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Voigtländer Nokton Classic 35/1.4

Maggie O

Active member
Following my SO's advice. It can't be that bad of lens if it lets me do this:

Scooter at "Treat Corner." CV 35/1.4 Nokton Classic, wide open, hand-held 1/4 sec exposure @ ISO 2500.

 

scott kirkpatrick

Well-known member
From the can shot it looks like it back focuses a bit wide open. That is assuming you focused on the middle can.

The sharpness at f1.4 looks to be about the same as the Noctilux at f1.

One thing I noticed is there seems to be a lot of DOF compared to other f1.4 shots I have seen from other lenses.

Robert
Rob, if you're the same guy that posts on the LUF, you've shot basketball (moving targets in bad light) nearly wide open with a Noctilux and a 35/Summicron and gotten impressive results. Are you correcting for back-focus, accepting a smaller keeper-ratio, or what? Would you see an advantage in this lens over the Summicron?

And Maggie, I agree with you that for cattails and cat's fur with glossy eyes, the lens you have is already doing a fine job. I guess the test is whether you can learn to get satisfactory portraits with great detail rendering around the eyes. I think following up on the impression that the OOF handling gives more apparent depth of field is worth-while. I would still be curious to know if there is a lot of sample-to-sample variation, and to know how much field curvature there is at 1.4 and 2.0. My question is what i asked Rob -- since i have and like a 35/Summicron-asph, does this lens add a usable extra stop?

regards,

scott
 

robsteve

Subscriber
Rob, if you're the same guy that posts on the LUF, you've shot basketball (moving targets in bad light) nearly wide open with a Noctilux and a 35/Summicron and gotten impressive results. Are you correcting for back-focus, accepting a smaller keeper-ratio, or what? Would you see an advantage in this lens over the Summicron?
Yes, I am the one that shot basketball with a Noctilux. There is a technique to the follow focusing and for the net shots in particular. They don't always jump from the same spot. Your brain figures out how much to move the focus off the prefocused net before firing. In other words, I will focus on the net, use the rangefinder to fine tune the focus when they jump, but with practice, your brain and the rangefinder get in tune and you tend to get the images aligned quicker and more accurately. In coming down the floor and follow focusing, it can be hit and miss, but so can an EOS with a50mm f1.8 lens.

In regards to Maggie's lens, it probably just back focuses until stopped down and we all know where that went with the 35mm Summilux. She could try some other copies of the lens, but it may not be worth the time and effort if she is happy with the results.

In regards to the edges being sharper than the middle, the Noctilux does this too and may just be that fast lenses have curvature of field.

Robert
 

Maggie O

Active member
In regards to Maggie's lens, it probably just back focuses until stopped down and we all know where that went with the 35mm Summilux. She could try some other copies of the lens, but it may not be worth the time and effort if she is happy with the results.
I was thinking about trying another sample- but Stephen Gandy is sold out of both the MC and the SC and over at RFF he said that the factory sold out the initial run, too. So, no one will be getting a 35/1.4 Nokton Classic until at least June, IIRC. I'll just try to remember to do the focus-->lean back a degree--->shoot thing when the lens is opened up, I guess.

Vignetting, of the M8 type seems to be very low to non-existent, so I'm leaning towards not having the mount milled. I'm afraid that the focusing problems (which are pretty darn small, when you get right down to it) would be made worse if I starting mucking around the lens with a screwdriver. Thoughts?
 

LJL

New member
Vignetting, of the M8 type seems to be very low to non-existent, so I'm leaning towards not having the mount milled. I'm afraid that the focusing problems (which are pretty darn small, when you get right down to it) would be made worse if I starting mucking around the lens with a screwdriver. Thoughts?
Maggie,
Is the present mount on the lens flat and smooth where the coding would go? If it is, you can try the magic marker method just to see if it matters or not. Most of the CV LTM>M mounts did not handle this well, hence Johh's milling mounts that would accommodate things. (The CV M mount itself, usually had a screwhead in the way, but still can accommodate coding well.) If the magic marker works, and you like the correction, it may be worth having John mill it for the coding. As long as you do not have problem getting the screws out, you should not have too much issue with removing, milling and re-installing the mount. I swapped mounts completely on my Zeiss 25/2.8, so that it would bring up the Leica 24 framelines, and had absolutely no issues with focus doing the install myself. (Zeiss recommends the calibration, etc., just as Leica does, but honestly, the fit is so precise that it did not create any issues with focus at all.) Worth a try, and a worst case scenario is that you send the lens to DAG after you have the mount milled, but I really do not think it will be needed.

