Image courtesy: ePhotozine.
One of the strangest new products of the Photokina show is the new Voigtlander 40mm f/2.8 Heliar lens. The strange part is that one: It’s an M-mount lens that you can not(!) use on M-mount cameras (no helicoid to focus). It has been designed to use in combination with the [shoplink 29312 ebay]VM-E Close Focus Adapter (here on eBay)[/shoplink] only. And it has been designed and optimized for the Full Frame E-mount(!). The lens is very compact and weights 112grams only. It’s a collapsible lens.
Here is the full press text:
The Heliar 40mm F2.8 is designed only to be used with Voigtlander VM-E Close Focus Adapter. It does not have built-in helicoid. Focusing is done by rotating the helicoid of VM-E Close Focus Adapter. Super compact style when the lens is collapsed.
The Heliar 40mm F2.8 is manufactured only for the purpose of using this lens onto E-mount camera body via VM-E Close Focus Adapter. You can not do focusing when you mount this lens via adapters not designed with built-in focusing-function or M-mount camera body directly. If you collapse the lens on M-mount camera body, it might result in damage the equipment. Any claims or damages due to improper use of this lens, which it was not designed for, are not covered by the warranty.
Source: Voigtlander.
0 Responses
How exciting!
Jesus Holy Christ. $200+ for a short, electrically dumb extension tube? With the cost of the lens on top of it?
I’m good without a pancake, I guess.
Actually it’s $300. $200 is the normal adapter. Seems pretty stupid
Haha, how cool ist that?!
If it’s cheap, I’ll be getting one just for the looks of it!
I bet with the adapter it will be or close to the Zeiss FE 35MM price, which just wouldn’t make sense
Well, I already own the adapter, so I’m tempted!
You don’t need to get the Voigtlander adapter. There are cheaper ones out there and they work fine.
This is what I call “compact”, really compact! but no OSS, no AF, it’s a no no for me. Tired of making soft images.
I typically don’t shoot street photography below 1/160 anyway, so the no OSS is fine with me. The lack of AF helps it stay extremely small, which is really small in this case. As to whether it makes soft images or not . . . that remains to be seen. Sometimes size is more important than perfect sharpness, I suppose.
Mmmmm…..maybe you should try to focus on your photografic skills.
Any pictures on an A7? It must look ridiculous(ly awesome).
I do love pancakes.
I prefer waffles.
I wonder what the image quality will be like. Optically looks really simple, and by the logic of less glass = sharper lens, this will be a sweet one. Will be interesting if Voigtlander releases more of these kind of lenses, it’ll make their offering rather unique in the market
I’m not sure the logic of “less glass = sharper lens” really holds. There are too many other variables.
That’s some pretty flawed logic there.
If this was true, then Zeiss wasted a lot of quality using all that glass in their otus lenses… less glass might give higher contrast, but I don’t expect it to be sharper than a more advaned lens.
Well, if any other modern lens design tells me anything- more lenses equals better performance. Not always true as there are trade-offs but generally speaking.
The little 40/2.8 pancake I used on my Canon 6D was really sharp and that lens was tiny. So I have not lost hope on this tiny Voigtlander just yet.
First of all it should be that tiny, though this one looks bigger and has to expand to shoot…
“Less glass = sharper lens” might have had some inkling of truth prior to WWII, before the advent of antireflective lens coatings and where air/glass junction reflective losses were significant. This is simply false these days, especially given the examples that you can see with top-performing glass such as the Zeiss Otus and Sigma Art series.
Also, the low-glass EF 40/2.8mm suffers optically in comparison to a glass-full Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art (not that it takes anything away from the EF 40mm’s many charms). Not that sean was suggesting this was the case… but I have both lenses and can tell you the proper context.
You should still agree that it would be more elegant to achieve similar results with much less glass. 🙂
Voigtlander owned this Photokina.
Very nice and compact. O wander is the image quality is is fine.
If it’s based on the 45mm 2.8 Zeiss Tessar design for Contax, the IQ would be very good, albeit with low contrast depending on coating.
Can be sharp corner to corner due to the asph., with strong light falloff which is a minor problem today.
They need to remake 25 too.
It’s not a Tessar… a Tessar has 4 elements in 3 groups. This is 5 elements in 3 groups and it’s not even a modification of a Tessar. It might be mistaken for a Voigtlander Color Heliar but it’s more of a Dynar (also Voigtlander) improved with aspherics, if you look closely.
It looks triplet-based to me. They split the first and last element of the Cooke triplet into two for better correction.
I think of references back to the Cooke Triplet when talking about relatively modern lenses is like making reference to CHLCA when talking about different human cultures 🙂
It’s not that old… This lens needs to be small, and the FoV and speed matches the triplet’s signature. It’s possible they started with a triplet. We need to know what glass they used for each element to know for sure.
In the early days, there were normal fov lenses and wide angle lenses. The latter were rare. And there were no teles because people used longer normal lenses. So it’s not even a real coincidence if fovs match with the Cooke Triplet.
I highly doubt anyone would start from a Cooke Triplet nowadays for anything other than novelty reasons. This is a fairly simple lens so people can infer similarities but there’s also a thousand others then 🙂
Thank you for that. I hadn’t looked at the lens formula. Just guessed because I haven’t seen a focal length like that in a long time so I imagined it would come from that.
