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Archive 2017 · The Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f/1.2 FE is coming!

Juha Kannisto
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p.22 #1 · p.22 #1 · The Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f/1.2 FE is coming!

GMPhotography wrote:
Just a thought folks focusing at 1.2 maybe very hard to do as its so dang paper thin. Maybe try at 1.7 or f2 that you maybe more used too and easier to nail the correct spot when focusing. You maybe getting thrown off by the fast speed. You don't want to stop down anymore than this as DOF could throw you off but try 1.7 and see if your nailing it better.

I'll try to refocus for each aperture on my next test, at least between f1.2 and f2, if the best focus position seems identical at every aperture I'll probably stop refocusing for narrower apertures from there. Now have my cameras and tripod but I stopped for a lunch. Need to find some reasonable place for the new aperture series. Overpasses are not good with tripod...

Oct 08, 2017 at 01:05 AM

DavidBM
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p.22 #2 · p.22 #2 · The Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f/1.2 FE is coming!

Juha Kannisto wrote:
I'll try to do some more aperture series today with a tripod, probably not the full test but something in that direction with both A9 and A7r (got some batteries charged now).

It's true that corner and edge resolution at f1.2 is not good but the peaking differences were obvious (my targets were street side buildings far away) , with best peaking at similar point where I get the best center.

The gold standard for this is focus bracketing: move the focus ever so slightly from infinity back a bit min a sequence of maybe five, in the corners, and again in the centre, and back on the computer choose the one that's best in the centre and best in the corners, then compare the centre of the best corner one with the centre of the best centre one and vice versa...

Oct 08, 2017 at 01:06 AM

DavidBM
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p.22 #3 · p.22 #3 · The Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f/1.2 FE is coming!

Oct 08, 2017 at 01:06 AM

Juha Kannisto
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p.22 #4 · p.22 #4 · The Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f/1.2 FE is coming!

DavidBM wrote:
The gold standard for this is focus bracketing: move the focus ever so slightly from infinity back a bit min a sequence of maybe five, in the corners, and again in the centre, and back on the computer choose the one that's best in the centre and best in the corners, then compare the centre of the best corner one with the centre of the best centre one and vice versa...

I'll have to something a bit quicker today as I won't have that much time before it gets dark... So I'm thinking of doing just one series with A9 focusing once on center and once on extreme corner for each aperture, with re-focusing at least between some apertures, and then another series on A7r.

Maybe I'll take some mobile shots showing the focusing position on the lens as well...

Oct 08, 2017 at 01:13 AM

DavidBM
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p.22 #5 · p.22 #5 · The Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f/1.2 FE is coming!

Why do the two cameras? I really can't see that the camera would make a difference to FC unless the stacks are different, which they aren't. Of course there might be a difference in colour cast but that's a different effect...I'd save time and just do A7r which will give you a bit more resolution.

Oct 08, 2017 at 01:16 AM

Juha Kannisto
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p.22 #6 · p.22 #6 · The Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f/1.2 FE is coming!

OK, I'll go with A7r as first priority, if it behaves noticeably differently than my A9 I'll do both.

Oct 08, 2017 at 01:21 AM

Juha Kannisto
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p.22 #7 · p.22 #7 · The Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f/1.2 FE is coming!

I shot some new aperture series at 4 different focusing positions between hard infinity and mid-point of 5m and infinity mark. In corner-series I put the target (top of a tall building) in left top corner and in center series I put the same target at center with tripod at the same position. (I couldn't find a very good place for infinity shots on tripod where center and corner targets would have been sufficiently / equally far away so I went with separate series for center and corner). I took some shots on my mobile to record the focusing positions on all series.

It seems that at f1.2 the best focus point on my A7r (for both center and corner) is around the middle of first loop of infinity symbol again but best corner focus moves towards hard infinity as aperture closes down, around f2.8 (or might be later) it reaches hard infinity. This is just from initial observations with the viewfinder, will look at the photos on my PC later at home.

Edited on Oct 08, 2017 at 03:19 AM · View previous versions

Oct 08, 2017 at 02:50 AM

philber
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p.22 #8 · p.22 #8 · The Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f/1.2 FE is coming!

