Essai du Voigtländer Nokton 35 mm f/1,2 sur Fujifilm X-T2 par Arkadiusz Olech (traduit par Maciej Latałło) pour LensTip.com :
Voigtländer Nokton 35 mm f/1.2 X / Z review - LensTip.comPoints forts :
- fût élégant, très solide, en métal
- excellente qualité d'image au centre à partir de f/2
- aberration chromatique longitudinale imperceptible
- légère aberration chromatique latérale
- pas de problèmes sérieux de distorsion
- zones floues agréables à l'œil.
Points faibles :
- faible qualité d'image faible au centre au voisinage de l'ouverture maximale
- bords pas particulièrement nets
- des problèmes d'aberration sphérique
- coma très élevée
- vignetage bien visible
- faibles performances en contre-jour.
I admit that I don't know what to think about such lenses as the tested Nokton. I can understand that there are people who like playing creatively with blur. Optics producers should offer them cheap instruments with just several elements for such a purpose. The choice is rich: you can use Cooke triplets, 4-element aplanatic lenses, anastigmats or tessars. The 5-element SainSonic Kamlan 50 mm f/1.1, that we have tested provided such a possibilities and its price was about $150.
Still, if you see much more complex and more expensive lenses, which are not so sharp you feel perplexed. A good lens should produce good quality images, if they are blurry there's nothing you can do. With a sharp lens you have a lot of possibilities – you can make it less sharp by playing with photo editors, you can apply softening or diffusion filters, you can grease the front element with lard. Finally you can make a sharp lens less sharp for ever by dropping it on the floor. It doesn't work the other way round – a blurry lens will never become sharp and crisp.
That's why I have a problem with the Voigtländer Nokton 1.2/35 X. On the one hand they did try to correct some aberrations by using 8 elements in its construction, one of them made of special glass. What's more, the Nokton is a very solid device and that's why it costs almost $650.
Perhaps the producer wanted to offer us two things in one, it's the only explanation I can think of. The Nokton 1.2/35 might be treated as a very well-built 2/35 lens that is quite sharp in the frame centre; apertures from the f/1.2-f/1.8 range are a bonus, just for a creative blur play. Still such a solution costs almost $650 and it doesn't guarantee you good image quality on the edge of the frame by practically any aperture. If you still think it's worth your while, fine by me. Personally I am not convinced...