--> Skip to main content

Voigtländer Color-Skopar 28mm f3,5 on Sony Full Frame Mirrorless

 If you want the TL:DR version of this, the Voigtländer Color-Skopar 28mm lens is absolute crap on my Sony A7RII. Check out the samples.


So I work at Mills College in Oakland California. We got an amazing donation - well actually several separate donations from someone who's mom graduated in 1939. There was a Leica M3 and a number of lenses for said Leica in the donation. The school doesn't have any mirrrorless cameras, but I do and wanted to test out some of these classic legends to see how they fair against modern lenses. 

There were a few reviews online like this one I found that talked positively of this lens. Can't say I agree.

I bought a Fotodiox (or as my friend refers to this company "Foto Detox") Leica M- to Sony FE adapter. It was $20 and is a simple adapter that all it does is hold the lens in place on the body. I believe they also make an adapter that will autofocus which blows my mind. 

In any case, I put this lens on and walked around campus to do a few tests. As for any sort of action shots, I don't think the Leica manual focus to Sony is any sort of solution worth considering.  This lens is slow and cumbersome to focus. And I often found myself inadvertently bumping the aperture scale when I did focus. 

The short of it is that, at least this copy of the Voigtländer Color-Skopar 28mm is absolute crap. When evaluating the photos I took, my first thought was - wow, the images are beautifully sharp and contrasty. But when I scrolled over to the edges, maybe the last 15% of the images was very soft and smeary. 

Epic fail!

It could be that at least part of the issue is a wide angle lens designed for film on a digital sensor. Whatever it is, stay away from this lens/camera combo like the plague! You're better off with a kit zoom.

See some samples here. You can download full resolution sample for your personal evaluation with the password: NotScottish


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Linhof Serial Year List - Salomon Says

Recently I've acquired a few Linhof cameras. I got a 5x7 view camera from Oakland Museum's White Elephant Sale. Later I stumbled upon a Color Kardan 90 Jahre Jubalaeum edition on Craigslist. And more recently, I found a "baby Technika" 2x3 (6x9) at Oakland's East Bay Depot for Creative Re-use. Not knowing much about Linhof large format cameras, I tried getting more info online, and came across a strange thread on the Large Format Photography Forum . Basically on this thread various Linhof owners ask a guy named Bob Salomon what year their Linhof was made. And the thread is over 100 pages long! Sifting through that thread is mindnumbing. Why Bob doesn't just publish the list of serial numbers is beyond me. Maybe it's just nice to feel needed. So I started compiling a spreadsheet of the serial numbers and the answer Bob gives. If you don't feel like spending a couple days reading this thread to get a hint as to the age of your Lin

From the Archive: Obsolete Film Data Sheet Scans - ORWO Information

Here's a sheet I got from writing ORWO Technischer Kundendienst back in the 1980's. It lists development times for all the ORWO Black and White films sold for export at the time (NP15, NP22, NP 27) combined with western developers Microphen, Atomal, Rodinal, Refinal, D-76, & ID-11. A little bit of ORWO history- Germany's big photo film/paper manufacturer up until Germany's losing WWII was AGFA (short for  A ktien G esellschaft F ür A nilinfabrikation - or corporation for some sort of plastic manufacture.) Germany was occupied by the winning powers USSR/USA/GB/FR and the rift between the USSR led to some complications for industries. Depending on your view of history the US and western allies were much friendlier to the land they occupied (remember the USSR lost many millions of their citizens to the NAZIs which made them much less tolerant.) In any case, some factories in the east moved to the west with many key employees. Most photo enthusiasts know of the t

Should I ditch my Sony a6500 for a A7r IV?

Recently, I bought a Sony a7r IV. The main reason was for stock photography. The high resolution along with improved focusing and biggish buffer would allow me to make better people (and other) stock photos for my various stock endeavors.  The Sony system has treated me well. I own two A7r II's for stock and other work, and two a6500's for event photography. The A7r II's aren't ideal for events for a couple reasons. The focus tracking is pretty good, but maybe not enough for fast paced people on stage. Another reason is that silent shooting is only available on single shot mode. And (admittedly a first world problem,) the files are much bigger than needed. Well, the last problem, too big files isn't an issue with the A7rIV if you use it in APS-c mode. The files are effectively the same size as the a6500: 24 mp. Focus with the IV is even faster and more effective than the very capable a6500. And with those smaller files, the IV has no problem with buffer overflow. So