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 p.27 #7 · Voigtlander for Nikon Image Thread | |
A short take of CV issues:
It's interesting. CV colour is, at the same time, notably bright and modern and yet it keeps faith with the what I will call the 'Zeiss stream' of the past 20 years. CV famously produced the ZM, Milvus, Classic, and Otus ranges along with their own M-mount inspired offerings, and a few DSLR lenses.
That's a unique pedigree, by the way. Their main game is to compete head on with the rather different M lenses from Leica and their quite individual colour system (more saturation, less gradation, ultra strong centres and higher macro contrast). Focus fade in CV lenses is generally elegant, making them fine landscape/nature lenses for discerning users, particularly in mirrorless.
The colour you see in the 35/2 APO is from the glass formulations (it's why the APOs deliver as they do, they are loaded with the stuff), and CV are intimately aware of the intricacies of Zeiss's designs mentioned above, as a strong influence on their recent progress forward.
Colour is very good at base profile, even neutral, yet can be pushed hard for effect if needed. You may notice a higher hit rate, and the lenses resist casting very well. Get WB right and you are halfway there, they are easy to process, predictable.
The glass expertise (and size constraint for M lenses) translates directly into the CV tendency to favour low element count lenses of very high performance. I don't want to re-prosecute the issue raised by the Angry Photographer some of you may recall, but there are technical and aesthetic reasons to enjoy and prefer low count lenses.
The better the glass, and the more sound and spare the design, this results in great clarity and very clean colour - in my opinion. Put another way, you can get away with so-so glass in a fast 17-18 element design thanks to sheer optical correction. But not in a 6-7-8 element lens.
The new CV 75/1.5 has seven elements, four are high end glass, one is an aspherical. It looks like a cutdown version of the 100/1.4 Otus Sonnar. By comparison, Nikon's 85/1.8 S has 12 elements with but two ULD (APD) elements among them. Just an example. Nikon eschewed asph surfacing which was a very common take 5-10 years back, to clean up and smooth out bokeh.
But Cosina made the four Otuses and each one, like the 75/1.5, features an aspherical rearmost element. They learned how to deal with it. The 35/2 APO also has two asph elements, and four such surfaces. My belief is their use is now very important, because the image performance is superb inside a very reliable OOF fade profile and good behaviour. The asph prep processes are now superb themselves, as a result of relentless technological improvements. It's cutting edge.
https://www.cosina.co.jp/voigtlander/en/vm-mount/nokton-50mm-f1-aspherical/
And the CV APD glass is like 98 octane compared with 91 count fuel, leading to the hypersonic MTF data. But all their glass is fine, even plain lenses. As an example, here is an image taken with a 5 element lens (5/3), the 50/3.5 Heliar - which also works very well on mirrorless. The design is over one hundred years old. There is not much they cannot do.
'Despite its simple optical formula, this lens provides...strong color reproducibility and excellent clarity.'
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