New Voigtlander Nokton 58mm f/1.4

12 Comments

1. Reminds me of the Minolta 58mm f/1.4, which is one of my favorite lenses of all time. The 58mm focal length is fantastic. Just a tad tighter than a standard 50mm which makes it a great portrait lens when you want to just get a little more of the scene into the frame but still want the majority of your image to be your subject.

2. Never heard about such original focal length.
   Interesting comments

   • Here are two pretty well known ones:

     https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1010026-REG/nikon_2210_af_s_nikkor_58mm_f_1_4g.html

     http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/58.htm

     • Helios, Rokkor… There must be more

       • Topcon/Topcor…;-)

   • It was a very common “standard” focal length for slrs some fifty years ago. There’s an optical design reason for it that I could not hope to faithfulky reproduce here.

     • Thkx, had a look. It seems it had to do with the mirror. I’m rhather into rangefinders

     • The 55-58mm focal length was the minimally achievable without the need of a retrofocus design for SLR. First introduced with the Contax-S system in 1949 (could be wrong here.) the 58mm focal length was very popular in the 50-ies and 60-ies. Even the first 50mm f2 lens for the Nikon F was “a hack” — one slightly negative element was added in front of a standard Gauss 6/5 design to make it focus at infinity — the lens with “patent pending” inscription. Later on companies learned how to do retrofocus design properly.. even for normal lenses 😉

   • The first camera and lens I bought in 50’s was Nikon F and 58mm f1.4 which physically looked like to Norton lens.

3. This is such a sweet lens. I’d take the black nose version as I’ve found that they resist flare more than lenses that have silver filter threads. Ir’s the same reason why lens hoods are black on the inside, not silver!

   • Since owning the 58/1.4G I’ve grown to love the focal length for close up portraits, and I miis that on my film slrs, where I mainly use the 50/1.2 AiS. As the newer version of the Voigtlander is optically identical to the older one, the latter could be a solution for a problem.

     Huss, do you know how it compares in rendering to the 50/1.2?

     • Hi Michiel

       From what I have seen it looks like the Voigtlander 58 has smoother OOF elements than the Nikkor 50 1.2 AIS. But I do not have any first hand experience.
       I’m curious to see how it compares to the Minolta 58 1.2, which is one of my favourite lenses.

       Best regards
       Huss

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