Do you want a 10.5mm f2 prime?

dulynoted wrote:

Roderick Balle wrote:

dulynoted wrote:

No I have no interest in a 10.5mm f2 prime. I already ordered the 10.5mm f0.95 prime from voigtlander and expect it to arrive in the next week.

Just read the review of this lens on lens tip. They didn't think much of it. Curious about your thoughts on it, after you've put it through its paces?

I have the 12mm SLR Magic T1.6 as my widest m43 prime. It's a very nice lens - some flare issues, but overall I like the way it renders, and the very close focusing distance makes it very easy to use.

It was a really simple buy for me.

1. The reviewer is big into astrophotography and the lens didnt match his personal expectations so the whole review was a bit tainted.

2. Sharpest of all the noktons wide open (were I tend to use my 25mm nokton the most)

3. When compared to the only 3 other lenses with similiar specifications (though none are as extreme in design as this one) the 21mm f1.4 from leica, the 21mm f1.8 ultron from voigtlander, and the 20mm f1.8 from nikon I found that the lens performance was actually pretty par with those lenses. Bokeh was significantly better than the nikon, as well as having better mtf charts. It also handles flare better than the nikon and the leica. Distortion is better and chroma abberations are lower too (1 kind, it was slightly higher in the other). The only place were it fared particularly badly was coma but stopped down to similar f numbers it improved. Even stopped down the 10.5mm nokton follows a similar sharpness curve to the nikon 20mm but actually retains sharpness better past the diffraction limit.

The other 3 lenses despite their flaws (which to this point have been unavoidable with superwide super fast lenses) are considered very good lenses. The nokton got hit hard because wide open it didnt deliver for the astrophotographer reviewing it at lenstip and because of the stellar sharpness levels hit by the 3 other noktons. In reality when compared to the only 3 similar lenses in existence it performs on par with them even though it is the only one with an aperture larger than its focal length.

All of this combined with the shallow dof available at wide angles on m43, a similiar rendering to my 25mm nokton, and a filter thread with stepless aperture for video make this lens a no brainer for me. It even gives me a dof scale for street photography (my most common photographic pursuit).

I do plan to post my own review and image samples once I have recieved my copy of the lens and had a week or so with it.

This is what I love to see: a photographer who is willing to make a lens work because of what it can do and his vision for using it. Not an armchair critic like so many.