No comment on his findings. Just thought you might be interested in knowing what's out there.
I love this lens. I have only had mine for a few weeks, but have been very impressed by it. I love the focal length. I love the rendering. I love the low light capability. I love the small size relative to its speed. I love that it makes me think when I use it. I am a big fan.
Nov 05, 2018 at 08:52 PM
imagesfromobjects Offline • • • • Upload & Sell: Off
That's odd that it was just posted today. I disagree with pretty much the entire assessment, and 95% of the comments posted, but hey. He claims it's "hazy" and "unsharp" wide open. I don't share that experience - even in the EVF things pop into crisp focus. Hmph.
Folks here and on that site seem to dwell in two separate bubbles, I guess. No skin off my back.
I just ended my personal moratorium on using only the new CV21 (something I try to do for a couple weeks to learn the vocabulary of a new lens) and brought the 40/1.2 along to my pre-school doc gig today. Rain + indoor + moving kids makes 3.5 a tough sell. I'm still very much smitten with the 40/1.2. The best thing about it, is that even if you miss focus it still looks cool as f*** like a painting, but when you nail it, it feels like winning the Olympics. And the payoff is GOLD.
The one thing I agree with in the SAR post, is that this is a lens you really have to devote yourself to. Sure, I scrap a lot of pics, but today I shot a little over 200 (burst mode is a magical thing) and got at least 75 solid keepers.
imagesfromobjects wrote:
The one thing I agree with in the SAR post, is that this is a lens you really have to devote yourself to. Sure, I scrap a lot of pics, but today I shot a little over 200 (burst mode is a magical thing) and got at least 75 solid keepers.
My thoughts exactly. Seems like he's just angry he still haven't learned to focus manually and blames the lens. Sure it's a bit challenging lens, but that's what makes it even more rewarding to shoot with.
The SAR guy may be unhappy that the 40/1.2 is hard to focus for what he shoots. A lot of camera users are pretty reductionist this way, they look first for operational excellence and sharpness isolated from pictorial quality. The sheer pictorial power weighs on their minds however, because their visual faculties tell them something very different from what their assessment criteria are telling them - it's a classic left brain, right brain cognitive dissonance.
The images he posts have high order visual qualities, they are excellent in this critical respect. If you have these qualities working in harmony, you have something special, something outside the usual concerns of the review community and beyond most mainstream lenses. CV are making lenses that are as well-balanced as CZ and Leica, but are audacious and have great ergonomics. They are the industry leaders now, IMHO.
All this is not elitist opinion, but it is often painted that way by those who have different modes of seeing, which are of course respectable. We differ widely in our visual modes and preferences, but the better manual focus lenses are the breeding ground for advanced imaging, because these makers know their clientele very well; they are people who want to engage fully with their harder to focus lenses to produce superior images. How else would they survive in an AF obsessed world?
philip_pj wrote:
The SAR guy may be unhappy that the 40/1.2 is hard to focus for what he shoots. A lot of camera users are pretty reductionist this way, they look first for operational excellence and sharpness isolated from pictorial quality. The sheer pictorial power weighs on their minds however, because their visual faculties tell them something very different from what their assessment criteria are telling them - it's a classic left brain, right brain cognitive dissonance.
The images he posts have high order visual qualities, they are excellent in this critical respect. If you have these qualities working in harmony, you have something special, something outside the usual concerns of the review community and beyond most mainstream lenses. CV are making lenses that are as well-balanced as CZ and Leica, but are audacious and have great ergonomics. They are the industry leaders now, IMHO.
All this is not elitist opinion, but it is often painted that way by those who have different modes of seeing, which are of course respectable. We differ widely in our visual modes and preferences, but the better manual focus lenses are the breeding ground for advanced imaging, because these makers know their clientele very well; they are people who want to engage fully with their harder to focus lenses to produce superior images. How else would they survive in an AF obsessed world? ...Show more →
Very well said! I love technical perfection but intangibles out weigh the technical side of my mind. I love the rendering of Voigtlander lenses, I also have several CV lenses for my MFT bodies. I have other lenses that are so sharp and the AF is blistering fast, but they don’t come near the images I get from my Voigtlanders. My Loxia 21 is in the same category. When people see the images from these two companies, they immediately recognize that I wasn’t using any ordinary lens. The images from Voigtlander stand out and they make me smile, and hopefully others as well.
