Solinon Optik 18mm f/5.6 ASPH Review & Super Wides are Not Just for Buildings

Super-wide lens’s promotional materials, reviews and forum posts seem to lean heavily to architectural and landscape images. That generally is not how I have used this class of lenses over the years. Back in the ’80’s the last lens I bought for my first professional photojournalism kit was the Canon FD 17mm/4. This was after getting the core – a Canon T90, 35mm/2, 50mm/3.5 macro and 200mm/2.8, then adding for sports a F-1N with motor drive, of course, 300mm/4, and an 85mm/1.2L for covering high school basketball in their dark gyms. I used the 17mm to give more context, content and an interesting look for assignments like this portrait of a train-lantern collector in his small shed.

When I switched to autofocus in the early ’90’s, the core of my kit was the 20-35/2.8L and 80-200mm/2.8L on a Canon EOS A2E and EOS-1. Then added a nifty 50, 100mm/2 and 300mm/4L. Before, my 35mm was my primary lens, now I easily experimented all the way down to 20mm during my news assignments with the zoom. When I went into management and was no longer out on the street I did not update my kit other than borrowing an EOS digital body. My newspaper days ended when I was caught in a newsroom downsizing at the beginning of 2013, so I reentered the equipment landscape trying Sony mirrorless. I won’t bore you with that gear, but will mention the crop-sensor Sony E 10-18mm/4 OSS mounts on their full-frame bodies (unlike some brands – looking at you Canon) and it covers the entire sensor starting at about 11mm. Then eleven years ago I started playing with rangefinder lenses on the mirrorless bodies, and found I really enjoyed getting back to manual focus, which inevitably led to one more equipment overhaul.

That major change was seven years ago when I made the “final” decision that I did not want the feel of a video game when looking through the viewfinder, so go back to a native manual focus body, and just the desire for a smaller size kit, so changed to a digital rangefinder set up. My core is now the Nippon Kogaku W-Nikkor 3.5cm/1.8 LTM and  Zeiss 50mm/1.5 Sonnar on a Leica M11. Supplemented by a Leica 24mm/2.8 ASPH and a Zeiss 90mm/2.8 Contax G Sonnar converted to M-mount. In no way were these acquired in that order, but it is what I have arrived at having tried and shed no less than eight other lenses. So what about a super wide? Or is the 24mm wide enough?

Well, one of those eight lenses that has come and gone is the Voigtlander 12mm/5.6 III M ASPH which I sent on its way late last year after four years of little use. After the fun with the Sony 10-18mm at 11mm on a full-frame body, I thought if I’m going to go wide, then go really wide to 12mm. But other than this portrait of our dogs, the only couple times I really used the Voigtlander was, you guessed it, to take interiors of interesting buildings.

I would skip bringing that Voigtlander 12mm along as it was just too bulky. I landed on that if I was going to have a super-wide lens in my kit it needed to be no bigger than the Leica 24mm/2.8 ASPH. The Leica 18mm/3.8 ASPH is too long, the current Voigtlander 21mm/3.5 II is smaller, but I have read it has field curvature, distortion, coma and vignetting I want to avoid. The Laowa 15mm/5 Cookie, which is very small and can focus close, but reportedly also has a good bit of vignetting, is not sharp over the entire frame wide open, and has poor flare resistance, so won’t be trying that one. The Leica 21mm/3.4 ASPH is a very good candidate, but starts at about $2,300 used, and not worth that much to me at this time as I use a super wide the least of all my focal lengths at only 10-15% of the time according to my Lightroom catalog. After not really using the 12mm much for years, I had pretty much decided to make the 24mm my widest lens at the beginning of this year.

But G.A.S. Happens

Ya, G.A.S. (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) just hits sometimes. After seeing Bastian Kratzke’s very positive review on Phillipreeve.net at the end of February of the small in size, 8.5 oz / 240g Solinon Optik 18mm f/5.6 ASPH I hovered over the buy button several times. At $443 it seemed like worth the chance from this upstart. When I sold a lens in April I immediately took those funds and finally clicked the button. The lens arrived well packaged from Hong Kong in only four days to the middle of the States. It included a nice metal hood and slip on lens cap for it. The hood screwed on and aligned perfectly, reflecting what seems to be a really well made lens. The half-click stops and focus felt good too. 

I shared the background above to say my use case for super-wide-angle lenses is mainly for reportage photography. That can of course include landscapes, and even building interiors, but those will not be the focus of my real-world review here. For sharpness, vignette, flare and coma tests, and several building and interiors, see Bastian’s excellent review mentioned before. I had just volunteered to do assignments for a couple local weekly papers, as wanted to get back to photojournalism, when the lens arrived. I was very excited to see how my current gear choices would work under this pressure. And there will be some more waffling about if I even need a super-wide lens later.

If you would like to see my copy of the lens I will have a table at the Cincinnati Camera Show Saturday, September 6 selling some photobooks and odds and ends that I have accumulated over the last 39-years, so please stop by and say hi.

The Solinon 18mm 5.6 in Use

My first news assignment in over 25-years was a community health and safety fair, and upon arrival I saw several teens heading to the ambulance display, so nothing like using a new untested lens to jump right back into the fray! I found the lens worked very well wide open while I was crammed in the back of the unit.

The county fair was the next assignment where I used the lens. My favorite photo could have been done with the 24mm as it is a big, big crop.

But, this one is full frame, and I like the perspective the 18mm provided of the friends working on the mural.

Also at the fair, this calf being prepared to show is near the uncoupled 15″ / .38m close focus of the lens. The lens is rangefinder coupled to 35.4″ / .9m.

Pixel peeping at the calf’s eye, I found this lens is plenty sharp enough for me on my 60MP sensor.