Well, with the latest pics and David's very telling review, I have decided to take this lens off my to-buy list. Not that it isn't eminently desirable, but I am looking for a one-lens star, or a one of a two-lens kit with the 65mm CV. I am afraid the 40 is not that sort of all-rounder, or rather that I couldn't get it to perform like an all-rounder.
This means I am back to the Milvus 35, twice the cost and weight. Not such good news.
But if you have other suggestions, I am all ears. And thanks to all who put in excellent work for our collective benefit.

Oct 08, 2017 at 03:01 AM

baltmin
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p.22 #9 · p.22 #9 · The Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f/1.2 FE is coming!

philber wrote:
Well, with the latest pics and David's very telling review, I have decided to take this lens off my to-buy list. Not that it isn't eminently desirable, but I am looking for a one-lens star, or a one of a two-lens kit with the 65mm CV. I am afraid the 40 is not that sort of all-rounder, or rather that I couldn't get it to perform like an all-rounder.
This means I am back to the Milvus 35, twice the cost and weight. Not such good news.
But if you have other suggestions, I am all ears. And thanks to all who...Show more →

Probably it's too early to judge, as:

1) We don't know whether there is copy-variation in the amount of field curvature

2) There might be still a "sweet focusing spot" for optimal results for landscapes (the awaited tests will tell us).

It doesn't look like an "easy" lens to be used for landscapes, but we should not expect perfection in every aspect because of its size etc, as aforementioned. If there is a sweet focusing spot which optimises the infinity performance, I would be personally happy with the lens, given its reasonably satisfactory overall rendering.

Oct 08, 2017 at 03:48 AM

davewolfs
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p.22 #10 · p.22 #10 · The Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f/1.2 FE is coming!

At 1130 grams the Milvus isn’t particularly portable. Nearly 3 times the weight.

Oct 08, 2017 at 04:30 AM

DavidBM
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p.22 #11 · p.22 #11 · The Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f/1.2 FE is coming!

@philber @baltmin

I can already tell you that if you focus for the corners, you get quite good performance across the frame (though at wide apertures the centre is, ah, not so good).

You are much better off focussing for the corners than the centre if you are shooting stopped down.

This makes me hope there will be a sweet spot for even better across the frame performance...

Oct 08, 2017 at 04:56 AM

Juha Kannisto
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p.22 #12 · p.22 #12 · The Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f/1.2 FE is coming!

Here are my new test shot crops (square 5.05 inch x 5.05 inch crops exported with C1 Pro, default settings, no noise reduction):

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0BYrcxVNFdPNmRpS1ctMG1EQ1E

Test was performed with A7r and Nokton 40/1.2 on a tripod focusing at a top of a building that was more than 100m away from my position. I took separate sets of shots for extreme corner and center. I placed the same building-top at extreme corner in corner test and at center in center-test. The crops for extreme corner are extracted right from the corner, i.e. cropped off right at top and left edge border.

There were 4 aperture series run for corner and 4 aperture series for center.
Infinity-0 : Focus at hard infinity (lens will not allow focusing any further)
Infinity-1 : Focus at center of first loop of infinity symbol (my go-to focus position with this lens)
Infinity-2 : Focus at beginning point of infinity symbol
Infinity-3 : Focus between 5m and infinity symbol

Folder structure:
- Center (contains center crops from center series)
- Corner (contains corner crops from corner series)

In each top level folder:

- Infinity-0
Contains full series of crops at hard infinity & mobile shot showing focus position on lens.

- Infinity-1
Contains full series of crops at mid-point of first loop of infinity symbol & mobile shot showing focus position on lens.

- Infinity-2
Contains full series of crops at beginning point of infinity symbol & mobile shot showing focus position on lens.

- Infinity-3
Contains full series of crops between 5m and infinity symbols & mobile shot showing focus position on lens.

- Folders for each aperture
Contain crops from each aperture series for aperture given in folder name. First file with smallest number in filename is the Infinity-0 shot, the next one is Infinity-1 and so on.

I'm just now analyzing the files myself, will provide my conclusions in later post.

Sorry the mobile shots in corner folder are in the wrong order, now fixing it... Update: Fixed now.

