Steve Spencer wrote:
As I am sure you know, such small number of samples could just be bad luck or they could be meaningful. There is no way to know from an inference stand point. That it is bad luck is not that unlikely.
Personally, I have had about 25 Voigtlander and Zeiss lens made by Cosina (I am getting a new one today as well) and zero of them have been decentered. Perhaps I just have had good luck. Even 25 is a very small sample and really can't tell me anything about the incidence of bad copies.
It is also a question how far you want to go with your testing. I examined the centering of a large set of my lenses with pixel shift including 6 Voigtländer lenses and at least 50% of the lenses I kept have a slightly weaker corner or minutely weaker side.
- Is it big? No
- Does it noticably show up in final images? No
- Is it gone if I stop the lens down by 1/2 an f-stop or one f-stop? Mostly
- Did I want to know? Yes
- Has it made me happy knowing? Definitely not
- Did I learn something? Possibly, but most likely not
Mar 20, 2026 at 08:57 AM
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Knut. wrote:
It is also a question how far you want to go with your testing. I examined the centering of a large set of my lenses with pixel shift including 6 Voigtländer lenses and at least 50% of the lenses I kept have a slightly weaker corner or minutely weaker side.
- Is it big? No
- Does it noticably show up in final images? No
- Is it gone if I stop the lens down by 1/2 an f-stop or one f-stop? Mostly
- Did I want to know? Yes
- Has it made me happy knowing? Definitely not
- Did I learn something? Possibly, but most likely not...Show more →
You are absolutely right. Technically almost every lens will show a bit of decentering or misallignment of the elements if you could examine it closely enough. If one side or corner is even a tiny bit weaker than another one, that could be call that a problem. If it doesn't affect my final images, however, personally I don't care and I don't want to waste my time doing that type of extensive testing, YMMV. I think a simple centering test that doesn't take much time can be worth doing, but doing extensive tests and blowing things up with pixel shift to me is pixel peeping I don't want to do. We all have different tolerances for how perfect we want a lens to be, but personally as in many aspects of life I think striving for the "perfect is the enemy of the good."
What do you feel about the build quality (on average) of today lenses compared to lenses manufactured, say, 35-50 years ago?
1) same quality,
2) better quality (thanks to modern manufacturing technologies),
3) lower quality to save manufacturing costs.
Ripolini wrote:
What do you feel about the build quality (on average) of today lenses compared to lenses manufactured, say, 35-50 years ago?
1) same quality,
2) better quality (thanks to modern manufacturing technologies),
3) lower quality to save manufacturing costs.
Ripolini wrote:
What do you feel about the build quality (on average) of today lenses compared to lenses manufactured, say, 35-50 years ago?
1) same quality,
2) better quality (thanks to modern manufacturing technologies),
3) lower quality to save manufacturing costs.
Build quality? Same. Mostly good, occasionally they make a mistake.
The big advances have been in optical design and electronic integration. Lenses have never been better optically.
The motorized internal focus and aperture mechanisms only have to last until the original purchaser sells, gives away, discards or loses interest. Long term parts availability doesn't look good for our contemporary electronically enriched lenses. There will be no forum threads in 2070 extolling the fun of using vintage 2020's lenses.
Ripolini wrote:
What do you feel about the build quality (on average) of today lenses compared to lenses manufactured, say, 35-50 years ago?
1) same quality,
2) better quality (thanks to modern manufacturing technologies),
3) lower quality to save manufacturing costs.
I have been used to Pentax (or Asahi) lenses from the early 80ties.
My feeling is
A) Pentax K lenses were superior to most present day lenses (and equaling present day Leica lenses)
- I have not seen much woble or other mechanical deterioration of these lenses even after decades of personal usage.
B) Next category is
Present day Voigtländer, Zeiss ZE/ZK/etc. and Pentax M, Pentax A lenses
- These lenses are about equal
C) Of the present day Autofocus lenses
- Sigma, Sony GM are quite nice, but third tier to the lenses metioned above. Pentax limited lenses and some Pentax F lenses also fall into this category (The Pentax F lenses are no longer made).
- I find ALL autofocus lenses slightly more prone to decentering on very close inspection
D) Other third party lenses and most zooms would fall in category four.
- Nice, but mechanically not perfect
- Most Sony G lenses
- Pentax FA lenses (non-limited)
- Tamron
- Tokina
These views are of course very subjective and quite clearly debatable.
I have not commented on Nikon and Canon lenses since I have never owned these systems.
So to summarize everything:
- Mechanical fixed focal lenses of Pentax and Leica were extremely well built in the 60ties and 70ties.
There was no difference between Pentax and Leica at that time.
- Leica kept this standard, everyone else has yielded some quality
- Cine Lenses of the big manufacturers like Zeiss, Leica etc. are actually superior (Cine lenses of lore as well as modern present day ones). This is most likely due to the fact that they are rented so often. They cost a fortune to own and have to hold up to a lot of abuse when rented.
- Manual focus lenses appear superior to autofocus lenses even today, at least when looking at Leica, Zeiss and Voigtländer lenses as makers of manual focus lenses.
- Autofocus lenses have come a long way the last 10 years, the latest have reached a level previously unknown, but I still find that they are not yet up to the best manual focus lenses (I have not used Leica AF lenses).
