Voigtlander Nokton 25mm f/0.95 review (Part 1)

I have been waiting for this lens for a while. I ordered in the day after it was announced in late August as my birthday present to myself. It arrived on Melbourne Cup day and I made arrangements to go and pick up the lens after the race (no luck there as I didn't win anything). It was great to meet Scott at Mainline Photographics - obviously a bunch keen on their photography and keen pricing (at the time the cheapest in the World but our dollar has since risen and it is about line ball with USD pricing).

Here is my review after its first week of use. Note - click on image or link for a larger version of photos. I will post the review in several parts and this is of course Part 1.

Unboxing



_B025004 by peterb666, on Flickr




_B025006 by peterb666, on Flickr




_B025007 by peterb666, on Flickr




_B025008 by peterb666, on Flickr


A rather modest thing. Well packed and you get a hood and two lens caps, a 52mm one for the lens body and a 67mm for the front of the lens hood. Both are snap on types.


Initial impressions

The build quality is superb. The lens has a nice solid feel to it having an all metal construction. It isn't too heavy and it oozes quality. This is how a good quality lens was made 3 or 4 decades ago.

The focus ring is ultra smooth and a generous amount of rotation covers the zoom range from 0.17m to infinity. You would expect a lens like this to focus no closer than around 0.25m, maybe even 0.3m. With about 280 degrees of rotation and much of it in that range between 0.3m and 0.17m, it is very easy to accurately focus the lens.

The aperture ring in towards the front of the lens. I am not a big fan of this type of design but have got use to it over the years. I have the same on a number of Olympus OM lenses as well as my Schneider 40mm lens from my Robot Star IIa. I also prefer full-stop clicks but the half-stop clicks are bearable enough. The aperture ring is light and the click stops positive.



Voigtlander 25mm by peterb666, on Flickr




Voigtlander 25mm-1 by peterb666, on Flickr


One disappointment is the lack of electrical interface with the Micro Four Thirds mount. Examining the rear element, it is fairly obvious that it would be difficult to provide space for the contacts other than slicing off the bottom of the rear lens elements. That of course would make assembly difficult and add to the cost of lens.



Voigtlander 25mm-2 by peterb666, on Flickr