25mm f/0.95 Voigtländer Nokton

nomad

There are huge differences in breathing with the Samyangs, the 85mm for example is nice, the 35 pretty bad.

If you are under the impression the Nokton is breathing a lot, you may not have taken the long focus range into account. I find similar breathing to most other still lenses in it for the same amount of change.

goanna

@kazuo

Sorry, I must have a faulty Nokton; unable to reproduce your breathing fault :-)

stoney

LoL. It's the first time I'm hearing it. Nokton 25mm has a lot less breathing than Lumix 20mm 1.7.

I guess you haven't tried Samyang primes yet. Although Samyang lenses have terrible lens breathing, images from the lenses look fantastic.

kazuo

You can achieve that kind of shot with any lens to be honest. It really boils down to you having an aesthetic eye and understanding the rules of photography. The lens may lend itself in a way that is unique to its character but in the hands of someone who doesn't understand even how light behaves you will get compromised quality.

One thing that no one has pointed out here about the nk25 is that it has terrible breathing. Try to rack focus with it: you get anything but cinematic

vicx

I keep seeing videos on vimeo which have a certain shot which stands out as being special. The shot is taken at night, the view is wide, the subject is half way between close and background but floats; the image is sharp but perfectly smooth at the same time. In the comments people ask, what lens? The answer many times is Voight 25mm f0.95 followed by smiley face :)

When I have money again, I will resist buying it as long as I can.

goanna

For any of us who've forgotten, a lot of our film language arose out of the need to cut together shots from prime lenses - and quite often a single prime.

Such shots as a POV of an actor needed to be set up with the camera shooting from the same distance and angle as actor No.2; then likewise doing the reverse shots, 2-shots, close-ups of hands - everything with the same lens, corresponding distances and angles. The wide shots, establishing shots, MCUs etc, all waltz in and out as usual, changing angle and shot-size so as they'll cut-in - but always with the same trustworthy focal length.

This will subtly lead the viewer into a complicity of trust and triangulation with that focal-length; in short, the eerie sensation in the viewer of being able to judge distances to a point of tactile judgement; of sensing one could reach out and touch a character or navigate the room blindfold; of being there.

At that point, any tracking shots will be in the time of one of the characters - or of the viewer himself; perhaps dollying twice alongside two walking characters, often from two different distances just to keep them in frame. Or else you might see tracking around the outside of that cramped car trying to get a better view of the inside.

With a single lens faithfully guiding the way, the viewer's awareness of a camera being present can disappear completely.

There are many ways to make a single narrative film. This is just one discipline you might like to stick to for a while. I'd like, as I say, to try it with the Nokton 25.

goanna

@oscillian

Yep, enclosed spaces look like my biggest challenge. Sometimes (with other lenses) I have to walk away from a good subject and say, "There's just no shot here for me to take." I promise to try harder with my Voigtlander.

Sounds like you might go the extra mile for Art yourself: try a little harder with your car rig and get that "shot with one lens" street-cred :-)

kazuo

I sold my nokton very reluctantly to be honest. I went all the way to Japan to pick it up and I paid quite an exorbitant price for it: 95 000 yen. So I do have an affinity for it still do. But I had to sell it out of necessity to fund other lenses.

I agree the Nk 25 is amazing for macro. But I hv since bought a zeiss 60mm f2.8 makro that does 1:1 ratio so I hv no complaints. I guess we all go through different phases and learning curves. Nk was a necessary phase to help me sort out how I want to develop as a filmmaker and I am sure it will be the same for everyone else writing here :-)

goanna

@tetakpatak

For spectacle-wearers, this should become an automated process: whip off your glasses and let them swing by their string while snuggle your better eye up tight to your custom-tuned EVF; hold everything still and squeeze the shutter.

(Breathe again)

At a Xmas get-together last light I took a few candid shots by candle-light just at twilight. Some of the portraits isolate the individual from the crowd and seem to capture some sort of inner self or timelessness or something. Gives ya goose pimples.

Anyway, here's a non-goose pimple-producing flower. Quite happy with my first try. f/0.95 of course...

BTW, all my extended family is suddenly rushing out to "Buy a Lumix!"

oscillian

@goanna The Nokton 25 almost works as a do it all lens for me. Only trouble I've had in narrative shooting is confined spaces, like cars where I need to mount it outside the window, or if the action is too fast and I can't whip around to catch it. In both cases my 12 mm does a good job without too much goofyness to the image. But if I could only have one lens it would be the 17.5mm f0.95 :)

tetakpatak

Well, anybody of us who will need reading spectacles (me, soon) might get troubles with focusing Nokton on the GH1 or GH2, as the LCDs are really soooo small, and Leica f/1.4 has AF

nomad

Maybe he was not happy with the precision of witness marks?

tetakpatak

@stonebat +1, I also love Nokton and agree with you about that, but also @kazuo likes it, he just has different needs, I belive. He never denied this:

Nokton is tack sharp at 2.8. That's my default.

