Voigtlander 28mm f/2.0 Ultron Vintage Asph Type I: My Favorite Lens At This Moment.

Voigtlander 28mm f/2.0 Ultron Vintage Asph Type I: My Favorite Lens At This Moment.

Subject to change at any moment. I thought this earlier soon after acquiring it. But I wanted to let some time pass to see if I felt the same way after a month or so. And I do. But first a recap.

I introduced this lens with a post on its filigree. It is what the Voigtlander website calls this little focus lever dealie.

In that review I discussed my pursuit of a fast-ish wide-ish Voigtlander lens. I point you to that last post for more details, but the short version is I wanted a lens to plug a hole in my M Voigtlander trio…

Welcome To Hypocrisy Central: The Voigtlander M Pivot Part 1.

…between the 21mm…

A Lovely Little Lens: Voigtlander Color-Skopar 21mm f/4 VM P.

…and 40mm.

Culling The 50mm-ish M Lens Herd: Voigtländer Nokton 40mm F1.2 For M.

And after considering the Voigtlander Nokton 28mm f/1.5 Vintage Aspherical Type II VM and Voigtlander 28mm f/2.8 Color-Skopar Type I Aspherical I took the Goldilocks spec between the two price, size, and aperture spec wise.

In that last post, I also went through the different variations of this lens. The newest version came in three flavors. All three have the same internals so everything stated here applies to them all.

Why my favorite lens? I am glad I imagined… you know.

It has nothing to do with flexibility. Plenty of other lenses have a much broader use case like overperforming zooms.

It is not the focal length. One could argue that slightly longer focal length primes like 40mm have a broader use case.

Ease of use is definitely not the reason. This lens does not have autofocus for starters.

So what is it? Easy.

Image quality.

I love the images that this lens produces. Love them. Above and beyond lenses I have rambled about in this space before. Even more than a prior favorite from Voigtlander, the 40mm f/1.2.

What is about the images it produces? And for those keeping track I am specifically speaking of images produced with an old guard M digital camera.

Will it perform the same way on newer M cameras? No idea. I do not have the required money tree to find out.

Will it perform as well adapted to another mirrorless brand? No idea. Might. I have no plans of ever doing so. That is not what I bought it for.

What brought me to this decision is based on nothing I can state in a sensible, quantifiable manner. I would completely understand if you dismissed my proclamation in full. Personal preference at the end of the day. Brace yourself for a healthy dose of nonsense prattling.

The colors.

Just wow.

3D pop.

Even the simplest image is interesting. And an amazing amount of subject isolation from a relatively humble f/2 aperture spec.

Surprising lack of aberrations.

Take this simple throwaway pic I took while going through a car wash. I applied no fixes so when I zoomed in on the image I was surprised to find no strange colors on the edges of items in focus that are being hit by direct sunlight.

I have modern AF lenses that would not have fared as well.

Stars.

Exhibit A: Check out the stars on this one.

Exhibit B: The star here is on the A pillar of the Honda CR-V.

But this image also outlines an excellent counter to this lens’ lack of AF.

Zone focus.

Set this lens aperture and infinity focus to f/5.6 and let her rip. That is what I did for the above image. And it works like a charm for out and about photography when you do not have time to focus and want to capture a scene. Perfect stuff for a 28mm lens.

Low light.

I love the way this lens renders low light scenes.

And while we are at it this lens pulls these same tricks off when using film.

And it is put together well and is not a bad-looking thing either.

I have a few more in me but I will stop myself here. These are some of my favorite images so far below.

Thoughts.

This lens is cuss word awesome.

But here is the highest praise. When I first acquired my M digital camera I feared that I might succumb to Leica M glass G.A.S.. But that has not been the case at all and lenses like this one are the reason why. No matter how wonderful it may be I do not see how I could be convinced to purchase the Leica alternative even if I had the cash in hand. I like this lens that much.

Well done Voigtlander.

-ELW