Low light test? How about NO light test, with Voigtlander 25mm?

B

Barry_Green

Moderator
Just got my Voigtlander 25mm f/0.95 lens. How do you test a lens like that? Well, obviously with a single candle!

Everyone always wants to hear about "low light" performance, and then the discussion centers around "what is low light?" I figured I'd go for the lowest of the low, a single individual tealight candle. However, I've seen a bunch of those types of shots and they always look... well, there's a little bit of face in a sea of blackness, what's the point of that? So I tried to use a couple of mirrors to augment the candlelight to see if I could get anything in any way usable. One mirror was used off-key as a fill, the other mirror was used to bounce a tiny bit of light onto the background.

Set the AF100 to 3200 ISO, high gamma, and 220-degree shutter. Set the lens on wide-open f/0.95. Focus? Eh, what's the point, when you're at f/0.95 there's zero depth of field, so ... I tried, but as soon as the camera started rolling it's entirely possible that she might have moved an inch forward or backward, so focus might be blown, can't help that, i was busy holding and aiming mirrors at that point...

For post, I figured that hey, nobody does anything without going through post, right? So I boosted the brightness a little, sharpened up the contrast a little, and ran some Neat Video on it to soak up some of the noise (this was 3200 ISO from a single candle, after all).

So, here you go.... here's what I could scramble together from a single candle.


This was my first stab at it. I also ordered a small parabolic reflector attachment to a lantern, to see if I could turn that candle into a PAR -- it sort of works, but the field of illumination is too narrow so it ends up looking like a rectangular spotlight, so I didn't use it in this test.


The challenge is out there, guys -- let's see your single-candle footage.
 
Looks great. If I could only find a place to get this lens!

I want to do the candlelight challenge and see if a la7200 and a +2 diopter will cover .95 without vignette.
 
I think Barry is making a practical joke. It wasn't one candle + couple of mirrors. If it was, there would be flickering. Candles flicker. There is no flicker. It was obviously more light, but a funny joke nonetheless! Love it! Anyhow, this is a lens to get, period.
 
Way to go all barry lyndon on us.

I didn't pixel peep, didn't blow it up, didn't watch it with a hyper critical eye - just watched it… and I think any non-film non-camera person (99% of the world) would be happy with that shot.

G.
 
OldCorpse said:
I think Barry is making a practical joke. It wasn't one candle + couple of mirrors. If it was, there would be flickering. Candles flicker. There is no flicker. It was obviously more light, but a funny joke nonetheless! Love it! Anyhow, this is a lens to get, period.
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neat video probably mushed the flicker away


but seriously if you look at the back wall you can clearly see strong flicker going on
 
OldCorpse said:
I think Barry is making a practical joke. It wasn't one candle + couple of mirrors. If it was, there would be flickering. Candles flicker. There is no flicker. It was obviously more light, but a funny joke nonetheless! Love it! Anyhow, this is a lens to get, period.
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I see waves of light not flicker - still a candle.
 
OldCorpse said:
I think Barry is making a practical joke. It wasn't one candle + couple of mirrors. If it was, there would be flickering. Candles flicker. There is no flicker. It was obviously more light, but a funny joke nonetheless! Love it! Anyhow, this is a lens to get, period.
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Absolute God's honest truth. The only light in that room was a single individual tealight candle. Model is holding it with her left hand just out of frame. I have a mirrored barn door from a Lowel Caselight being held by a stand just off her right side for fill, and I'm hand-holding another mirror about two feet behind her, bouncing into the background.

That is absolutely one candle and only one candle. You can see the flicker in the vimeo-induced banding on the white wall on the right side of the frame (note that the banding isn't present in the original, but vimeo compression added banding).
 
