Quick Halloween Post! A7r and Voigtlander 21 1.8 rock it out!

47 Comments

1. In your opinion, what would be the best wide angle lens for the A7? Would you say it is the Voigtländer 21mm f/1.8?

   • I have no idea as I have not tried that many of them. I hear the Leica WATE is great, but depends on what you are looking for in size, speed, brand, etc.

2. Hi Steve,

   Does the Voig 21mm 1.8 suffer from color shift on A7 or A7R? Thanks!

   YS

   • I posted the samples in the post before this one 🙂

     • you see the problem then.

3. I do have a 35mm summilux. Should I get this camera or go all the way to a Leica M?

4. Looking forward to seeing a site that shows wide angle colour photos. Black and white doesn’t tell us what we want to know. Come on somebody, enough is enough.

   • I showed some..right here in this post and the previous post.

     • Well, there always seems to be some other issue like it’s artificial lighting or strange coloured rocks or there’s no peripheral lighting, or the focus is close up. How about a distance daylight shot with blue sky and clouds and not post-processed? In view of what you’ve seen, would you ditch an M9 for the Sony as far as base iso image quality is concerned? It would be nice to see some images that enable us to make some sort of judgement call. I realise this post might make me sound less than thankfull for your efforts but you’ve certainly made more effort than anyone else I’ve seen so far so kudos to you Steve and thanks!
       Charlie

   • Charlie, look here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/leo_roos/sets/72157636975598525/

     • This is just what I need. Thanks.
       Charlie

5. hi, good lens and ever put your the 21mm summilux on A7r?

   • Don’t own it 🙂

6. Can you please try this Voight on m43 system (with focus peaking)?
   42mm is sweet FOV

   • Will try to do this over the weekend if I can. Not guaranteed but will try.

7. Great to know the 21/1.8 works pretty well. Looks like I’ll be picking one up to go with the cv 35/1.2 and the Zeiss 50/2 on an A7r. I have the cv 15/4.5 too, but I’ve lowered expectations.

8. Aloha from Hawaii Steve,

   Thanks again for such an outstanding job posting, shooting pics and sharing. BTW I love the killer clown shot!

9. I would love to see sample pix with a small light kit like a A7 with a Voigtlander Nokton Classic 35mm f/1.4 SC or MC and a Voigtlander Nokton 50mm f/1.5 Aspherical Lens. This should be a killer low light street life combo for a decent price.

10. Looks like fun! The guy in photo No.3, the first B&W one – is that Gordon Laing from Cameralabs.com?

    • Yes it is!

11. Steve, would you be able to test, say, an 21mm or 24mm Summilux on the A7/A7r? I would suspect corner performance to be similar to the 21 1.8, but whether these are any good is going to be the factor that determines whether I get one or neither of them

    • Well, the problem is I do not own these lenses and can not afford to spend $7k on one test it 🙂 I also do not have an A7 or A7r as I am headed home and I do not get to take one home. So, i will get one soon for review I am sure.

      • Thanks! I look forward to the formal review.

12. Hahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahah I can’t stop laughing at the photo of you with a fro! 🙂

    But I actually wanted to ask if you had a chance to do the very technical and sophisticated ‘pocket test’ with the A7 and 35mm f2.8 (ie. will it fit in a large jacket pocket)

    Ha. Haha. I’m sorry, I just can’t stop…

13. Hi Steve:

    This is an awesome report and BTW I like your hair.

    Looks like there are some dark corners with the Voigtlander 21 mm f1.8, but no color shift – would you agree?

    I am getting the A7r and hope that sometimes in the future may be you can compare the Zeiss 21 mm f1.8 Distagon (Nikon or Canon mount) because I suspect this one will be the 21 mm lens that may not produce dark corners. I will buy one if that is the case.

    Thanks again. Bigtree.

14. Anybody care to give their opinion on whether or not Voigtlander will market a 21mm f/1.8 with a Sony FE mount. It would be so much easier…..

15. Love that clown shot!

16. Steve,

    Love your enthusiasm!!

    What people want to see with the a7r and a rf ra lens is if there is color smearing and how the edges / corners hold up.

    The Voight 21/1.8 would be an awesome lens with this camera. But your pics just show the center of the frame. Maybe next ones could have some detail towards the corners?

