Thursday, October 17, 2013

The Voigtlander 40mm f/1.4 Nokton


I just got a nice little box from UPS this afternoon!

I needed a good normal prime lens for my Ricoh GXR M-mount camera and had been trying a variety of lenses. I've been very happy with Voigtlander's rangefinder lenses, especially for the price. I currently have the 25mm f/4 Color-Skopar and the 15mm f/4.5 Heliar Asph II and have found them both to be extremely useful, if a little slow.

For the low price, I wasn't expecting much from the 40 but the 1.4 speed was very attractive! I'm glad I got it because on my GXR, the performance is excellent - even wide-open. The build quality isn't too shabby either - it's no Leica but the construction seems to be mostly metal and the tolerances seem to be well-met.

The 40mm Nokton gives me a 60mm equivalent field of view on the GXR which is a tad tight for a Normal lens but I'm actually finding it useful. I've tried numerous 50mm lenses and they are always too confining. I'll probably try out Voigtlander's 35mm f/2.5 at some point as well.

In some instances the bokeh is a bit busy but mostly I find it appealing and have had no problem shooting wide open for the lion's share of these following shots. These were just shot around the house in available evening light. I plan on taking this guy out as part of my regular GXR kit on my next photo jaunt...more photos then.

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