Edited on Oct 08, 2017 at 05:23 AM · View previous versions

Oct 08, 2017 at 05:03 AM

Jonas B
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p.22 #13 · p.22 #13 · The Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f/1.2 FE is coming!

So far so good (with that I mean we have no bad news here compared to what we saw back in February). Thank you guys. I'm looking forward for more.

As mentioned this lens make me think about going back to the Sony A7x series of cameras. I have used the RX1 as my (nearly) only camera for a couple of years. At some point one needs to change the lens and the perspective on things. Of course, coming from the RX1 Sonnar 35/2 may make me more picky than I really should be.

Oct 08, 2017 at 05:21 AM

DavidBM
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p.22 #14 · p.22 #14 · The Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f/1.2 FE is coming!

Juha Kannisto wrote:
Here are my new test shot crops (square 5.05 inch x 5.05 inch crops exported with C1 Pro, default settings, no noise reduction):

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0BYrcxVNFdPNmRpS1ctMG1EQ1E

Test was performed with A7r and Nokton 40/1.2 on a tripod focusing at a top of a building that was more than 100m away from my position. I took separate sets of shots for extreme corner and center. I placed the same building-top at extreme corner in corner test and at center in center-test. The crops for extreme corner are extracted right from the corner, i.e. cropped off right at top and left edge border.

There were 4...Show more →

Is there going to be a way we can compare central sharpness on two images, with the same composition, where one is focused for the corner, and one focused for the centre?

But sounds like good work! One thing I’ve noticec is that differences in lens position that affect sharpness are sometimes so small that it’s hard, looking at the ring, to see a difference...

Oct 08, 2017 at 05:25 AM

baltmin
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p.22 #15 · p.22 #15 · The Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f/1.2 FE is coming!

Juha Kannisto wrote:
Here are my new test shot crops (square 5.05 inch x 5.05 inch crops exported with C1 Pro, default settings, no noise reduction):

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0BYrcxVNFdPNmRpS1ctMG1EQ1E

Test was performed with A7r and Nokton 40/1.2 on a tripod focusing at a top of a building that was more than 100m away from my position. I took separate sets of shots for extreme corner and center. I placed the same building-top at extreme corner in corner test and at center in center-test. The crops for extreme corner are extracted right from the corner, i.e. cropped off right at top and left edge border.

There were 4...Show more →

First of all thank you very much for your effort.

My observations (and one question):

1) The centre is always better at infinity-1

2) The corner is better at infinity-1 in apertures 1.2 until about 4.0 and at infinity-0 in smaller apertures (which is a bit strange but the difference is very hardly noticeable)

3) What about the mid frame? Does it follow the same pattern?

Oct 08, 2017 at 05:29 AM

Juha Kannisto
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p.22 #16 · p.22 #16 · The Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f/1.2 FE is coming!

baltmin wrote:
First of all thank you very much for your effort.

My observations (and one question):

1) The centre is always better at infinity-1

2) The corner is better at infinity-1 in apertures 1.2 until about 4.0 and at infinity-0 in smaller apertures (which is a bit strange but the difference is very hardly noticeable)

3) What about the mid frame? Does it follow the same pattern?

Thanks for your quick analysis! I agree that center is always best at infinity-1. And I figured that it's maybe at f3.5 where infinity-0 (hard infinity) got better than infinity-1 for corner and remains best at narrower apertures but it was still very close at f3.5.

I have not done any testing for midframe yet, I guess that calls for one more test tomorrow or so (we have a national holiday in Japan tomorrow).

Oct 08, 2017 at 05:37 AM

DavidBM
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p.22 #17 · p.22 #17 · The Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f/1.2 FE is coming!

Juha Kannisto wrote:
Thanks for your quick analysis! I agree that center is always best at infinity-1. And I figured that it's maybe at f3.5 where infinity-0 (hard infinity) got better than infinity-1 for corner and remains best at narrower apertures but it was still very close at f3.5.

I have not done any testing for midframe yet, I guess that calls for one more test tomorrow or so (we have a national holiday in Japan tomorrow).

OK this sort of makes some sense.
Corners are better focused behind the point where the centre is best. That’s the same with your lens and mine. Phew!

