement in the corners.
My eyes also see an improvement in the images from both cameras from f/4 to f/5.6 to f/8 for all 3 focal lengths.
F/5.6 is clearly better than f/4. F/8 seems just a tad better again and is optimal, f/11 is very similar, then diffraction sets in more heavily.
Rich, currently I prefer using Capture One Pro 9.1.1, that unfortunately doesn't seem to have Lens Profile Corrections for the WATE. I sure haven't found them.
But I also use LR 6.4 with Camera Raw 9.4 and CS6 13.0.6 with Camera Raw 9.1.1.461.
I believe the two Adobe Camera Raw versions deliver very similar results.
To answer your question, yes, I have enabled the ACR 9.1.1.461 WATE Lens Profile Corrections for the different focal lengths and seen a significant improvement in the moustache distortion for all 3 focal lengths. But the corrections aren't perfect.
p.47 #6 · Official: Voigtlander 15mm f/4.5 III E-mount
They quoted me $65 for cutting the hood and painting it black. (similar to what Guy did)
naturephoto1 wrote:
SK Grimes in Woonsocket, RI will do the work for you. Fred had gotten a price which I can not remember. They are a great machine shop (quite well known) that do machining for photographers even now years after Steve's passing. Adam and crew do excellent work:
p.47 #8 · Official: Voigtlander 15mm f/4.5 III E-mount
Here are the quotes for various options I got from them back in September. I'm leaning toward having it done after seeing guys step-up ring solution.
Thank you for the inquiry about the Voigtlander SW Heliar 15mm 4.5 hood modification. We have a couple options for you:
1. Cut down the hood and paint the exposed aluminum edges – $65 (2 -3 wks)
2. Cut down the hood, strip the ring and send out for standard black anodizing. – $80 (3-4 wks)
3. Cut down the hood, strip the ring and send out for hard coat black anodizing, a more robust scratch resistant finish. – $220 (3-4 wks)
4. Fabricate a replacement ring with standard black anodizing. - $115 (6-8 wks)
5. Fabricate a replacement ring with a hard coat black anodizing. - $320 (6-8 wks)
p.47 #9 · Official: Voigtlander 15mm f/4.5 III E-mount
The bad part is the turn around time. Honestly it took me 20 minutes. The problem I have is obviously the curtting tool. It works but it's not elegant. If you do what I do with the step up ring than you will never see the cut but if you use the normal 58mm than the cut will be there. So you have to decide what you want before you send it out. If you want just a straight 58mm natural lens than really you should go for the more expensive options. I would at least go for the 80 dollar option if your staying 58mm
p.47 #11 · Official: Voigtlander 15mm f/4.5 III E-mount
RFisher wrote:
Guy I just noticed this thread and not up to date - Why was it necessary to cut the hood?
The petals (which are not removable) interfere with using filters- installing and removing, using a circular polarizer, ND filters, grad filters, and using multiple filters at the same time (which will probably require a step up ring or something like the Lee system).
p.47 #12 · Official: Voigtlander 15mm f/4.5 III E-mount
So at the step up ring to 67mm and I need to test this again you can use 1 glass round filter if you go to 72mm you can use 2 glass round filters or you can now use your Lee 7 filter system. I would say use a 58 to 72 step up than your Lee system just to be sure your not vignetting . I have not tried the Lee system so it may even work fine at 67mm
Bottom line I opened up every possible filter option by getting the petals off. They really serve no purpose whatsoever. Maybe fall protection but I doubt it.
p.47 #14 · Official: Voigtlander 15mm f/4.5 III E-mount
I have a chance to pick up a Ver. 3 in an Mount new in box for less than 550usd. For that price I am tempted to give it a try but the odds of getting a bad one are really making me think hard about it.
p.47 #15 · Official: Voigtlander 15mm f/4.5 III E-mount
Not sure about how much fall protection the hood would provide either, I recently dropped mine about a foot to a hard surface, the lens landed squarely on the edge of the hood and unfortunately the lens is now heavily decentered. The sad part is that my copy v3 in M-mount) was great even into the corners.
Thinking of getting it looked at, I reached out to the distributor here in Canada and they said they might need to send it bak to Japan, not sure it's worth the cost at this point.
p.47 #16 · Official: Voigtlander 15mm f/4.5 III E-mount
i tried slipping a 67mm to 72mm step up ring over the OUTSIDE of the petals, so that i could use a 72mm filter, but the outside diameter of the petals seems to be something like 68 or 69mm... i'm trying to think of a way to leave the petals but still use threaded filters
p.47 #17 · Official: Voigtlander 15mm f/4.5 III E-mount
So now that I have tested my copy which has some smearing, but only in the very extreme corners (edges are actually very sharp even on the short sides right up to the corners), the question I am asking myself - is this lens worth keeping given that I also have good copies of the L21 and FE16-35? My thinking was if I had a "choppy" then it would certainly be good to have as a small travel option. In some cases, depending on composition (eg sky or water in corners) I could get away with this without noticing the smearing, but in other cases I may need to slightly crop to eliminate it, which may defeat the purpose of having this in my kit. Then again, my style is I usually crop most shots slightly (to straighten verticals) or add vignetting in corners in post, so the small corner smear may be a non-issue most of the time. Who knows?
I decided I will give it a real world test shooting landscapes and city shots and see how much the corner smear really affects my images.
p.47 #18 · Official: Voigtlander 15mm f/4.5 III E-mount
Number 4 looks good so far. The first three were identical, 15 digits apart serially. This has a different prefix number sequence. At 5.6 and 8, the corners seem pretty good. Little loss of detail in the extreme corners, but no smearing.
Obviously light fall-off in the corners is significant.
How do other users feel this affects focus peaking when the box is in the corner? Only very high contrast objects peak. Typical? Cloudy day here.
I need to compare with photos from the Zeiss 15 2.8 ZE.