    • My pics are full frame, why do you say it only shows the center? Do you mean focus? Well, I would never ever shoot that lens at f/16, I would shoot it at f 1.8 nearly all of the time, so my corners will always be OOF due to DOF. But I did post samples yesterday with this lens and others of the window. Looks fine to me. If you are going to be a critical 100% pixel peeper of the corners then that is something I do not do..so I would not be able to tell you. That really has nothing go do with shooting a nice image. BUT, if you are thinking the 21 1.8 for landscape..there are probably better (and smaller/cheaper) 21’s for that. The 1.8 is designed for low light shooting. When you use it at 1.8 you really do not care about the corners so much but there is vignetting on the R.

      • This lens is certainly not well suited for landscape on the A7/R. But it is pretty awesome for parties and street shots in lower light and other creative shots like this. Like Steve, I’d get the lens to shoot wide open or close to it and corners be damned. ;~)

17. A little disappointed in the complete lack of RX-10 coverage. I realize the A7 and A7r are the hot items right now. If you were only able to get “a few keepers” with the RX10 in low light that doesn’t speak well to it’s capabilities in that area.

    • Yes, Steve, we’d also like to hear about the RX10 despite everyone’s interest in the A7’s. Your comment that you had trouble shooting in low light “since it has a 2.8 lens” is confusing. Wouldn’t we expect this fast lens to be an asset in low light? Is “one hell of a versatile camera” code for “sacrificing IQ, speed, etc. for versatility (I assume because of the zoom, etc.)”? Please tell us more!! Great coverage of the A7’s however!!!

      • So in the images on this page Steve is shooting an f1.8 lens at 6400 to squeeze some light out of thin air and you are wondering why a “fast” lens like the RX10’s f2.8 would be an issue in low light? Sort of answers itself that question 🙂

        • Agreed, “low light” is what it is always in my house according to camera standards. Even the Fuji X100S which has a significantly larger sensor than the RX10 can really struggle. Also the Rx100, same sized sensor as the 10 struggles with slow shutter speeds indoors. If a full frame camera with a significantly larger aperture has to shoot at iso 6400 then the RX10, no matter how good if IQ it can deliver is going to have a rough go of it in those conditions. Honestly surprised Steve had anything that he would qualify as a keeper in lighting like that!

          • Thanks for the clarification, Kelly and Jason. I hadn’t paid attention to the spec’s on aperture and ISO of the shots Steve posted, so the “squeeze” comment from Jason puts my question to bed. I have to say that even my Leica M struggles with low light in my house, and at 6400 the noise is louder than my neighbors.

          • Sensor size does not affect light intensity, therefore f2 on phone camera has the same exposure as f2 on medium format, f stop does affect exposure though, like you said

18. Hey Steve, I would like to see some crazy comparisons with this new Sony camera!

    In particular I’d love to see a NEX with speed booster compared to the A7 using identical lenses.

    And then another crazy comparison I’d like to see is A7 + 35/2.8 compared to E-P5 + 20/1.7. I think this would be a very practical comparison for most of us, to see how much we can potentially gain from this new full frame system!

19. These look like great cameras overall. So many new and exciting offerings coming down the barrel though so it’s tough to choose! I’m strongly considering the A7r, but I do have concerns that because it is SSOO sharp that the slightest screw up on my part is going to be shown big time. One of the other reviewers at the event mentioned that they felt that they always needed this camera on a tripod. I’d hate to get a killer camera like that, and then find that I had to absolutely NAIL each shot.

    • The NEX-7 is much the same, I had to relearn good habits as I had become lazy with my technique, plus I was using a 1DIII which has 1000x the inertia of the little NEX-7, so any hand movement is transferred to the 7 so quickly, after the relearning process, hit rates are much better.
      Keep in mind that we are talking about pixel level blur, picture level blur will be no different than a 15MP sensor.
      But…. To get absolutely the most out of the higher Rez sensors, you should use a tripod.

20. Is the man on the third picture Gordon Laing (Cameralabs dot com)? 🙂

    • Yes it is, he was great!

21. Thanks for this! This is the lens I want to use with the A7(R)!
    In the first photo the corners looks blue. Is it a color shift issue or is it just noise? In the 2nd photo it is gone.

22. I just commented with question about this combo in your previous wrap-up post and the next thing I noticed was this new post with samples from the very same combo 🙂 Excellent, thanks so much! I like these samples a lot.

    • Good request Juha, I think it becomes clearer and clearer that A7(r) is usable with most of our RF-lenses, thanks Steve for all testing and great samples!

23. That seals it. I’m all over this Sony and a little bag of Voights like pigs on a trough. LOL

    Thanks Steve. 🙂

24. Just great shot after great shot, so pumped to get mine!

25. Thanks for this great reminder that having FUN is allowed in photography!

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