No problem. There are lots of pancakes in the 40mm range for both rf/mirrorless and slrs and they’re quite popular too.
Guess on price?
So this should work with any M-mount adapter with a helicoid? I currently use a Hawks close focusing adapter for my voit 35 1.2 on my a7r..
Yup. It might provide a different focusing range – I’m not sure the mm of extension provided by Hawk’s vs the VME Close Focus adapter.
1mm longer with the latest Hawk’s. More flexibility.
Why doesn’t it have an E mount?
Because it wouldn’t focus: that thing has no built-in helicoid.
I think he means that it should have a built in helicoid and be in E-mount, instead of being only half a lens.
There was a time when people were still able to focus themselves. Another rumour I heard is that Canon is thinking of making a drone-camera combination with AI capabilities. You tell the thing what photos to take and it will fly off and do it on its own. Once AI is sufficiently advanced, it will be able to decide for itself what to take pictures of. Great stuff!
Off-topic, but could someone tell me – did Zeiss indicate what other lenses are coming in the Loxia range? I haven’t been paying attention.
No.
3 more are coming
thats how it looks on the A7r … nice! Although a bit fiddly.
http://dc.watch.impress.co.jp/img/dcw/docs/635/267/html/01.jpg.html
I love this but I admit I step back and say, “Why doesn’t Sony make an uber cheap pancake like this?” It wouldn’t have internal focus—so slower AF—but AF would be possibly with a small design like this. No OSS. Sell it for ~$200-300 and keep it the size of the CV lens. People would love it! A great cheap compact prime to sell along with the A7 which, despite its flaws, is the best value in FF cameras.
Manual focus isn’t a flaw…
never said it was, just that Sony makes only one MF lens in its entire lineup. I shoot mostly MF but I still think MF shooters are in the minority generally.
My point was more that by adding a few things this could be a great popular, native lens. Like the Canon 40mm EF-S or 22mm mirror less lenses. There’s nothing terribly fancy (except the aspherical element) in this optical design.
why would Sony want to waste your resource on this while there are much bigger holes to be filled? What’s the difference between a Sony pancake like this and this lens? How do you propose them to fit the AF motor in at this size. It would be bigger. Then what you ended up with is very close to the FE 35.
For an optical design like this, this lens isn’t small enough. A 40/2.8 at this size shouldn’t need to expand to shoot, like one of the Contax Tessar designs. And they could fit the AF motor on the sides, or at the back which in this design is inside the adapter–space. But I agree with you that such a project is a waste of time and resources.
That’s a really cool lens! I like it! Looking forward to see tests of it!
I have the VM-E adapter. Very high quality and well worth the price if you have ‘M’ lenses. The folks at rangefinderforum.com are following this lens closely. The expectation is that it will be a very sharp lens. Based on Japanese full retail price, I would expect the lens alone to come in somewhere between $299 and $349… give or take a few dollars. CV is a first rate optical house.
I do not understand this lens at all. Why Cosina are trying to do a lot of folks have already been using- with the close focus adapter (Hawk and others) and a plethora of lenses?
They need new ideas and some top lenses (like the Ultron 35mm and the new 15/4.5) and not contraptions like this with odd filter threads.
This is a great idea but crazy at the same time. I hope they release these adapters for all the mirrorless mounts so everyone can support them. A crazy idea I had was, sony should commission all the other mirrorless manufacturers to create a FF E mount camera and each provide a lens. The camera could be sold as a limited edition with 500 of each camera.
Using the adapter for focussing means no focus distance scale which makes it a ‘no’ for me. Otherwise a really interesting idea, looking forward to the 35mm f1.7 though and updated 15mm.
Smaller and cheaper:
http://www.magnuswedberg.com/index.php?doc=Contax_T_stripped_down_for_NEX
😉
Magnus, Did you ever try this on a FF? I bought a Contax T after seeing your blog post but unfortunately (or fortunately!) that turned out to be a fully functional camera so it is being used with film. Fabulous camera altogether!
Nope — haven’t stumbled upon a full-frame E-mount camera yet, I’m still using my a900 and my NEX-5… they are enough for me right now. So we don’t know how it will do in the corners on a full frame sensor.
My T might have been functional too. I’m pretty sure it was. Sorry about the carnage. 😉
Does any body know if this adapter will fit the q7 aor will it mostor less be the best thing to use on honey get me another beer.
. .or the other one
whatz up?
I think you’ve had enough beer.
Can´t have enough beer
Will this work on the Novoflex LEM-NEX mount adapter that I currently use to connect M Mount lens to my A7r?
Unless this, combined with that adapter, is significantly smaller than the 35, which it probably is not…I don’t see a point for this. It looks triplet-based, so it could suck. It even has to expand to shoot. A completely E-mount based MF 40/2.8 could be smaller. Or they could’ve pushed it up a stop, without much change to the size.
Dont see the point. Sony 3528 is just a bit bigger and has AF.
rather interesting lens… would like a review.
Heard the rumour that Hoya is going to make a special type of maple syrup for putting on this lens.
I just saw this and it made me laugh out loud
It would be nice is screw mount.