Tag: Voigtländer

Sunbathing

England, March 2025

Sunbathing

No doubt many of you have dogs that do this and Charlie our Lurcher loves nothing more than laying in a patch of sun on the floor. This image is straight out of camera, with the only editing being to crop the top and left of the picture.

Problems drying film

I hadn’t taken much this month that I feel is worth uploading. The other problem have currently is drying film. Our shower was leaking, so the shower cubicle is always wet and it’s the only place I dry developed film.

It has amazed me how difficult it has been to find someone to fix the issue. Being a built in shower from the 1990s, no one seemed to want to fix it without removing half the bathroom wall. Finally this week I found a specialist plumber cured the problem without having to remove half the tiles or the wall. Yay! …I can get on with some developing.

Summicron 35mm f/2 ASPH

More money!

My 35mm Summicron has developed a problem. It seems this effects both this lens and the Summicron 28mm f/2 ASPH version 5 MK1. The front filter thread bezel has come lose.

As you can see from the images above, the aperture mark moves and indeed, I found if your not careful the bezel will completely rotate when removing a filter. It is very annoying as I have never fitted a filter on the front of this lens to tightly neither. With the Leica hood fitted, it gets even worse. Although a clip on hood, in use I find the hood moves and if your not careful it causes vignetting.

My Voigtländer 35mm f/1.4 Nokton lens, I hadn’t used it for quite sometime and decided to sell this lens. Oh lord, I’m regretting selling it now!

If someone knows how to repair this problem with this version of Summicron lens, do let me know in the comments.

Spheres

Margate, England. 2022

Spheres

Slightly tongue in cheek street image with the the drain cover, the light globe and the man’s head.

Leica M-P (Typ240) and the Voigtländer Nokton Classic 35mm f/1.4 II VM lens.

Washing the rain

Queenborough, England. 2022

Washing the rain

I took my car along to a local hand car wash and the heavens opened.

To my left of this shot was another car being vacuumed under the canopy but these guys carried on out in the open. As fast as they applied the soap, it was being washed off by the rain. As they got wetter and wetter I started taking shots, even when the rain got harder they carried on with their jet washes. Amazingly, once under the canopy to be vacuumed these boys still used chamois leathers to dry the body work despite the heavy rain, bit pointless really, the car soon got as wet when it was being washed as we departed for home.

A job well done by them and I gave them both a good tip for their efforts. Just goes to show there’s always a chance of a good picture to be had even while getting mundane tasks done.

Leica M-P (Typ240) and the Voigtländer Nokton Classic 35mm f/1.4 II VM lens.

Seaside paradise

Margate, England. 2022

Seaside paradise

Taken with my Leica M-P (Typ240) and the Voigtländer Nokton Classic 35mm f/1.4 II VM lens.

Scouting for girls

Margate, England. 2022

Scouting for girls

Taken with my Leica M-P (Typ240) and the Voigtländer Nokton Classic 35mm f/1.4 II VM lens.

Morris

Margate, England. 2022

Maurice Morris

This is Maurice Morris, 88, he’s a local legend around Margate, England. Morris has lived his entire life in the town and is a familiar figure to many. From the 1950s to 1990s Maurice worked in various roles at Dreamland theme park, including as an usher at the local cinema. I didn’t know any of this before I took his portrait sitting enjoying the day at a sea front cafe.

Please do click to enlarge the image, it was taken with a Voigtländer lens.

Voigtländer

Last year a friend of mine tried his hand at some street photography and he purchased a Leica M9 and a Voigtländer Nokton Classic 35mm f/1.4 II VM. Now he’s decided to buy a used Summilux-M 35mm ASPH and is selling his Nokton 35mm f/1.4 for £400. More and more I’m finding myself using a 35mm focal length, so with this in mind I thought I’d give this lens a try. I see no end of people using this lens, raving reviews about it’s performance and at a £600 compared new purchase price to a new Summilux-M 35mm £4400 it’s not surprising to me that photographers are using them.

Voigtländer Nokton Classic 35mm f/1.4 II VM

I’m quite impressed with this little lens from Cosina. Well made, sharp mostly across the board although I will say the focusing is a tad stiff compared to my Leica lenses. It has a softer look to me and with digital I don’t think that’s a bad thing. With my Summicron-M 35mm and Summilux-M 50mm I think some of my pictures looked to sharp, clinical even, there’s just no life to them.

One Way

With the Voigtländer Nokton 35mm I kept an open mind and to be honest wasn’t expecting such good results. Does question why pay for Leica glass! This image above was straight out of camera, only little cropping and straighten was done here in Gimp 2.10

Bee Roads – Isle of Sheppey 2022

Even wide open at f/1.4 I’m pretty impressed with this lens performance and yes there is a bit of vignetting at f/1.4 but I don’t mind that in my images.

Think this Voigtländer Nokton is a keeper and I’ll use the Leica glass for film.

All images taken with Leica M-P (Typ240) and the Voigtländer Nokton Classic 35mm f/1.4 II VM lens.

Edit. Side note, Leica 6 bit coding test.

Voigtlander coded on the left. Click to enlarge.