It was only for him difficult to focus it once batteries of his monitor died as much as I understood.... I also didn't check at first what he meant.

nomad

Absolutely, you can shoot some stunning macro with it.

stoney

I forgot to mention that the Nokton has .39x magnification ratio. Prolly that's the highest among non-macro lenses on m43.

nomad

The Minolta 16mm is a fish-eye. Apart from that: you name a great line of lenses!

gameb

@kazuo I thought in the same way. I am waiting for my new lens set up arriving next week. I just decided to give a try to the 2 - 2.8 world and see how I can live with it: Elmarit 90, Summicron 50, Minolta MD 24 2.8 and Minolta MC 16mm 2.8 (not very sure about this one?) and a Minolta MD 35-70 3.5 Zoom in the wider I keep the Panny 14mm + DMW-GWC1 wide angle adapter. This is after I took the decision to leave the Nokton 25mm for my next testing period. These lenses are all very affordable and have excellent reputation - obviously not as fast as the NK25 - but fast can be difficult.

tinyrobot

Anyone recommend working focus gears for the Nokton that are snug and tight?

stoney

25mm focal length on M43 captures z-axis distortion close to what we see.

goanna

@Kazuo

I'm standing here with my GH2/Nokton 25 and trying to work out what ergonomics problems you're running into. It seems nice & accessible to me. Aperture has clicks but focusing behaves pretty much like any lens.

Before I sell my Nk25 I'll try to learn what I can about it.

Seems like we already have enough suggestions for NK25 alternatives. Maybe we could start another thread for that.

stoney

One man's trash is another man's treasure. 25mm 0.95 is my treasure.

kazuo

Noktons color rendition is great, it's bokeh is even better but it's unusable at f0,95. Let's face it who would shoot at 0.95 everyday? Also if you are using pro equipment like matte boxes, follow focus et al you would soon realize the nokton is not customized for that kind of workflow. I hate to say this but the voigtlanders are pretenders to the Leica throne. It is an alternative to leica m for the budget conscious. Just as you won't quite use Leica m glass on set because of ergonomics issues the noktons design similarly makes it an oddity.

goanna

@Jasmin

I have known about the "normal lens" debate and, to quote Ozu, "I have decided I want nothing to do with it."

For those who want to peruse the numerous debates, see http://ww.google.com/m?q=35mm%20equivalent%20lens.%20site:personal-view.com&client=ms-opera-mobile&channel=new

Using a Nokton 25, we should be able to work within confines and use available light, show characters' body movements comfortably from 1.5-3 meters yet move in close for a CU without their facial features being distorted; bring our viewers to inhabit that space so that it begins to feel real - even if we sometimes have to show only part of something or someone from just the knees down (like a wood-cut) . We also need occasionally to move with the camera, to choose locations matching the lens's constraints and take a back seat to the actors.

All this single prime technique places demands on lens and operator and there must be people like P Bloom who've developed an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Nokton 25's adaptability, what works for them and what doesn't.

Jasmin

@goanna: I think there is a confusion about "normal focal length" of still photography vs cinematography.

In Still photography, a focal length about equal to the diagonal size of the film or sensor is considered Normal focal length. Therefore, 23mm is the Normal focal length for m43 for Still Photography.

But for cinematography, the focal length roughly double the film or sensor diagonal is considered 'normal'. As per wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_lens
So the Normal focal length is around 45-50mm for m43 (for Cinematography).

Also, if we want to recreate the 50mm look of the Super35mm film, we will need to use a 35mm lens on a m43 sensor (1.5x crop).

Please correct me if I am wrong.

Thanks

goanna

The 25mm Nokton would be in the running as a candidate for the MF3's best-choice "normal" focal length lens. This means a lens you'd choose to shoot an entire film with, looking for the extraordinary intimacy with characters sought by cinéastes like Yasujiro Ozu, who even invented special, eye-level tripods to bring the audience right into the scene.

That's what I'd like to do with mine. If anyone besides Phillip Bloom [read it] has had any experience with precisely this application, I'd be very interested in hearing about technique particular to the Nokton 25.

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