Nov 07, 2018 at 10:20 PM
imagesfromobjects Offline • • • • Upload & Sell: Off
No comment on his findings. Just thought you might be interested in knowing what's out there.
I love this lens. I have only had mine for a few weeks, but have been very impressed by it. I love the focal length. I love the rendering. I love the low light capability. I love the small size relative to its speed. I love that it makes me think when I use it. I am a big fan. ...Show more →
The flare in the last shot looks mostly like sensor flare to me.
philip_pj wrote:
The SAR guy may be unhappy that the 40/1.2 is hard to focus for what he shoots. A lot of camera users are pretty reductionist this way, they look first for operational excellence and sharpness isolated from pictorial quality. The sheer pictorial power weighs on their minds however, because their visual faculties tell them something very different from what their assessment criteria are telling them - it's a classic left brain, right brain cognitive dissonance.
The images he posts have high order visual qualities, they are excellent in this critical respect. If you have these qualities working in harmony, you have something special, something outside the usual concerns of the review community and beyond most mainstream lenses. CV are making lenses that are as well-balanced as CZ and Leica, but are audacious and have great ergonomics. They are the industry leaders now, IMHO.
All this is not elitist opinion, but it is often painted that way by those who have different modes of seeing, which are of course respectable. We differ widely in our visual modes and preferences, but the better manual focus lenses are the breeding ground for advanced imaging, because these makers know their clientele very well; they are people who want to engage fully with their harder to focus lenses to produce superior images. How else would they survive in an AF obsessed world?...Show more →
Philip, I always look forward to reading your insightful posts but this one resonated strongly. I suspect that even knowledgeable photographers would balk at your assertion—no matter how humbly it was expressed—that Cosina Voigtlander are now the industry leaders in producing manual focus lenses, surpassing Carl Zeiss and Leica, the two erstwhile heavyweights. Yet I believe that you are absolutely correct. CV have been on a roll for some time now, particularly with their VE lenses: 21/3.5, 35/1.4, 40/1.2, 65/2, and 110/2.5. Of these, the 35/1.4 was the only focal length that was of interest to me personally and, as it turned out, I didn’t care for its rendering. But the ergonomics were a revelation and, consequently, I’ve already pre-ordered the VE 50/1.2.
Your second point—that the best manual focus lenses are designed for photographers “who want to engage fully with their harder to focus lenses to produce superior images”—made me aware that, as much as I love the results I’ve been getting with my Planar FE 50/1.4, I’ve come to rely too much on autofocus and face recognition. So today I swapped the FE for the Planar ZE 50/1.4. We’ll see how that turns out.
Hello everyone! I read the entire thread and purchased my CV 40mm 1.2 two days ago. It renders superbly, but has its quirks that I'll learn to work around. Overall, couldn't be happier to own this bad boy. Thank you to everyone who helped me make the right decision on my first lens for my first camera.
DavidBudo wrote:
Hello everyone! I read the entire thread and purchased my CV 40mm 1.2 two days ago. It renders superbly, but has its quirks that I'll learn to work around. Overall, couldn't be happier to own this bad boy. Thank you to everyone who helped me make the right decision on my first lens for my first camera.
Props for diving right in, and welcome." - imagesfromobjects
Haha! Yes, and thank you. I was using my phone before (Note 4), which was extremely limiting, but I still managed to get some interesting shots with a lot of patience. The problem was, they only look good on the phone. Image quality degrades rapidly when you blow them up a little. I know what kind of pictures I want to take, I just needed the right tools. I decided I like the challenges and rewards of only shooting 100% manually, because I find too much automation takes some of the pain out of the artistic process - a pain I enjoy. Kind of masochistic, I know, but humans thrive on struggle and function best with it rather than without. I think I'll get the 110mm APO macro, and then look for a really good wide angle lens. I'm dreaming of a 20mm F2 lens... That should take care of my cognitive needs.
By the way, for anyone in Toronto, I bought my lens at Downtown Camera from Sheldon. Great store and guy to deal with.
A couple of snaps from a wedding a few weeks ago. These are stopped down just a bit for sharpness, but retain a nice OOF background. Photos from a wedding by Graham Gibson, on Flickr
Beautiful stuff!
. There is quite a bit of flair in the last one but the sun was at a prominent angle.
