Steve Spencer
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 Re: FM Review: Voigtlander 21mm f/1.4 Nokton | |
HelBen85 wrote:
nehemiahphoto wrote:
Do you have crops to show this? I am interested as I shoot wides often, and I test them. I'd like to see how large, how soft and exactly where the soft area is so I can keep an eye out myself. And I owned a couple Loxia 21's, so I am curious.
Of course, I took several hundred test pictures and compared several copies of both lenses.
Unfortunately, for professional reasons, I often (like this weekend) have limited access to my image database. And when I'm at home, I prefer to take pictures rather than discussing faulty test procedures with others.
In the following the desired crops (uncompressed raws in LR/ unprocessed/ f8 / triopod / best focus setting / remote control / IS deactivated / best of 5). These are 100 percent view crops with a Full HD screen resolution (i.e. approximately 200 percent view on an Imac 5k):
The uesed Zeiss Loxia 21mm is the best of the many that I had here. It was sent to me directly by Zeiss after I complained to Zeiss about exactly this (with all Zeiss Loxia 21mm lenses that I tried it had this problem).
You can see that with this Zeiss Loxia 21mm there is a (relatively) blurred area at the top right of the picture, but the corner of the picture is again sharp. All other parts of the image (within the DOF) are sharper, including the area at the top left of the image. By the way, the blurred area on the right is a bit larger (longer than in the screenshot).
At f8, the Voigtlander is minimally sharper over large parts of the image except the very corners. Most important for me, however, the Voigtlander has no areas in the picture that fall off clearly as with the Loxia.
That's the only reason I switched.
By the way, there was no way to sharpen this area with all my Loxias, regardless of aperture and focus setting. The best result in the blurred area of the image was achieved with all copies when I turned the focus ring directly to the hard stop. Fred`s recommended foucssing a tad before infinity leads to worse results in this area.
I tried this with several cameras, but not with the A7RIV.
I have found the best 21mm for me. And sorry, but in my opinion Fred is wrong here. He has already corrected his conclusion about the comparison of Loxia and Voigtlander, initially it was said that the Voigtlander would show less field curvature 
For clarification:
All my Loxia 21mm 2.8 lenses had such a blurred area, but unfortunately this was not always in the same place. With some lenses, for example, it was on the left side of the pictures.
It is interesting, however, that the 4 corners were always sharp with all lenses and that the problematic area was only ever visible on one side of the image.
To rule out an error with my camera, I tested the Loxias with many different cameras, for example A7, A7R, A7II, A7III, A7RIII, ...
A test procedure with an oblique test Picture (like Fred's) would not have shown the error with any of my Loxia lenses, because it was never on the diagonal.
I don't see what you are seeing when I look at these samples. I see a just noticeable difference (I had to switch to my big monitor to see it and couldn't see it at all on my laptop) in favor of the Voigtlander over the Loxia, but it is a small difference and to me it seems consistent across all the shots you posted. I don't see that the difference is bigger in the first pair of shots than the others. And given the general difference, the difference between lenses could just as easily be slight difference in focus (after all the differences between lenses is really small here) or in the specific copies of the two lenses you have, perhaps you got a particularly stellar Voigt 21 f/1.4. Note I have had the Voigtlander 21 f/1.4 since it was first available and I had the Loxia 21 f/2.8 for a long time and just got it again. I like both lenses a lot. My experience is that they are both fine optics. I am keeping both. I will use the Voigt 21 f/1.4 when I want the wider aperture, but when I have to carry the lenses at all and I am shooting landscapes I will take the Loxia 21 because I do notice its smaller size. These samples are consistent with my experience that trying to pick one of these lenses over the other on the basis of stopped down image quality it to the level of asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Any tiny differences just are worth my worrying over it and both lenses are fantastic.
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