I always use original CV hoods with my CV lenses and I think it's especially necessary with these VM lenses that have a reflective silver threads at the front... I picked up a new LH-6 in advance this week just in case they might be out of stock when I pick up the lens. They go for about $50 new in Tokyo.
The LH-6 is free with purchase of the lens in Australia and fits a couple of other CV lenses. Interesting it is not included in the purchase. Thinking some more about the Panda, will it retain that extra value into the years ahead? I feel it may be a special issue lens and will always be well-regarded in the marketplace.
philip_pj wrote:
The LH-6 is free with purchase of the lens in Australia and fits a couple of other CV lenses. Interesting it is not included in the purchase. Thinking some more about the Panda, will it retain that extra value into the years ahead? I feel it may be a special issue lens and will always be well-regarded in the marketplace.
The Panda styling is growing on me.
It's 57 grams heavier but the barrel made of brass instead of aluminum. It's still a light 50/1.5 lens at 255g.
Fred Miranda wrote:
Does anyone knows which Voigtlander lenses are made of brass?
I believe the current Voigtlander 50/1.5 (293g) and 35/1.7 Ultron (297g) "Chrome" versions have brass barrels.
I'm addition to those 2 and the new Panda, the old LTM 28/3.5 and 50/2.5 Color Skopars which I have are known to have brass barrels. Their silver versions are also real Chrome plated brass and the black versions must be black painted brass (same weight). Cosina's Lens archives also mention that 28/3.5 LTM uses a Brass barrel "真鍮鏡筒を採用し". http://www.cosina.co.jp/seihin/voigtlander/archives/L-wide.pdf
I picked up the original 1950's Topcor-S 5cm f2 Panda from Tokyo Used Camera Fair that just started today...
There was just one I could find there and it's in decent condition. Lots of supply of the other Topcor-S non-Panda versions. Externally in very nice shape but there are quite many cleaning / wear marks on the front glass. No caps were included. http://ics1972.jp/index.html
I picked up the original 1950's Topcor-S 5cm f2 Panda from Tokyo Used Camera Fair that just started today...
There was just one I could find there and it's in decent condition. Lots of supply of the other Topcor-S non-Panda versions. Externally in very nice shape but there are quite many cleaning / wear marks on the front glass. No caps were included. http://ics1972.jp/index.html
Wow, you got the original panda! How does it perform on the Sony?
Juha Kannisto wrote:
I picked up the original 1950's Topcor-S 5cm f2 Panda from Tokyo Used Camera Fair that just started today...
There was just one I could find there and it's in decent condition. Lots of supply of the other Topcor-S non-Panda versions. Externally in very nice shape but there are quite many cleaning / wear marks on the front glass. No caps were included.
I used to own that lens, though the black rather than the Panda version. I've never seen one without at least some cleaning marks; perhaps they used a softer coating. I ended up selling it but it's quite a special lens: it's a Biotar design, which is relatively rarer to find in rangefinder lenses (I still own and love my Zeiss Jena 58mm f/2 Biotar in M42 mount).
Fred Miranda wrote:
Wow, you got the original panda! How does it perform on the Sony?
I had to get back to work (home office) pretty soon after buying it and having late lunch so I couldn't use it much yet and I lost all my early test shots by some glitch on my work PC that messed up the memory card. Had to format it to make it usable again...
So far I liked the wide open rendering quite a bit based on what I saw on the camera and the lens has really nice handling/usability. Lot of flare when shooting against strong lights. I'll have to play more with it to get a clear idea in the coming days, but so far I'm feeling good about it I'll share some samples when I get some in the next days.
Well I broke down and preordered the Nickle (Panda) SC version. My rationale for the SC over the MC is that I will use this on my M10M and M-A for black and white, where I feel like the SC will give B&W photos a bit more classic vibe over the MC.
I still need to share shots of the CV color-skopar 35/2.5 P II lens that arrived a few weeks ago, but I'm waiting for my film scanning equipment to ship from Negative Supply. When that happens I'll be busy developing, scanning and posting in the film shots thread.
Fred, I believe the idea is the slightly lower contrast will result in more midtones for a potentially 'rich' silvery look, but will of course be image dependent.
If you want to experiment on the cheap, try a lens like the Canon 50/1.4 LTM.
My feeling is the tradeoff is primarily flare resistance and if shooting color, somewhat lower saturation. The latter of course can be somewhat compensated in post. Flare could be more tricky. Generally there will be more veiling flare and possibly also ghosting artifacts. With the older lenses, shooting at or near wide open, you're also mixing in SA, which likely will be much better corrected in the new Voigtlander. So I'm not sure how much 'magic' the new lens will offer in its SC version relative to vintage pre-MC lenses.
I picked up the original 1950's Topcor-S 5cm f2 Panda from Tokyo Used Camera Fair that just started today...
There was just one I could find there and it's in decent condition. Lots of supply of the other Topcor-S non-Panda versions. Externally in very nice shape but there are quite many cleaning / wear marks on the front glass. No caps were included. http://ics1972.jp/index.html
If it's in rough shape and you are ok with losing the coating, I found a guy in Taiwan who will polish lens elements. He also repairs lens separation by separating and re-cementing groups. I have not used him personally, but inquired about polishing the front element of a lens and he quoted 4000 NTD, which is about 140 USD. He seems to do a lot of polishing and separation repair work, but also water/moisture/fungus damage (which I guess is more prevalent in Asia). He indicated he's currently running at approximately 6 weeks turnaround.
If interested, definitely look through his Facebook posts. He's worked on a wide range of new and old lenses. I even saw a 50/1.2 Noctilux in there, meaning someone trusted him with a rare $20K lens. He seems to reply quite quickly via Facebook.
rscheffler wrote:
Fred, I believe the idea is the slightly lower contrast will result in more midtones for a potentially 'rich' silvery look, but will of course be image dependent.
If you want to experiment on the cheap, try a lens like the Canon 50/1.4 LTM.
My feeling is the tradeoff is primarily flare resistance and if shooting color, somewhat lower saturation. The latter of course can be somewhat compensated in post. Flare could be more tricky. Generally there will be more veiling flare and possibly also ghosting artifacts. With the older lenses, shooting at or near wide open, you're also mixing in SA, which likely will be much better corrected in the new Voigtlander. So I'm not sure how much 'magic' the new lens will offer in its SC version relative to vintage pre-MC lenses.
If it's in rough shape and you are ok with losing the coating, I found a guy in Taiwan who will polish lens elements. He also repairs lens separation by separating and re-cementing groups. I have not used him personally, but inquired about polishing the front element of a lens and he quoted 4000 NTD, which is about 140 USD. He seems to do a lot of polishing and separation repair work, but also water/moisture/fungus damage (which I guess is more prevalent in Asia). He indicated he's currently running around 6 weeks turnaround.
If interested, definitely look through his Facebook posts. He's worked on a wide range of new and old lenses. I even saw a 50/1.2 Noctilux in there, meaning someone trusted him with a rare $20K lens. ...Show more →
Regarding that B&W smoother or 'richer' tonality gain by using a lens with single coating vs multi. If you come across an experiment showing this, please post it. I'm a non-believer but have an open mind.
We know that veiling flare lower contrast and that could potentially give us a flatter image with smoother tonality out of the gate but I think there is a some marketing behind this. After images are equalized in post-processing, I don't think any difference in contrast would be noticeable unless under heavy backlighting flare.
rscheffler wrote:
If it's in rough shape and you are ok with losing the coating, I found a guy in Taiwan who will polish lens elements. He also repairs lens separation by separating and re-cementing groups. I have not used him personally, but inquired about polishing the front element of a lens and he quoted 4000 NTD, which is about 140 USD. He seems to do a lot of polishing and separation repair work, but also water/moisture/fungus damage (which I guess is more prevalent in Asia). He indicated he's currently running at approximately 6 weeks turnaround.
If interested, definitely look through his Facebook posts. He's worked on a wide range of new and old lenses. I even saw a 50/1.2 Noctilux in there, meaning someone trusted him with a rare $20K lens. He seems to reply quite quickly via Facebook....Show more →
Thanks for the pointer to this guy! It's interesting. My lens is not in that bad shape I think, and the front element's coating seems to be a common point that deteriorates over time with these particular lenses. There are a lot of visible hairline/small marks in the coating but I think it doesn't probably have much impact on photos so I will use the lens as is for now. Everything else is in good shape. Waiting for the rain to end hopefully by tomorrow so that I can actually go out with the lens.
That article also talks about damage on the coating and how it could not be repaired by this facility that wrote the article. That also got me thinking about potential cleaning/repair options but I wouldn't really want to lose all the coatings from the front surface as that might have more impact on photos. There are probably also various lens repair/cleanup specialist shops in Tokyo and Japan but I've never really studied them as I haven't bought many lenses that are this old.
Juha Kannisto wrote:
Thanks for the pointer to this guy! It's interesting. My lens is not in that bad shape I think, and the front element's coating seems to be a common point that deteriorates over time with these particular lenses. There are a lot of visible hairline/small marks in the coating but I think it doesn't probably have much impact on photos so I will use the lens as is for now. Everything else is in good shape. Waiting for the rain to end hopefully by tomorrow so that I can actually go out with the lens.
That article also talks about damage on the coating and how it could not be repaired by this facility that wrote the article. That also got me thinking about potential CLE options but I wouldn't really want to lose all the coatings from the front surface as that might have more impact on photos. There are probably also various lens repair/cleanup specialist shops in Tokyo and Japan but I've never really studied them as I haven't bought many lenses that are this old....Show more →
It definitely resembles the Topcor-S 5cm f/2 but the new CV 50/1.5 II's style is also similar to the Leica Summarit 5cm f/1.5, although I don't think there is a 'panda' version for the Leica: http://thephotobrigade.com/tag/lens/
'single coating (SC) reproduces classical color tones.' (Cosina site)
'All 3 are available in Multi Coating for a modern look with a minimum of flare, or Single Coating for 1960’s style flare shooting against the light.' (Australian distributor)
Some like the 1950s look in B/W, I can see why they do. I'd like to see more from this SC one, since a modern complexity 8/7 lens with one of their double-sided asph elements (probably saving them weight/size) will not be lacking general performance.
In addition, less lens coating means less light reflections. In general, SC lens allows more light coming through the lens thus the SC lens is a bit "faster" than its MC equivalent. Of course, the SC lens will not render color as accurate as the MC version.
I'll share some samples when I get some in the next days.