The actual position on the focus ring that this corresponds to is the kind of thing which is very likely to be subject to copy to copy variation.

The only surprising thing is that you on,y notice the improvement in the corners at smaller apertures: that suggests focus shift in the corners (different focus position is optimal at different apertures) and my copy has no focus shift; as you can see from the series above the corner focus is better for the corner at all apertures than the centre focus.

Oct 08, 2017 at 05:48 AM

Juha Kannisto
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p.22 #18 · p.22 #18 · The Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f/1.2 FE is coming!

DavidBM wrote:
Is there going to be a way we can compare central sharpness on two images, with the same composition, where one is focused for the corner, and one focused for the centre?

But sounds like good work! One thing I’ve noticec is that differences in lens position that affect sharpness are sometimes so small that it’s hard, looking at the ring, to see a difference...

Thanks!

Can't really do that comparison on 2 images with same composition with today's series because I had to change composition for corner shots vs. center shots. If I had found a very good location for infinity shots I would have tried to keep the composition but I can't shoot from nearby overpasses with a tripod and street views are not optimal for infinity shots as there are buildings on both sides that are much closer than the far-away middle. I also didn't have a lot of time to search for best infinity shooting location.

I first shot another series on a streetside but I wasn't really happy with the distance for center and distance to corner (across the stret, much closer) and my corner targets were not very well defined targets, was hard to get any peaking etc. Then I switched the target to this one that I finally went with.

Oct 08, 2017 at 07:07 AM

Juha Kannisto
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p.22 #19 · p.22 #19 · The Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f/1.2 FE is coming!

DavidBM wrote:
OK this sort of makes some sense.
Corners are better focused behind the point where the centre is best. That’s the same with your lens and mine. Phew!

The actual position on the focus ring that this corresponds to is the kind of thing which is very likely to be subject to copy to copy variation.

The only surprising thing is that you on,y notice the improvement in the corners at smaller apertures: that suggests focus shift in the corners (different focus position is optimal at different apertures) and my copy has no focus shift; as you can see from the series above...Show more →

Yes, my corners seem to get better at further position than centre as the aperture is closed down, but I think at least on wide apertures the best focus-position for centre and corners is very close on my lens even if not 100% identical. So close that I couldn't reliably tell the difference by looking at focus placement vs. lens markings at wide apertures at least on my A9. I didn't really spend much time evaluating or optimizing the focus positions on my A7r once I decided to do the test with fixed aperture positions close to each other. Would need some more testing to confirm the situation on the same photos at center and corner with suitable infinity target, but I think from this test it was already clear that the optimal positions would be very close to each other near hard infinity, requiring some very delicate finetuning only.

So it seems somehow different from your corner and center result where there is a big difference when focused on center vs. when focused on corner especially at wide apertures and the gap on optimal focusing position on lens for center and corners seems much wider. I agree that the position differences for center and corner are in the same direction (i.e. further position is best for corners vs. slightly closer position for center).

If the weather allows I'll try to test some more tomorrow

Oct 08, 2017 at 07:31 AM

Juha Kannisto
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p.22 #20 · p.22 #20 · The Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f/1.2 FE is coming!

I ran some of my test shots from today (original full JPEGs) via Exiftool to check what is reported as focus distance (if there was such info, I had not looked into it earlier), as I was curious about it.

From Exiftool's output I found parameters called "Focus Position 2" and "Focus Distance 2" that gave these values from my 4 different focusing distances:

Focus Position 2:
255 (Infinity-0 series)
233 (Infinity-1 series)
208 (Infinity-2 series)
208 (Infinity-3 series)

Focus Distance 2:
Inf (Infinity-0 series)
30.29m (Infinity-1 series)
10.28m (Infinity-2 series)
10.28m (Infinity-3 series)

Corresponding Corner and Center series had same values reported in EXIF, but values for Infinity-2 and Infinity-3 are exactly same though there was a clear difference at focusing point so this is not super accurate. Anyway, at least there was no focus difference between the Corner and Center series to the level that would be detected by Camera's distance measurement system

Oct 08, 2017 at 08:37 AM

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