Voigtländer 40/2

[Airy]

No review for the time being, but just this sample picture (three kids among my grand-nephews and -nieces). This little lens is very pleasant, convenient and well-built. It is often in my bag, together with the Df and and 105/2.5 AIS.

[Roland Vink]

Very nice. I had the original 40/2 Ultron (no CPU). I wonder if the optics have been tweaked since then, my version had terrible bokeh so I sold it. Yours seems to render backgrounds more smoothly.

[Airy]

Something must have happened then. Bokeh is generally good. I often use it for such scenes, shooting at close distances, in cafeterias... also because it is small and does not attract attention. I generally get good feedback, the optics are not "distracting".

[John Geerts]

Crisp and colorful. Interesting.   40mm is an unusual size, not?  Is it much different from the Nikkor 45mm 2.8p ?

[Airy]

40mm may be unusual, but actually is very convenient. My father had a compact film camera (Canon or Nikon, I do not remember) with a fixed 40/2 lens that I used extensively on a Fasnacht trip in Southern Germany. This may be the reason why I'm partial to the FL.

I have never tried the 45 Nikkor, although I found a second-hand one two weeks ago. The Voigtländer is bigger for sure, but still quite small, and offers an additional stop plus a close-up lens, all of which are very useful. This is why I was not tempted to test it (anyway I spent three hours comparing the 24mm wide angles...)

[Vilhelm]

Is it much different from the Nikkor 45mm 2.8p ?

IMO very different from the 45/2.8 Ai-P, both because the Voigtländer 40/2 Ultron is one f-stop faster and somewhat wider, producing a very different look in images. In the summer of 2014 it was my favorite walk-around lens on the Df, will post photos once I am sitting by my archive disks. The Ultron gives a nice dimensionality in images but requires stopping down for sharpness. Nice, compact and very fine tolerances. Bokeh highlights are not very appealing stopped down but at f/2 to f/2.8 it paints a very dimensional look that I find very pleasing. Just like the sample photo above, very nice.

I have two, they are both of the older Voigtländer SL silver/black series with Red/Green/Blue stripe on the barrel. The older one has a different type of lens hood than the newer, and the newer of them two is factory chipped. The newest versions of the 40/2 Ultron are SL II (all black, rubber focusing rings) and SL II N (all black, metal focusing rings) - they come with a screw-in close-up lens, giving them limited macro capability. The lens scheme looks identical for SL and SL II, so it is likely that the barrel construction, screw-in hood and close-up lens are the only differences to the older version. Not very expensive, you can find mint copies on eBay for 250-300 and the SL II for 300-400 EUR.

[John Geerts]

Thanks for the explanation, Vilhelm !