Played with the super wide while covering a small town’s street festival.

When I needed to take a quick photo of a house for my real estate day job, and found the subject really backlite, I decided to give the 18mm a test.

I thought it came out great, but did find this one flare spot while working the file. I have had no serious issues with flare with this lens so far. And vignetting has also never been an issue.

While attending a wedding at St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church in Hudson, Florida the beautiful stain glass called for a photo before the service.

So yes, this super-wide lens can do architectural interiors very well, as it basically has no distortion and seems sharp across the entire frame from wide open. Of course the lack of distortion is a big benefit if using on a film camera, but I also have heard that the software-based distortion correction required by a lot of super wides for digital cameras these days can result in a loss of sharpness and smearing at the edges, and slight cropping due to the pixel manipulation, so a benefit for digital use too.

So far I was very happy with this little lens. So where out of the blue did it come from?

Calvin and His First Lens

Calvin Lee in Hong Kong is the man behind Solinon Optik. He says Solinon comes from Latin for sun, ‘sol’, and the second half, ‘inon’ derives from “the fast standard lens name ‘Quinon’ from my favorite lens brand Steinheil.” He also shared with me that he is a manual focus lens collector and hobbyist for about 20 years. His collection consists mostly of German and Japanese lenses from the 1950’s and 1960’s, with a few from 1970’s. He shares his passion on the MFlenses forum, his personal website LensFever, Instaram and on flickr. He has worked in the back office of Leica specialist M&K Kamera Trading Limited for about 10 years. And judging by this Solinon Optik video (closed captions are in English) he finds joy in photography and his new lens.

The Solinon 18mm 5.6 is his first product, let alone his first lens, and he says he did all the lens development in his spare time over the last two years, “decided all the details of the lens housing. The optical design is done by an experienced lens designer who has lots of experience on designing aspherical lens.” It contains two aspherical elements (ASPH) and two Extra-low Dispersion (ED) elements, and multi-coatings.

So why an 18mm? Calvin’s reasons; “Leica and Zeiss no longer produce their M-mount 18mm lens, and they are both expensive and bulky.” And he feels “None of the Leica and Zeiss 18mm can unleash the potential of modern 60MP sensor cameras. A sharper lens is need.” He says his Solinon’s 18mm sharpness “should exceed the Leica 18/3.8 and Zeiss 18/4 thanks to modern aspherical design.” In an email exchange with me he stated “the Leica 18mm/3.8 has a single double-sided aspherical element. Aspherical design and manufacturing has improved a lot in recent years which enable lens designers to make better designs with more aspherical elements, or more complex sharped aspherical elements. Since the Solinon 18mm is a f/5.6 lens which is one stop slower than the two previous 18mm, it is easier to correct the optical aberration with two aspherical elements than an f/4 lens with a single double-sided aspherical element. From my own test with my lens against the Leica 18/3.8, the Solinon 18mm has better corner sharpness, more graduate image fall-off (less vignetting) at f/5.6, and much better distortion control.”

As well, he saw in the market that Leica M8 (1.33x crop) owners needed a budget 24mm equivalent lens. And finally, Calvin says “Both of Leica and Zeiss’ lenses are not distortion-less.”

Talk about taking on the big guns right out of the gate!

So Does the Solinon Optik 18mm 5.6 Stay in My Bag?

As Bastian also found, the build quality of the Solinon Optik 18mm 5.6 seems very good, and I found the focus feel excellent. Turning the ring was smooth, but damped just the right amount so I easily acquired focus with my rangefinder. The Leica EVF focus peeking was another story, but not necessarily the lens’ fault. With all that depth of field at f/5.6 I just could not hit focus on what I wanted using focus peeking in the EVF, so found using the camera’s rangefinder to focus, and then switching to the EVF or LCD screen to compose to work best for me. The EVF’s zoom in view also worked. If I did already have the EVF for my 90mm and Nikkor 10.5cm, I would seriously consider getting an external 18mm viewfinder instead of the EVF.

So ya, what about a 5.6 minimum aperture? As a photojournalist I work in a lot of different lighting conditions, and some are very low. But, that is why I invested in the M11, I don’t mind noise, and in this age when software noise reduction is so good, the smaller minimum aperture has not held me back. And most of the time I am not interested in super shallow depth of field, as I want the additional context and content, so not missing a wider aperture for that. So sharp, very low vignetting, basically no distortion, and I have seen no flare issues – if f/5.6 is the “cost” to have a small, light weight, great performing, affordable lens, then that is a good trade off in my book.

But, I have an outstanding performing Leica 24mm/2.8 ASPH. I found myself debating for a few days about how much would I really use this 18mm lens, and should I really keep it. I knew I was using it in a lot of situations where I would normally grab the 24mm first because I was working on this review. Then, while processing images I had a Miami Red-Dot Forum Camera Talk video running on my side monitor and David Farkas said about his 18mm for travel; “I use it the absolute least of any focal length, and yet, I have the highest keeper rate from the pictures. . . When you need it you need it, and you absolute love you had it.”

It reminded me that while the super wides are my least used lenses, as noted at the beginning, they do bring something special to my reportage work. And can provide a panorama feel, as well provide a creative and storytelling perspective I like, such as to give the hot rod admirer a bit more lean at the edge.

At first I thought the metal hood with its slip on metal cap would be too big in my small bags, so set it aside and found a 46mm lens cap in my junk box. But, I have been keeping the hood on more often now. Be aware the cap does slip off very easily. The other change I made is I dug out my permanent marking pen and Akara Labs Encoder and 6-bit coded the Solinon 18mm/5.6 – for me the final statement that a lens is staying in my collection.

The entirety of the text of this review is my work, and not a machine. If I have misstated anything or you have questions about the lens please comment below.

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