I hate to mention this, and it is something that some advocate and others do not, but here goes..... I was having awful backfocus problems with my coded Leica 50/1.0 Noctilux and a coded Leica 75/2.0 AA lens. I was about to send them to DAG for focus calibration. My thoughts were that all of my other lenses did not have any focus issues on my M8, so those two lenses were the problem. Just before packing things up to ship, I decided to attempt the RF adjustment on the M8. I made an absolutely teeny tiny adjustment (couterclockwise as you look at the front of the camera), and it completely cleared up the backfocus problem on both lenses, AND it did not effect the focus on my other lenses at all. I was amazed. I fully expected to throw everything out of whack, and was prepared to ship the body to DAG also if I did mess things up, but in the end, things worked out perfectly.

In your case, I was doing the exact same thing for both lenses.....get the focus and lean back a tad. The problem I kept running into is that this sort of user compensation is not consistent at all, unless everything is being shot at the same distance. Most of us are really good at making our own compensations and adjustments when we know there is an issue like this backfocus, but we just cannot be precise enough all the time for all the various distances when shooting wide open. As you say, stopping down a bit makes the problem disappear, more or less, but my humble suggestion is to get the focus dead on wide open at your most preferred working distances. Anything stopped down from there will be fine, but you need to have that wide open focus plane as close as you can possibly get it adjusted. That is where things matter most to achieve the impact of DOF and focus plane that you want. Just something to consider.

LJ
 
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LJL

New member
Thanks for the info and insight, LJ!

Dare I ask....how do you adjust the rangefinder?
CAUTION!!! I am not advocating this, but merely passing on info for the brave of heart, those that like to tinker, or those who were desperate and prepared to ship things off if they screwed it up. (That be me :D )

When you remove the lens, you will see the roller cam at the top of the lens mount opening. Behind this cam is a small screw with a 2mm allen head facing upwards toward the top of the camera. Turning that screw counterclockwise (toward the shutter release side of the camera) brings the focus adjustment of the rangefinder forward. Turning the other way places it further back. We are not talking about much adjustment here to make a fairly significant change. Remember, this rangefinder is a precision device, so a little turn goes a long way.

You may want to ask Guy about this, as I know he was carrying a wrench around with him when he first got his 75 Lux and other lenses until he got things to his liking. The story is if you can get the focus of a 75 or 90 Cron dead on wide open, you are set. It also helps to use an eyepiece magnifier for those lenses when focusing. (I have a Megaperls 1.35x magnifier that also allows diopter correction, and I leave it on all the time for all lenses. Makes things a bit harder with the 25, but for the 35 and up, it really helps me a lot.)

In the case of your lens, based on the images you took and Scott and others commented on, any adjustment may be very, very small, if the problem is not the lens itself. Again, I am offering this up as a potential fix, but first you need to determine if the lens is hitting the marks for everything else for you. This will not "fix" things if the lens is not in calibration, or if it has a slightly off-centered focal plane. This slight adjustment worked for me, even though the camera came back from Leica saying the rangefinder was checked and within spec. The backfocus issues were never really noticeable on my wider lenses, but were very obvious on my Noctilux and 75 Cron. Both of those are now dead on, as are my other lenses.

After you do a couple more tests to convince yourself either way, it may be something to consider. These sorts of adjustments should be made by a camera tech, but this one seems to be easy and effective for a number of folks that have done it, even after Leica has said their camera rangefinder was in spec. The other option is to leave the camera alone and hope you can get the lens adjusted for proper focus. This usually involves extremely thin shims under the lens mount, at least for things like the Noctilux and others. DAG does this work and it does not void any warranties, based on what he has told me himself.

LJ
 

scott kirkpatrick

Well-known member
I like the last one.

It seems that rendering of the Nokton 35/1.4 is nice at all intermediate f-stops. This seems like the behavior of the pre-asph Summilux, which was lovely at intermediate f-stops, but I am told was sometimes bizarre at 1.4 and 2.0. My summicron-asph 35 has a flat image field (checked it with a newspaper on the wall) at 2.0, and bokeh which looks to me like coarse stage painting. So I'll stay with it for now. (Have to, since the initial supply of the CV35/1.4 is sold out.)

scott
 

dseelig

Member
All the photos taken at f1.4 shots look better then my 2nd 35 1.4 aspherical black model I have a titanuim now this might rival .
 

