Voigtlander 17.5mm f/0.95 lens test sample shots

The Voigtlander 17.5mm f/0.95 brags spectacular specs and I was wondering if it's all that great. I've recently had a chance to test one of the fastest lenses available in the market thanks to good guys at infoto.pl who made this test possible, so I borrowed my friends Olympus OMD-EM10 (great camera btw) and began the tests.

First of all this lens mounted on EM10 looks just great. The retro elegance is amazing and as it turns out it fitted my palm just right even though the camera is rather petite.

reminds a mint film camera innit?

I needed  just a few seconds to decide that the first results looked great, but I was still rather sceptical until I saw them on a larger screen.

I am quite suspicious of the micro 4/3 system in general as those sensors are considerably smaller. In this case the 2x multiplier comes in handy - it makes the lens a 35mm equivalent for the full frame and fast 35mm lenses are notoriously used for all kinds of photography. Many photographers consider this focal length even more versatile that 50mm. It's good for landscape, portrait and perfect for street photography. But in the DSLR world you don't even come close to f/0.95- you have to make do with f/1.4 and you end up with a really large lens. Twice as big and heavy as this one anyway.

I was booked for 3 portrait shoots on the weekend anyway so I took those babies for a spin and... I took about 15 shots total with my NEX5N + 35/1.4 lens that I adore. I took the other 3000 shots with the Olympus + Voigtlander.

The lens is tack sharp already at f/1.4-2, and still very decent at f/0.95 which I found almost unbelievable.

at 0.95 the image is perfectly acceptable

at f/0.95

at f/4

Sharpness almost all the way through apertures shown on 100% 1:1 pixel crops. The range between f/2.8-f/4 is the sharpest, f/1.4 is the sweet spot IMO

How do the portraits look? Take a peek yourselves:

Shallow (yet very sharp) depth of field is just amazing. I used it at f/0.95 almost all the time, occassionally stepping down to f/1.4 for some shots.

Colour reproduction is great too. Skin tones and the green of the plants look amazing straight from the camera so I only gave it a bit of postprocessing to get this result.

The lens focuses so close you can easily use it for some softcore macro without using any additional macro lenses etc.

With such a fast lens the only annoying thing are those chromatic abberrations as you might have guessed, but I have seen some f/1.4 lenses that had more ACs than this one at f/0.95. Luckily they are easy to get rid of with ACR or Lightroom so I didn't worry about them at all.

53: Urban Rot

Olympus XA4 (wide angle 28mm compact camera) + AGFA Precisa

45: Typhoon & Tetris

Oly XA2 + Precisa

43: Random Lodz #003

Oly XA4 + Precisa

43: Random Lodz #002

Lodz, Poland
Oly XA4 + Precisa

43: Random Lodz #001

Oly XA4 + Precisa
in Lodz, off-license

41: Olympus XA4 ! ! !

Hi, I finally got round to write something about my recently purchased Olympus XA4. I had owned an XA2 for almost a year before I bought the XA4 and you have to know the latter is a rare bird. First of all it was produced only in 1985 so there's probably not many to go round these days, second it has got a wide angle 28mm lens so no wonder it is so hard to come by.

Here's the camera itself:

It differs from the XA2 by quite a number of things and what sets it apart from the other XAs is that it has a focal length of 28mm (the rest have 35mm). The XA2 has three focusing zones: close, mid range and far. :) represented by a bust, a couple of people and mountains respectively. The XA4 has 7 focusing zones: 0.3 - 0.5 - 0.7 - 1 - 1.5 - 3 - infinity which gives greater precision, but then again at 28mm what difference does it make if you focus at 1.5 or 3m. After using it for some time I can say that it does make a difference, but getting the hang of setting the value without looking (this camera is known for being used for candid photography) is a little harder than in the XA2 where you had only 3 positions.

Having scanned the first roll of slide I was amazed at the quality. I once compared the XA2 with my Nikon + Nikkor 20mm 2.8 lens stopped down to f/8. For some strange reason the XA2 was considerably sharper. Well. the XA4 is even sharper!

The light metering is great, but I don't see the differences between the two XA in this matter. They are both great. When the camera needs compensation you just have to alter the iso value for this shot. Eg ISO800 instead of the nominal ISO400 of your film for +1E.V. or ISO200 for -1E.V. The XA4 has one advantage when ISO sensitivity is considered, it do

All XAs have a central shutter so you will be amazed what long exposure time you will be able to make hand-holding (I had a couple of occasions where I held a really long exposure like 1/5 to 1 sec[only my estimation] and they worked out great while I was sure they would be smudged)

The leash of the camera can be easily used to measure the two closest focusing distances 0.3m and 0.5m (when extended)

Macro shots (0.3m measured with the leash):

This camera is amazing and I recommend it to anybody who is able to buy one which is not that easy after all.

More technical details availavle on this www.

34: Drying

Oly XA2

Darkshape - Tomasz Kaluzny

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33: Numbers

My new project:
Numbers on the Behance Network

Preview:




Olympus XA2 + AGFA Precisa

25: Untitled

Oly XA2 + Slide developped in Rossmann