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Start Gear & Galleries 2D Cameras & Lenses GH2 showing Strengths and Weaknesses of the Voigtlaender Nokton mFT 25mm/f0.95

GH2 showing Strengths and Weaknesses of the Voigtlaender Nokton mFT 25mm/f0.95

As already shown in this article, the new Voigtlaender Nokton 25/0.95 with mFT mount is a perfect lens for available light photography. Another strength is the extreme sharpness that the GH2 with it's new 16 MP sensor can deliver through this lens which already comes close to the results that I reached when I spent some time with the Leica M9 and two excellent Leica M lenses.

P1000355

100% Crop:
P1000355_acr_crop
(developed with Adobe Camera RAW 6.3)

...but...

...where light is there are some shadows as well. With wide open aperture (f0.95) the sharpness in the center is already quite good but you will also recognize a significant portion of blur in the edges. At f2.8 the edges are still a bit soft but when you stop down to f5.6 the sharpness all over the picture is excellent.

4:3 format @ f0.95
Nokton 25/0.95 @ f0.95 (4:3)
(click on the picture to see available sizes and enlarge to original size)

crop f0.95:
f0.95 crop

4:3 format @ f2.8
Nokton 25/0.95 @ f2.8 (4:3)
(click on the picture to see available sizes and enlarge to original size)

crop f2.8:
f2.8 crop

4:3 format @ f5.6
Nokton 25/0.95 @ f5.6 (4:3)
(click on the picture to see available sizes and enlarge to original size)

crop f5.6:
f5.6 crop

I was curious to see, how this lens manages the challenge of the new multiformat sensor of the GH2. With this sensor, 16:9 pictures are not just crops of 4:3 images as with most other micro fourthirds cameras (except it's predecessor the GH1). This sensor provides some hundreds of extra pixels horizontally when using the wide format (to be precise: 4976 instead of 4608 pixels), which means that we look a little bit deeper into the horizontal border areas of the image which is projected by the lens but leave out a little bit of the edge areas of the 4:3 aspect ratio.

The results are visible in the following pictures:

16:9 wide format @ f0.95
Nokton 25/0.95 @ f0.95 (16:9)
(click on the picture to see available sizes and enlarge to original size)

16:9 wide format @ f2.8
Nokton 25/0.95 @ f2.8 (16:9)
(click on the picture to see available sizes and enlarge to original size)

16:9 wide format @ f5.6
Nokton 25/0.95 @ f5.6 (16:9)
(click on the picture to see available sizes and enlarge to original size)

Is it really f0.95?

Another question I already saw from other users: Is it really f0.95 at fully opened aperture? I have some doubts...
During the series of photos I also took pictures at f1.4 and f2.0, the camera was set to "P" (program automatic). The camera selected 1/2000 for f1.4 and 1/1000 for f2.0, which is as expected. At f0.95, the camera selected an exposure time of 1/2500 second. many people expect at f0.95, that the exposure time would have been 1/4000s as the lighting conditions were quite constant during that session. When I repeated that series a little bit later with some more light, the f0.95 exposure was taken with 1/3200s, the f1.4 exposure with 1/2500s. I would actually estimate the open aperture f-stop at about f1.1. Perhaps the lens construction fullfills this value geometrically but then other pyhsical reasons may have already a strong effect in this aperture range.

Nevertheless it is an exceptional lens that lets you win at least about 1/3 to 1/2 stop against other f1.4 prime lenses with great bokeh and extraordinary sharpness when stopped down.