25mm Lens Comparison

B

Barry_Green

Moderator
Seeing this shiny new Voigtlander 25mm f/0.95 lens here, I thought... hmmm... I wonder, how does this lens compare to my Zeiss Compact Prime, in terms of straight-up image quality, bokeh, all that fun stuff?

So as I gathered them to take a comparison photo, it struck me that I also have the ZF 25mm lens.

And then as I kept looking, I kept finding more and more 25mm lenses! Sheesh, how many 25mm lenses does one guy need? I found five in all.

So, here they are, in full 5K res still photos, all shot at f/2.8 because that's the fastest the ZF/CP would go.

Let me know what you think, and which are your favorites, and if you see substantial differences between them (because one thing I can guarantee you is that there is a
substantial difference in price!)

Lens 1: http://www.mediafire.com/?5aa44c60rb0kpy5

Lens 2: http://www.mediafire.com/?9if3bm8g6ju6bma

Lens 3: http://www.mediafire.com/?ss69t2u2tqg17pd

Lens 4: http://www.mediafire.com/?wc1yf8ycti8mugx

Lens 5: http://www.mediafire.com/?i62xrdqbm2djo0v
 
I prefer lenses 1 & 2, and couldn't tell them apart at first glance. I'd love to see how the Panasonic 20mm Pancake compares though at different focal length...

BTW- In the spirit of the photo selection Merry Christmas/New Year & Thanks for sharing all your awesome knowledge all year!

Cheers!
 
Merry x-mas Barry!
Without a doubt 0037 and 0038 are my favorites as I'm not crazy about the bokeh on the others
Judging by the unusual eliptic bokeh, 0038 is my guess at the Voigtlander f0.95
edit:
I'm very curious about the 'fish-eye' look to the bokeh on 0040. Is that a B4 or C mount lens?
 
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Great test! First of all, they are all usable, 40 is the worst with 42 slightly behind it. Both have vignette and curvature on the outside edges of the lens.
37 and 38 look like the same lens. I really cant tell a difference in bokeh or color rendition.
39 is fantastically sharp and I might slightly prefer the color rendering. Not a huge fan of the bokeh, but it does have the least amount of CA. I guess 39 would be my favorite, though I'd never be able to tell a difference in motion between 37, 38, and 39. I hope it costs $100 :)

BTW - I'd rather pixel peep than do anything else on x-mas. thanks again!

EDIT: I see tiny differences between 37 and 38 now. 39 is still my favorite and I'm hoping its cheap and opens to 1.4 :)
 
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urgg ... dammit ... I just realized I got my numbers mixed up, I meant to say 0038 and 0039 are my favorites
(I like the near circular bokeh)
I still say 38 is the voigtlander, at least I didn't typo on that number
 
I don't have a whole lot of experience compared to others here, but I'll take a stab at this anyway.

• As others have noted, 37 and 38 are very similar with only slight differences in color rendition - however, 37 only has 213 lights showing on the tree, while 38 shows 215 - therefore 38 is obviously resolving better. :)

• 39 has great color and good detail - the bokeh is slightly ragged, which might be attributed to needing to stop down a bit - Voightlander?

• 40 is just plain funky. Cool if you're going for that look.

• 42 is kind of interesting - there's something weird about the DoF - the right side of the hat (red part which points toward the lampshade) seems to be more in focus than the white fur in front, and yet the eyes are sharp. And look at the detail in the fabric showing through the hole in the white fur. This is the only shot that shows good detail in that area. It could just be that this lens shows a greater DoF but is having trouble resolving the detail in the fur?

Barry, assume you were focusing on the eyes - comparing just the eyes; 37, 38, and 39 appear to be sharpest. Although they're all fairly sharp, and there's always the possibility focusing could be egg nog influenced.

Although it's a very close call between these three, I'd say 39 is my favorite.

Now please tell me it's not the Voightlander because that's the only remaining lens in my price range that I'm currently lusting for and if it compared favorably to the Zeiss lenses I'd be even more tempted to buy it. Okay, who am I kidding - it's only a matter of time anyway. I need to find a support group.
 
37, 38 and 39 are all good. I think 39 looks best as far as detail (e.g. white fur on Santa hat), but the polygonal bokeh is a little ugly. That's probably because it's not wide open. 40 has the familiar distorted bokeh of a c-mount lens, which can be a cool effect for portraits. The ETC on the GH2 might get rid of that. As far as clarity, they all seem really, really close.
 
The price range on the lenses in this test range from $3900 (CP) to $15 (cheapo Ultrak security-camera c-mount lens).

Many of you are pretty much spot-on with your observations, actually, although the one biggest tell-tale giveaway hasn't really been commented on yet. The edge vignetting on #40 should have clued folks into that being a c-mount lens.

37 - Compact Prime
38 - Zeiss ZF
39 - Voigtlander
40 - 1940's-era Bell & Howell 1-inch 16mm movie camera lens
42 - Ultrak security-camera lens, but it wouldn't focus on my c-mount adapter so I actually am freelensing that one a bit, I'm manually holding it up against the camera body with no mount at all! Kudos to tflak for noticing that it was "off"

The CP and the ZF were closer than I was expecting; I expected them to be identical in most ways, but I was expecting rounder/smoother bokeh from the 14-blade iris, and instead they really look rather identical.
 
LOL. Now I have to have the voightlander! If the 50 1.1 looks that good I'd have to have it as well.

Was almost hoping it was the panasonic 25mm 1.4, just so it'd be available for purchase.
 
The voigtlander really does hold it's own for sure. I do love the lens... It's made like an absolute tank and it's cool that it has a cap for the lens hood and for the actual lens.... Thanks so much for doing this comparison Barry and all that you do...


Are you planning on getting a Fader ND or anything else to work with the Voigtlander when it's on your GH2 as I know you'll be set on the AF100.
 
I have the Fader ND, I got an 82mm back when I had a 7D. Probably the #1 thing I still dislike about working with something like a GH2. The Fader's a neat concept, but in reality it just isn't all that. Can't be used on really wide shots, loses sharpness on telephoto, it's really just a hack. Neat idea not ready for prime time.
 
Barry_Green said:
I have the Fader ND, I got an 82mm back when I had a 7D. Probably the #1 thing I still dislike about working with something like a GH2. The Fader's a neat concept, but in reality it just isn't all that. Can't be used on really wide shots, loses sharpness on telephoto, it's really just a hack. Neat idea not ready for prime time.
Click to expand...

I also have a Fader ND 82mm and couldn't agree more on all accounts.
 
I have 2 LCW Fader NDs and also agree. Which is why I now have a Singh-Ray Vari-ND. Completely different ballgame. The Singh-Ray is definitely ready for prime time compared to the Faders. It's still sharp at 100mm and build quality is much nicer. That said, I haven't tested it yet with the 100-300 to see how it does over 100.
 
Thanks a lot for this test Barry! I was wondering about the 10 edges on the xmas lights of #39 but the Nokton really holds up with the 3x expensive Zeiss! it would be interesting to see how those xmas lights look with a stopped down Zeiss...
 
What about if getting a Smaller thread size for the ND-FADER because the 0.95 is 52mm ? will that make a difference
 
cool comparison :) I have been researching the lens enough to spot out the Voight straight away as I know its Bokeh character and how it becomes octagonal in nature when stopped down (which to be honest I'm not a huge fan of as other lenses manage to keep a circular bokeh with LESS blades...BUT the bokeh of the nokton wide open is beautiful).
 
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