Maggie O

Active member
I'm really beginning to like this lens and its idiosyncrasies have stopped bothering me. It's definitely one that's above the Mendoza Line.
 
E

espressogeek

Guest
Is that line doubling in the OOF areas on some of the first shots? Before I quit shooting my R-D1 my 40/2 leica did that I think but it was supposed to clean up when you stop down. This lens looks like a good optic for the money and has quite a bit of bite IMHO.
 
S

Sean_Reid

Guest
Re: further request

Maggie --

For the obsessed pixel-peepers, could you upload one or two raw files to Yousendit and share the links? You're posting resized jpegs on Flickr, so a lot has already happened to the file before we see it. Cases of most interest would be:
f/5.6 outdoors with objects at various distances;
the classic brick wall, bulletin board or wall of books at f/1.4 and tripod;
and pictures somewhat like your cattails in which there are fine details backlit such as tree branches against a medium tone sky. (at f/5.6, not at f/11, so that there is no possibility of diffraction limiting the sharpness or obscuring any CA)

If you share the raw file, it is possible, thanks to Cornerfix, to know the aperture used. Flickr's exif reading is a mixed bag. I can see your firmware level, ISO, number of shutter activations, and software used to create the Jpeg, but the shutter readout is not convincing, and the aperture and focal length are a complete mystery.

Sean is off to Florida and motorcycles, so we are probably a month away from seeing his detailed test of this lens. In the mean time, you are the expert.

thanks,

scott
Hi Scott,

I am in Florida now but I can't ride until my leg heals fully from the VT fall on ice (walking). I have SC and MC versions of the 35/1.4 here but will be away from my usual testing setups until April. So, I'll do the review in two parts. Part one will be based primarily on field use and will be published while I'm here. Part two will include my usual comparative tests.

I'm working on the Daytona Wall pictures through Saturday and then people on beaches through the end of March.

Cheers,

Sean
 
S

Sean_Reid

Guest
I think it probably has focus shift. If you look at the shots of your sister, the ones at f1.4 are soft, while the the f2 are nice and sharp.
Just be careful to do controlled tests with focus bracketing before drawing any conclusions about resolution, focus shift, etc. Its easy to be fooled by confounding variables.

Cheers,

Sean
 
S

Sean_Reid

Guest
I'm looking at the bricks. I see why Sean insists on focus bracketing when he tests wide open. It looks to me as if the 1.4 is a little out of focus, and shows some vignetting. The 5.6 and the 8 seem sharp and evenly illuminated, but I would have guessed that there is diffraction at f/11 reducing the sharpness and contrast of the image. From the cans, it looks like there is a focus shift of as much as an inch at f/1.4, so try pulling the focus forward in tiny amounts and I bet that one will sharpen up and brighten as well. How does the best result with your brick wall work out at f/2? The can trick to check for focus shift at f/2.0 would also help to determine if you will have to focus bracket here as well.

scott
Hi Scott,

I focus bracket for the full aperture series with each lens and, yes, it's essential. Its very easy for slight misfocus to confuse one's sense of what's going on.

Cheers,

Sean
 
S

Sean_Reid

Guest
OK, here's a thought- if the lens is backfocusing, wouldn't it make sense that the middle is mushy (that was the focus point) and the corners, being farther away, should be in focus? Though f5.6 should have enough DOF to cover that range, yes?

Is this something that can be adjusted? Do I send the lens back to Cameraquest? I'm kinda getting bummed out here. (Thankfully, I can go and shoot with my lovely 50/2 Heliar Classic and it cheers me up.)
Hi Maggie,

I wouldn't worry until and unless you see a problem after doing very methodical testing. Semi-methodical testing is, unfortunately, the most potentially misleading of all. If your usual pictures look good to you, I wouldn't worry for now.

Cheers,

Sean
 

Maggie O

Active member
Hi Maggie,

I wouldn't worry until and unless you see a problem after doing very methodical testing. Semi-methodical testing is, unfortunately, the most potentially misleading of all. If your usual pictures look good to you, I wouldn't worry for now.

Cheers,

Sean
That's pretty much the conclusion I've come to at this point- I'm making photos that look like how I expected them to look, so I'm not going to worry. Thanks for the reinforcement!
 
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