GH4 Zeiss Loxia 35/2, 50/2 vs Voigtlander 17.5/0.95, 25/0.95

D

den59

Well-known member
I wonder what do you guys think about those combo for, say, GH4 and A7s?
Of course, no tests are available for Zeiss Loxia yeat,
but I recall people saying that Voigtlanders are quite dreamy at full open,
whereas one can expect good performance of zeiss straight at f/2.

Looking at 17/0.95 and 35/2 it is interesting to note that
17/0.95 is heavier (590g vs 340g) and has larger filter (58mm vs 52mm).
Both seem to have a good built quality and focus through.
The prices are also quite similar both for normal and wide primes.

Anyone at Photokina tried Loxia? How does it feel?

A hypothetical question, if you have both GH4 and A7s,
which lens (Voigtlander/Zeiss) would you buy / invest to ?
 
The Loxia uses an old and very reliable Biogon optical formula, but I wonder how much better this would be compared to using like an old SLR lens with an adapter ? ( i.e. Contax/Leica/Nikon 35mm f/2.0 or f/1.4 )

With the GH4 we have no choice as there's only the one Voightlander 17.5mm f/0.95 lens.
 
If I had both GH4 and A7S and was in that range of lens budget, I wouldn't buy either Voigtlander MFT (which couldn't be used on the A7) or Zeiss E-mount lenses (which couldn't be used on the GH4)... I'd buy a trusty set of Nikon-mount Zeiss ZF's, or at a less expensive budget, a set of Rokinon Nikon-mount primes plus a good Metabones adapter for both. Nikon mount lenses can be used on virtually every camera body, save for PL-mounts.

MFT-mount lenses like Voigtlanders only make sense if you've mostly using MFT-mount cameras; E-mount lenses like Loxias only make sense if you're mostly using E-mount cameras.
 
surely Nikon-mount are easier to adopt to almost any body. Unfortunately, Rokinon's are quite big and are designed for DSLR.
What is nice about Loxia / ZM / Voigtlanders is that they are designed for mirrorless cameras and can use different formulas thereby
achieving smaller sizes.

As there are numerous E-mount video cameras like FS7 (as opposed to an absence of any new m43 camera from the Panasonic's Pro video devision),
perhaps Zeiss Loxia is overall a better investment.
 
Surely it depends upon what you want and what you want to do with it. Rokinons are large, but relatively light, and faster (1.4 in their 35 and 50 versions); comparing size and weight of, say, a Nikon or Leica R f2 lens to its equivalent focal length f1.4 lens is not insignificant. Similarly with MFT lenses... the Olympus 17/1.8 is absolutely tiny compared to the 17/0.95.

Again, considering MFT and E-mount, neither would be an investment if you switched to any other camera system (unless of course you'd used them enough to make some profit from them). Get lenses that will work for the cameras you want to use.
 
i see your point. I do own Olympus 45/1.8 and Pana 12/2.5, which are also very small. Those are a bit too small and too plastic to feel comfortable in my big hands ;-)

I am used to big Nikon lens (70-200/2.8, 17-35/2.8), so big de-facto is not a problem. It just does not look reasonable for a small body/sensor. In other words, i would say 5dm3 + Rokinons are perfect combo, whereas GH4+Rokinons is a bit of a waste in this regard. And I do like mirrorless cameras in general.

At the end of the day, surely, it is a matter of taste. But for me, i don't quite feel comfortable with smallish m43 lenses. Those Voigtlanders look good though. I wish there were more m43 lenses like Voigtlanders with fast apertures not for the sake of DoF, but to be bigger and with more solid (not plastic light tiny) construction/feel.
 
Last edited:
den59 said:
I wish there were more m43 lenses like Voigtlanders with fast apertures not for the sake of DoF, but to be bigger and with more solid (not plastic light tiny) construction/feel.
Click to expand...

The Voightlander Leica M lenses are easy to adapt to m43 and share a similar pedigree with the Voightlander native m43 lenses.
 
I used to use the Voigtlander 40mm 1.4 on the GH1 all the time. I really liked that lens, fantastic manual focus feel, and very flattering "dreamy" images. I think the argument for Nikon F mount lenses also applies to Leica M mount lenses. You can always mount M lenses to any number of short-flange mirrorless cameras. They're probably the easiest lenses to adapt as there is no stop down metering hardware or anything like that to worry about.
The native m43 or E lenses have the advantage of focusing closer than 70cm. The Loxia will get you a lot closer than a rangefinder lens at 30cm but the Voigtalnder can focus from 17mm I think, which is a really great feature. They also both have declicked apertures, as much as I love my 40 the clicked aperture was really annoying when shooting video, although as a result you'd end up with more considered and consistent footage. You tend to try to avoid changing apertures and will "think" about your exposure, instead of indiscriminately pumping that iris dial. It's hard to tell because I've never used either, but I think the voigtlanders are actually quite large lenses, I'm pretty keen on the Loxia myself.
 
i saw that news shooter video. Very interesting.

So far started bidding on ai Nikkor 35/2.0 on e-bay :dankk2:
p.s. more on Loxia from Carl Zeiss
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top