p.36 #1 · Voigtlander 21mm f/3.5 Color Skopar Review
Hi, has any one tried Voigtlander FE 21/3.5 on a7R IV? Does it resolve enough for 61mp sensor? Thinking to buy a7R IV and a few lenses soon. I know that 21/1.4 is among the best but prefer to go light at this FL. Thanks.
p.36 #6 · Voigtlander 21mm f/3.5 Color Skopar Review
Tip for you: To boost the colors for more pop without getting that oversaturated look, in Lightroom / Camera Raw go to the "Camera Calibration" tab and increase the saturation of the blue channel.
For me a standard procedure (sometimes more, sometimes less) on landscape photos.
p.36 #9 · Voigtlander 21mm f/3.5 Color Skopar Review
Most people prefer more colourful to less colourful, and many associate 'realistic' with 'drab', so it's reasonable to expect photographers to prepare images accordingly, particularly for busy compositions. The key is to keep the image inside the range of credibility, stopping short of the cartoonish postcard look that can interfere with appreciating the image.
This requires an excellent balance in the lens used and more-or-less neutral sensor/RC input. It also helps to be able to read colour off the image well in post, as Peter Figen has pointed out (and his colour-related posts are always rewarding).
And this is a significant advantage of Cosina's Voigtlander lenses - their great ability to represent neutral tones alongside strong though realistic and attractive colour. It's one of the major reasons I use them. And Sony's format-leading DR makes the most of the colour gamut, adding tonal subtlety and grading to your images.
HSL is not the greatest colour model unfortunately, and it's best used as a foundation or starting point in RC s/w (inside a broad space). I rarely even mention working spaces and chroma sets because people are usually rather defensive about the very personal issue of colour, minds are made up and toolsets limited.
But should any reader have an interest, a good page to start is: josephholmes.com/profiles and the pages that flow from this short historical account of his regarding the dimension of image colour. The first time I encountered his spaces was from a very savvy drum scan operator, back in the dawning days of CM.
Nov 06, 2019 at 08:12 PM
davidmarinero Offline • • [X]
p.36 #10 · Voigtlander 21mm f/3.5 Color Skopar Review
philip_pj wrote:
But should any reader have an interest, a good page to start is: josephholmes.com/profiles and the pages that flow from this short historical account of his regarding the dimension of image colour. The first time I encountered his spaces was from a very savvy drum scan operator, back in the dawning days of CM.
I was also introduced to his spaces from drum scanning my 4x5 slides, and when I started using the A7R the year it was launched I bought the DCAM4 space with its chroma variants. It is a really natural and elegant way to manipulate color. The only problem it has is that it is a global color adjustment. This led me to also use saturation masks for saturation painting specific parts of the image, using Tony Kuyper's TK Actions panel, to add and remove saturation and vibrance to different parts of the image.
Restraint is the key here. I like to walk away from an image and look at it with fresh eyes to make sure I am not over doing it. Looking at my old photos now, I think I have overdone it quite a bit per my current standards!!
p.36 #11 · Voigtlander 21mm f/3.5 Color Skopar Review
Yeah, all great knowledge and hints. But seriously - try what I said with the blue saturation slider.
Take the first version of the photo and just apply that slider.
Totally suffices to give the photo enough pop in a still completely "credible" way.
HSL and stuff should only be necessary in relatively few, relatively special cases.
While when I began I of course tried all these fancy sliders, today on most photos I DON'T touch at all the following sliders: Contrast, structure, vibrance, saturation, the whole HSL panel. Clarity max. 20, sharpening just the default value with masking.
p.36 #12 · Voigtlander 21mm f/3.5 Color Skopar Review
Wayne Yan wrote:
Hi, has any one tried Voigtlander FE 21/3.5 on a7R IV? Does it resolve enough for 61mp sensor? Thinking to buy a7R IV and a few lenses soon. I know that 21/1.4 is among the best but prefer to go light at this FL. Thanks.
p.36 #14 · Voigtlander 21mm f/3.5 Color Skopar Review
I see you are enjoying this lens a lot. You are also blessed by light and landscape in that area !!
I have been attracted by this lens and the Tamron 17-28, both small enough for me, only reason I haven’t bought it is that its too close to 24, which i already have in a suction pump format
philip_pj wrote:
A very pictorial lens, well-balanced and lively.
p.36 #16 · Voigtlander 21mm f/3.5 Color Skopar Review
At 700 grams on the a7r and not much more on the later models, it's near to perfect for my schtick. The look matters more than final IQ, and the light is often not cooperative, but you need the shot. The Voigts are very good at this, very good. The secretive nature of the parent company just adds to their appeal. They will, however, never be for the mainstream. And QA seems excellent.
p.36 #20 · Voigtlander 21mm f/3.5 Color Skopar Review
I cannot see even the well-regarded E competitors in the same light as the modern era Voigtlander lenses. The superior 3D of the CV lenses is the result of colour separation within like hues - so where other lenses might be as sharp (a few being more so, maybe) almost all will fail to distinguish between hues the viewing eye can see easily as separate tones. A lot of people don't see this, for various reasons. It's best not to press this issue, obviously.
If any reader is interested in seeing a clearcut example of what I refer to here, I suggest looking up Dustin Abbott's comparo of the Milvus 35/1.4 against Canon's 35/1.4II. I won't post a link but enter this text in a search engine:
Zeiss Milvus 1.4/35 vs Canon 35L II | Part 1: Resolution | 4K
(the 16:01 video)
..and go to 12.58 to view the next 40 seconds to see how the colour tone rendering elevates the Milvus 35mm above the Canon in a very dramatic fashion, one that Dustin does not comment on. Not everyone sees. BTW, that same video snippet demonstrates that the Milvus has much more real world DOF at f5.6 (which I call 'apparent DOF', not 'formula DOF' as in the CoC fictions).
For a Japanese company Cosina has a great affinity with European visual sensibilities, probably due to the long-established relationship with Zeiss and the owner's great respect for Leica optics. Here are a couple more 21/3.5 images (most of my 21/3.5 images end up in the FE Image thread because we lack a Voigtlander Image thread or a Manual Focus on Sony thread). cheers.