Homunculus said:
barry how does this lens compare to pancake 20mm 1.7 not necessarily low light but just image quality alone
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I originally tried this shot with a different model and the 20mm f/1.7, and ... it doesn't compare. The Voigtlander lets in over 3x as much light. I'm pretty happy with how this shot turned out. With the 20mm, I just couldn't get anything in the background at all, and the model's face was so much darker that gaining it up that 1.7 stops resulted in a whole mess of blue and red noise, that Neat couldn't get rid of without mushing the whole scene, so... couldn't do it with the 1.7. Well, I couldn't do it. Someone else may be able to. :thumbsup:

As for 20mm vs. 25mm, there's a miles' worth of differences:
20mm is tiny, 25mm is (comparatively) pretty big, it weighs about a pound and is easily 3x as long.
20mm can autofocus and auto-iris, 25mm can't.
25mm's build quality makes it feel like it's made of solid gold. 20mm, not so much.
20mm's manual focus is meh. 25mm's manual focus is exquisite, with a massive massive throw, probably 300+ degrees.

20mm is razor sharp even wide open; 25mm is a little bit soft wide open, but if you stop it down a stop it'll be probably as sharp as the 20mm, and still half a stop faster.

20mm is a genius companion to the GH1/GH2, the tiny size and field of view make it just perfect. 25mm seems like it's more at home on the AF100, where its bigger size is a non-issue, and its all-manual nature just comes with the territory. With the GH1 (and now GH2) I'd sometimes actually use it like a point 'n' shoot, just slap it on auto and take photos; with the 20mm it's perfectly integrated. With the 25mm, no way. You have to work it all the way.

And, of course, the 25mm is 3x the price of the 20mm.

So they're as different as different can be. I'm glad I've got 'em both, I do highly recommend both of them. The 20mm is no slouch when it comes to sensitivity, f/1.7 is pretty good, but ... man, faster than f/1 is just SCHWEET!
 
thanks...i'm glad i have the 20mm also and in the medium term future hope to be proud owner of 25mm as the images i seen out of it are astonishing.

and yes 20mm is the worst pain to pull focus on. how the hell do people do it? my follow focus doesn't reach it


by the way is this officially the world's fastest HDSLR lens now?
 
Well, world's fastest? I don't know of any faster, but there is the Noktor 50mm f/0.95 which is equally fast, so I don't think it can lay claim to the title of world's fastest... and the Leica Noctilux f/0.95 is out there, and can be mounted on an HDSLR, so ... does that count? I don't know.

But yeah, I don't know of any lenses that are any faster, that you can actually buy. And the two m43 lenses (Nokton and Noktor) are much less expensive than the others, so they're within reach of a lot more folks.
 
is there a reason every 095 is called Noct something. presumably the prefix stands for night/darkness etc...but still...no creativity in the marketing dept? lol

is noktor 50mm the crappy one? I heard it's terribly soft and pretty bad lens.

anyways dont want to hijack the thread. let's seee some more tests!

how about with a little more light and less ISO ;-)
 
how about with a little more light and less ISO ;-)
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So, what... two candles and 1600 ISO? Heh. Four candles and 800 ISO?

The Noktor has been reviewed by several folks who say it does get soft when wide open. We used the Nokton 50mm (which opens to f/1.1) in "A Verse Before Dying".
 
what is this barry freeman stuff.

damn shame you didnt get chance to use the nokton 25mm in verse before dying. would have loved to see it in cinematic setting. not that there were super low light shots in that film but i don't even care about the f stop like i keep saying it's the image quality out of the lens that seems to be so damn nice. how many blades is the iris does anyone know?? bokeh seemed really nice from what i saw i can't remember though gotta check flickr again ...
 
hey barry do the infamous philip bloom, leonardo dicaprio (redone), etc shot with this voigtlander puppy ;-) ........

or someone anyone?
 
OH BOY....here we go. Phillip Bloom is in love with this lens....now Barry Green is in love with this lens. It looks like I'd better order one now....and maybe it will be "in stock" in 2012!! :) Thanks for sharing....VERY COOL!~!
 
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