Voigtlander 15mm f4.5 Super Wide Heliar III Aspherical Sony FE Review / November 19, 2022 by Jan

I have a lot of love for compact, super wide angle lenses. A lot of love!

When I was still photographing with the Fujifilm system, one of the first lenses I bought for it was the Samyang 12m f2.0 (review here). Except for the weird distortion and the plasticky feel of the lens, I loved everything else about it. It was pretty compact for being the lens it was, and on top of that; it was super affordable, almost cheap. So I had no qualms throwing it around, really closely to the action. Like I did with the basketball game here. Yet, it could still hold up really well for professional work, like photographing for real estate agents (photos and review here).

At the end of last year I decided to move to the Sony eco-system. I got a great deal on an A7 III with the Sigma 24-70mm 2.8 DG DN. My priority then was to find the perfect 35mm lens for me. And I did. Eventually. And then a ±50mm.

I was really happy with those three lenses, and then I realized, there aren’t really any lenses directly equivalent to the Samyang 12mm f2.0 in the Sony system. Sure, there is the Samyang 18mm f2.8, but personally, I don’t find the image quality on par with the 12mm, and the weirdly coloured vignetting really turned me off. Distortion was also poor.

Add to that, that the quality control of Samyang’s autofocus lenses seems to be an absolute mess as well, which is such a shame because I have absolutely loved their manual focus lenses on the Fujifilm system (especially the Samyang 21mm f1.4 and the Samyang 35mm f1.2 - reviews here and here). Not just that, but their other autofocus lenses, like the Samyang 75mm f1.8, the 85mm f1.4 mkI (not so much the mkII) and the 50mm f1.4 mkII all produce absolutely beautiful images. Living in Cork though, a very small city in Ireland, we don’t have access to any of the large photo stores, so I’m always stuck just buying lenses of the internet based on reviews. The returns process can then turn into a real mess, really quickly, and it’s difficult to judge how well these Samyang AF lenses are built. Will it die on me or cause freezing issues with my camera at the pinnacle of the wedding shoot; the first kiss? I’ll give them a try at some stage, but for now I’ll stick with the Sony, Sigma and Zeiss lenses. They’ll be reliable for sure.

I have always had a soft spot for Voigtlander. I think they produce some amazing lenses, and wished they would start making some autofocus lenses too.

I came across their Voigtlander 15mm f4.5 III Heliar lens one day. Checked out some photos online, and man, this is one hell of a lens! The build quality is impeccable, the image quality is fantastic and it’s just a really nice looking lens. That’s what really stood out to me actually, was just how beautiful the lens looks. I love the focus rings, with the large cut outs for a nice grip. So much better than using rubber, especially the rubber that Zeiss uses on their Batis line up! And it gives the lens that timeless and classic look.

The built-in hood is so classy looking too. Never mind practical. The font is so clean. And the de-clicking of the aperture, it is a feature I will never use, however, I can appreciate how well this system has been integrated into the lens. Simply push the ring underneath the aperture ring towards the lens hood and twist it 180 degrees, till the yellow marker is on the front side, instead of the white dot. That’s it. Simple as.

De-clicking aperture ring

*“Simply push the ring underneath the aperture ring towards the lens hood and twist it 180 degrees, till the yellow marker is on the front side, instead of the white dot.”*

Distortion

The one thing, that really bothered me about the Samyang 12mm was the distortion. In portrait and action shots, it was fine, but for architectural work, it was really annoying. I’ve seen the distortion described online as a “moustache style”. If that’s really true, it would make a lot of sense, because I was never really able to fix it in post in a way that I was 100% satisfied with.

Which is why I was delighted to read that this Voigtlander has no distortion at all! I was very surprised by that. Much less so when I imported it into Lightroom, applied the lens correction and it did indeed correct for distortion. Ok, it’s only a tiny little bit, and it’s impressively well corrected before digital corrections. But finally I didn’t have to mess around with the manual distortion corrector in Lightroom! So a big thumbs up from me on this point!

Vignetting

What is odd though, and I can’t find an exact explanation on why this is, but for some reason this seems to be the only lens in the world where stopping down the aperture has absolutely no impact on the vignetting. It will vignette just as much wide open at f4.5 as it does full closed at f22, and everywhere in-between. Not a big issue, just strange. It’s always nice to have the option of minimized vignetting for certain shots, but obviously, Lightroom exists.

Image Quality

What I really like about this lens is that optically, it fits in perfectly with my two favourite lenses; the Sony Zeiss 35mm f1.4 and the Sony Zeiss 55mm f1.8. The colours, the contrast, micro-contrast, sharpness, etc. This is a beautiful trio to use together. Whereas, in comparison, photos taken with my Sigma 24-70mm f2.8 stick out like a sore thumb. Although any of the current zooms would. I’d say the Tamron 28-75mm f2.8 G2 would probably come the closest though. But regarding the image quality, it’s all thumbs up from my end.

Also, the lack of CA is a dream! Especially compared to the above mentioned Zeiss lenses.

Miscellaneous Positives

The compact size is great, and compared to the manual focus Samyang lenses I have used before on the Fujifilm bodies, this lens has electronic connections. It’s a minor thing, and I would definitely be able to identify this Voigtlander lens in Lightroom library just by being such an extreme wide-angle. But just having the actual EXIF info is such a nice, little benefit and makes for easy digital corrections.

Quite a bulbous front element, but it easily fits filters.

Miscellaneous Negatives

Now this is a very personal negative. I don’t know how many people will share this complaint with me. What I don’t like about this lens is that it is difficult to focus when using it as a ‘throw around lens’.

The Samyang 12mm was so great at f5.6 because everything was in focus. The depth-of-field was so large. