p.3 #2 · It's official: Voigtländer Nokton 50mm f/1.0 in Z mount
Did anyone see a comparison of the Z mount version versus the M mount version on the same camera?
I wonder whether the optical design in the Z mount version produces less outward field curvature than the M version on a stock Nikon Z camera.
p.3 #13 · It's official: Voigtländer Nokton 50mm f/1.0 in Z mount
The 90/2 would neatly fill out their quite linear and curated Z portfolio.
It might depend on how you like their sometimes scratchy out of focus look and how varied your focus distances are. For your work, you are looking at a metre or two back, and/or down a stop or two. APOs generally don't reward skin tones and you are good at dealing with skin highlights (quite rare).
Need to see many more images from many photographers. I think at this stage Cosina still need more practice at this focal length region, one they have neglected for so many years. Their lens catalog looks like a normal distribution, with the mean/median/mode all hovering above the 35-50mm mark.
They are the lens producer most consumed by a favorite narrow focal length region. Their new 90mm lenses look like something they can now reluctantly turn to, having exhausted all other possibilities. Until recently, 75mm was their modern era speed limit - no 90s, no 100s, no 135s. Just a macro or two above 50mm.
The search for THE manual focus short telephoto portrait lens is becoming disturbing if your tastes lie outside the huge bokeh, painted on lot - the f1.2 lenses - and the mid-range functional lenses that do a pretty good job.
I sense Cosina made this one as a lightweight all rounder for the technically informed: landscapes and general work. Many buy on haptics and weight concerns. But, time will tell. They did not use a model in their web blurb while calling this a 'portrait lens', but they give you more smog landscapes, water flows and soft near distance bokeh - not particularly confidence inspiring:
p.3 #14 · It's official: Voigtländer Nokton 50mm f/1.0 in Z mount
philip_pj wrote:
I think at this stage Cosina still need more practice at this focal length region, one they have neglected for so many years. Their lens catalog looks like a normal distribution, with the mean/median/mode all hovering above the 35-50mm mark.
They are the lens producer most consumed by a favorite narrow focal length region. Their new 90mm lenses look like something they can now reluctantly turn to, having exhausted all other possibilities. Until recently, 75mm was their modern era speed limit - no 90s, no 100s, no 135s. Just a macro or two above 50mm.
Well, they made Voigt 125/2.5 Macro and 180/4 (both Apo-Lanthar), Zeiss 100/2, 85/1.4 (both non Apo) & 135/2 (Apo Sonnar).
I own both the Zeiss 100/2 & 135/2, and find them very good for portraiture, independently of the Apo design.
p.3 #15 · It's official: Voigtländer Nokton 50mm f/1.0 in Z mount
Please.
Note the release dates of the first two lenses you mention, and neither are portrait lenses in anyone's mind. ALL of the scores of Zeiss manual focus lenses made in the Cosina facility are most definitely pure Zeiss optics (design, development protocols, QA, marketing, service), not Cosina Voigtlander lenses.
Your take on the 100/2 Makro-Planar is controversial; some do like the super sharp look for people photography, and others reject it. Ming Thein had this to say:
'You can use it for portraits, but your subjects had better have perfect skin…at least bokeh will be beautiful, though.'
The Cosina elephant in the room is this: they want you to buy what *they* want to make.
As Alik Griffin said recently, they seem to prefer pumping out a lot of short market life 'prototypes' rather than building coherent, long life lens ranges. Here is a list of the VM lenses so unbiased readers can judge for themselves how concentrated the Voigtlanders lenses are in the middle focal lengths:
Until the 75mm f1.5 appeared in 2019, they didn't market a single lens for Leica M longer than 50mm! So they now find themselves walking unfamiliar territory for short telephoto portrait-specific lenses. They will improve as time goes by, but if all lenses need to be made for Leica M first, problems.
Have you ever focused a 90mm lens on a Leica rangefinder camera? It's why there are so few portrait lenses from 75mm onwards by anyone, for that system.
I've got several of their lenses too, but facts are incontrovertible, even if they are unwelcome.
p.3 #16 · It's official: Voigtländer Nokton 50mm f/1.0 in Z mount
philip_pj wrote:
Have you ever focused a 90mm lens on a Leica rangefinder camera? It's why there are so few portrait lenses from 75mm onwards by anyone, for that system.
Close, super-wide aperture (calibration) and longer FL focusing are why I've avoided Leica M.
But, the CV brand issue is using the VM (Leica M) line as the basis for other mounts. The manual focus lens market is going to be much larger than during the DSLR era. We - finally - have useful MF aids.
p.3 #17 · It's official: Voigtländer Nokton 50mm f/1.0 in Z mount
philip_pj wrote:
So they now find themselves walking unfamiliar territory for short telephoto portrait-specific lenses. They will improve as time goes by....
Unlike you, and having seen what they can do, I am confident that guys working in Cosina have all the skills to design and manufacture whatever FF lens they want, being able too to balance the lens characteristics (sharpness, rendering, character, etc.).
philip_pj wrote:
Your take on the 100/2 Makro-Planar is controversial; some do like the super sharp look for people photography, and others reject it. Ming Thein had this to say:
'You can use it for portraits, but your subjects had better have perfect skin…at least bokeh will be beautiful, though.'
The Zeiss 100/2 Makro-Planar is one of the best portrait lens ever made! Only defect is LoCA at the wider apertures, a defect common to many fast portrait lenses.
Ming Thein wrote several nonsenses, including the following one (here: https://blog.mingthein.com/2013/02/01/review-nikon-afs-60-2-8-g-micro/): Something I’ve been asked in the past is why I don’t use the 105/2.8 VR instead for greater working distance; the answer is that for the kind of work I do, the 60 actually holds several advantages. Firstly, I don’t need as many extension tubes to achieve higher magnifications*; secondly, the lens itself has much lower chromatic aberration than the 105 – lateral is fairly well controlled on both, but longitudinal is ugly on the 105 – and requires a lot of work to fix afterwards. Finally, there’s the issue of depth of field: for any given aperture, you’ll get more with the shorter focal length
He doesn't realize that DoF in close-ups is mostly independent of FL; actually, due to the effect of pupil magnification, a 105 macro lens has slightly higher depth of field than 60's at same aperture and same magnification!
The issue of depth of field in close-up photography has been explained pretty well by Paul van Walree, here (copy & paste and remove the blank): https://web.archive.org/web/20090308002437 /http://toothwalker.org/optics/dof.html
