PAD 143 - Blossom

[Mike Farley]

Day 143 and I found this blossom in the local wood.

Canon EOS 7D
Voigtländer APO-Lanthar SL II 90mm f/3.5
1/250 sec
f/5.6
ISO 100

[davidc]

Interesting choice of lens, what made you buy it/use it in this case?

[Mike Farley]

Interesting choice of lens, what made you buy it/use it in this case?

The lens gets good reviews and is currently on offer at an attractive price from Robert White at half its original price. It is one of a series of well regarded lenses briefly made by Cosina under the Voigtländer name, the other focal lengths being 125 and 180 mm. All have been discontinued as Cosina is now using the factory to make higher priced Zeiss optics. There was a Nikon version of the lens, but according to Robert White this has sold out due to D800 owners looking for high resolution glass to match their cameras' sensors.

The lens is manual focus, but is chipped so that metering works and it is possible to use focus confirmation which surprisingly does not come on until some time after the subject appears to be sharp in the viewfinder. (Two or three years ago I passed on a Leica Summilux-R 80 mm F/1.4 at a good price because I could not get a sharp image from it when mounted on my EOS 400D, so could not be sure it was focussing properly. I now know where the fault probably lay. It is one of Leica's classic designs and many of the R lenses, this one included, have since gone up considerably in value. )

I used the lens for this shot mainly as I was trying it out. The image demonstrates both the sharpness and pleasing bokeh remarked on in the Photozone review. At the original price, either of Canon's non IS 100 offerings would probably be better options, but with the reduction I thought it was worth trying and I have not been disappointed.

One of my tests was to mount the lens of my IR camera to see if there was any flare in circumstances when I would expect it occur, in other words pointing in the general direction of the sun, even if it is not visible in the viewfinder. It performed commendably, while the 17 - 40 Canon lens I normally use on the camera did flare in the same situation. Possibly that was due to the wider focal length, but the Voigtländer does seem to be a good IR lens.

http://www.robertwhite.co.uk/lenses/voi ... -lens.html

http://www.photozone.de/nikon--nikkor-a ... est-report

http://www.photozone.de/sony-alpha-aps- ... er90f35nex