40mm Lens

Leitz Summar 42mm f/4.5

Omnar LT42-45 Barnack – Leitz Summar 42mm f/4.5 – Lens Review

By / / Lenses / 8 Comments

Most of my other lens reviews have been pretty straightforward. I’d offer a little bit of their history followed by physical characteristics, compatibility issues, and finally my subjective impressions on the images they create. I try to stay down to earth, especially when writing about Leitz/Leica lenses or those with cult-appeal, in order to demystify them. I figure in a time when the prices of vintage lenses are skyrocketing, the last thing we need is snobbery.

Skopagon lens on an Ultramatic camera

Voigtänder Skopagon 40mm f2 – a Vintage Lens with Modern Performance – By Oliver Toth

By / / Lenses / 5 Comments

For most people, the choice of lens comes down to a choice between vintage and modern. Modern lenses with aspherical elements and modern coating tend to produce very sharp images without failures and aberrations, which is, however, perceived by many people as a too “sterile” and “clinical” rendering. Vintage lenses, by contrast, tend to have less perfect rendering, which most people find aesthetically pleasing; these lenses are said to have “character”. In this review, I am going to talk about a lens that unites the best of both worlds: it renders perfectly like a modern lens, but without the clinical and sterile look associated with lenses that have aspherical elements. Let me introduce the Voigtänder Skopagon 40mm f2 lens from 1961!

PPP Cosmic Lomo T-43 Conversion

PPP Cosmic Lomo T-43 to Leica M-Mount Lens Conversion Review

By / / Lenses / 15 Comments

Some people might question the logic of mounting a Lomo lens to a Leica camera. Not me though, I think it’s a great idea and I am all the more enthralled when someone goes out of their way to productise a rehousing for such a lens. This is exactly why I was quite pleasantly surprised when this PPP rehoused Lomo T-43 40mm f/4 landed in my pigeon hole at work.

Pentax ZX5n

Pentax ZX5n & 40mm DA Limited – A Crop Pano for a Winter Coat Pocket – by Rob Jamieson

By / / SLRs / 17 Comments

I have to confess, I have a bit of a panorama problem. I absolutely love panoramic cameras and cameras with a panorama mask feature. I love them big and small, expensive and cheap. Some people find the panorama masks that were all the rage for a hot minute in the 90s to be a cheap trick or a useless fad. And I completely understand that point of view. You could, after all, simply take a full frame photo and crop it to a panoramic aspect ratio in Lightroom or photoshop later.

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