Marvelous lens
By Eugueny
Rated 5 out of 5
Date: 2025-01-02
I have several 85mm lenses from Zeiss, Sony and Sigma. They're all optically perfect but they're also heavy, so I was looking for something more lightweight to take with me on long hikes. This Nokton at about 500g fits the bill.
Several reviewers characterized this lens as soft or dreamy wide open, but they reviewed the M-mount version. Mine is quite sharp at f/1.5, at least in the center. The far corners become sharp only around f/4 and they continue to improve until f/5.6 when its sharp across the frame. For portraits that's not a problem, and for landscapes I am perfectly fine stopping it down to f/4 or 5.6.
But the best part is the bokeh it creates. Unlike more clinical options from Sony or Zeiss, this lens renders the out-of-focus ares with a signature look which I love. But most importantly, only 500g!
And finally, I must mention the fantastic build quality. Glass and metal. This is what old Zeiss lenses used to be, so it's great to see Voigtlander carrying on the tradition.
Manual focus on modern Sony viewfinder is easy. I wouldn't shoot a hockey game with this lens, but for hiking or walking around town I actually prefer lighter manual focus lenses.
Adapts well to GFX medium format - tested purely on GFX
By jw2k_fr
Rated 5 out of 5
Date: 2024-05-20
I picked up a used copy of this lens at the same time as the Voigtlander 50mm Heliar Classic f1.5 VM, with a view to 'comparing' the two, or maybe I should say 'contrasting' them.
I went for a short walk in Inwood Hill Park and used a couple of squirrels as test subjects. All shots were in Aperture priority mode, at ISO 1600 with the manual lens adapter settings for focal length set at 75mm and 50mm, as appropriate, in the GFX menus, which should (in theory) mean there was some IBIS in the mix.
For aesthetics and handling, the Heliar 50mm looks drop dead gorgeous with that contrasting nickel-finish band. The aperture ring clicks just a tiny bit more positively, and makes the cheaper lens feel that it's cut from a very, very slightly better quality cloth. However, that's entirely subjective, I'm sure others could find that nickel finish slightly gaudy and prefer the clean lines of the Nokton 75. Both get high marks for perceived build quality and the detents in the aperture rings. Both also have smooth, well damped focus rings.
For image quality though, I felt this Nokton 75mm looked noticeably better when adapted to the GFX, which is probably as much about the difference in focal length as it is the quality or design of the optics, although the Aspherical elements in the Nokton *could* also play a part there. For me, both have a smooth, organic rendering to them on that sensor, but I still prefer the Nokton by a hair even in that respect. The biggest negative for the Heliar Classic 50 is that there is some weird compression in the out-of-focus areas just off-center, approximately where lines of thirds would be if made into a circle? It's very reminiscent of other swirly boken lenses such as a Helios 44M, and I found it too distracting (I will post some examples to the other lens review I will write after this).
This Nokton, on the other hand, has a surprisingly small amount of vignetting for an adapted lens, and needs minimal cropping for these shots to make it mostly imperceptible, although it is a little strong right in the corners with this busy background. However, for smoothness of out of focus areas when at f2 and below, I really like this lens.
Coming from Canon, via Sony, and only recently to GFX, I had no issues with finding the focus ring with my eye pressed to the viewfinder and found focus peaking to get me close on almost every shot. Unfortunately, of those 'almost' shots, my keeper rate was probably around 25%, and only a couple of those would be 100% in focus.
Of the first pair of images I've posted, 1A shows the full, uncropped image, with some noticeable hard vignetting right in the corners. There is some swirliness to the image, but it's lighter, and much further towards the outside than the Heliar Classic. 1B shows roughly the middle ninth of a 'Thirds' 3x3 grid, and this is VERY usable at 3450x2588 pixels, 1/340s, and approx F2 (I didn't make notes of my apertures, sorry, but they were almost all very wide!)
** RAWs 1A, 1B, 2A, and 2B have not been edited in Lightroom, except for guestimating the color temp at 5500k. RAWs 3A, and 3B, the black squirrel, were set to 5000k and had some minor tweaks to contrast, texture, shadows, and blacks for the enlargement to show a little detail in the fur. All images resized to 1600px on the longest edge for posting here. **
Obviously comparing these two lenses isn't entirely fair, or even appropriate, but I have found it hard to find solid examples of these lenses converted to Medium Format, so I thought I would flag the other review for anyone in the same boat. The comparative focal lengths on Full Frame would be 40mm and 60mm. I'll post images for the 50mm Heliar under a similar review I will do after this one.
In summary, I feel the 75mm Nokton Asph adapts much better to Fuji GFX than then Heliar Classic 50mm. The vignetting is less noticeable, and it doesn't have the same weird compression going on that the Heliar had in my setup. While they both have good color rendering and the micro-contrast seems like it could be decent (difficult to judge at 1600 ISO), the 75mm Nokton ASPH is the one I will be keeping and looking to use. I think both lenses could work well for portraits with a less jumbled background, but I would still take the Nokton every time.
Be aware that both lenses do appear to have some issues with flaring, I did not have either included lens hood available to see whether this would have made a difference.
I hope this helps anyone looking for a high quality, modern, manual focus lens which will work almost as well on Medium Format as others have shown it to do on Full Frame. I'm going to be keeping this one and putting it up against my Mamiya Sekor 80mm f1.9 M645 lens which I have tested once on the GFX. Both seem very capable and ultimate choice is likely to be subjective for each person. The Mamiya has good resolution, possibly slightly more muted colors (which you could easily compensate for in post) and has almost as wide of a maximum aperture. The Mamiya might be a little cheaper but prices are volatile and climbing for most good quality medium format lenses.