Not /s, but I think the fact that you can pixel peep on a monitor at ridiculous resolution compare to how most people view a photograph from before the year 2000s made it seem like most modern lenses are worse than they are.
I also question any conclusion you can draw from comparing that to older lenses because the amount of them in circulation and being examined and pixel peeped to the same level is still gonna be orders of magnitude less data point.
For manual lenses, I would say build quality is mostly the same. I regularly buy and sell vintage lenses. Lenses from top tier manufacturers then and now are very well built and will last for years. Budget and lower tier manufacturers have shorter lifespans as one would expect.
Optically, modern lenses are far superior overall to vintage lenses with regards to resolution and color rendition. That said, I do think pre-digital lenses had greater design variation and rendering quality which is part of their desirability.
Autofocus today, no comparison. Modern lenses are clearly superior although I do find the casements to be made of less durable materials.
When discussing build quality between lenses from the 70's and 80's to today, I do think there is a bit of perception skewing happening. The lenses from that era that are available today are the lenses that haven't broken, developed haze, frozen up from ancient lubrication, been dropped etc. So, when you find a lens today from 1974 that still works, there is a tendency to assume all lenses from then were better built.
I have one, but haven't had a chance to use it as much as I would like. Hope to post here again soon. I am pairing it with the 40mm f/1.2 Nokton on my Zf.
jrscls wrote:
I have one, but haven't had a chance to use it as much as I would like. Hope to post here again soon. I am pairing it with the 40mm f/1.2 Nokton on my Zf.
newyork wrote:
Not seeing many pics with the 28 apo on z mount. Anyone have and shoot one?
Been wondering the same.
As the only lens I got at the moment for Nikon Zf is the 40mm Nokton, I'm looking for a wide lens to accompany it. Sadly there's no 21mm options for Z-mount, the 15mm is too slow and too wide for my taste, so 28mm it is for now. And I don't like adapting lenses. Might just get the tiny/cheap 20mm Viltrox to fill the wider end. Been debating which one to get - 28mm Nokton or Apo-Lanthar? But I think the fact that Apo is such a high-performing lens and so a bit different than my 40mm Nokton (although it's also pretty stellar from f/2.5 and up), it would probably justify itself better in my kit, while being so close to 40mm.
For example I just yesterday shot some Auroras and night sky with the 40mm Nokton (images in the Zf thread). I bet the Apo-Lanthar could manage such a scene already from f/2 easily, without coma etc. that the Noktons are prone when wide open (I've found f/2.5 seems pretty good sweet-spot for the 40mm in astrophotography).
Just asked from a local supplier how long it would take to get the 28mm Apo-Lanthar.
In Japan the APO-Lanthar 28/2 lenses have been in rather short supply compared to all other in-production CV lenses, with the VM and E-mount versions backordered everywhere most of the time after the initial supplies ran out, and shops estimating a few months before they can get more supplies. Map Camera now has a label for E-mount version that states "Special Order (Delivery Date Undetermined)". Z-mount version is still available in some stores now (including Map Camera, they must have received more after it ran out stock there very fast after initial launch). I think Cosina has been having unusually limited supplies for this lens and it's also been relatively popular here so available supplies have moved at a good pace.
Yup. Had Foto-Erhardt bookmarked and might order from there. The Finnish store I asked about it said that it's out of stock in whole of Europe from importers. Only a few single stores might have any left.
Tonzah78 wrote:
Yup. Had Foto-Erhardt bookmarked and might order from there. The Finnish store I asked about it said that it's out of stock in whole of Europe from importers. Only a few single stores might have any left.
I bought the Voigtländer Apo-Lanthar 2/28 in E-mount version last week. The lens seems fine, sharp across the frame even at f/2 and no obvious centering issues.
However, I was surprised to see some purple fringing in the image corners at f/2, which only gradually disappeared on stopping down. Only at f/8 it disappeared almost completely. I fooled around with the built-in profile applied in Lightroom Classic as well as with a home-built profile, this didn't make much difference if at all. Below the upper left corner of an image taken at f/2 with the built-in profile and the home-built profile. The image center is clean. Did anyone else notice this? Could this be sample variation?
I bought the Voigtländer Apo-Lanthar 2/28 in E-mount version last week. The lens seems fine, sharp across the frame even at f/2 and no obvious centering issues.
However, I was surprised to see some purple fringing in the image corners at f/2, which only gradually disappeared on stopping down. Only at f/8 it disappeared almost completely. I fooled around with the built-in profile applied in Lightroom Classic as well as with a home-built profile, this didn't make much difference if at all. Below the upper left corner of an image taken at f/2 with the built-in profile and the home-built profile. The image center is clean. Did anyone else notice this? Could this be sample variation?
There were some observations about purple fringing in the corners/edges from my earlier sample images with 2 copies of the lens earlier on this same discussion thread:
I think it's not really a sample specific matter as I even bought a 2nd copy of the lens just in case, and both appeared to be well centered fine copies, but both exhibited this purple fringing under certain conditions.
I have already traded away one of those 2 copies I needed some budget towards another lens purchase and I'm just keeping my newer copy.
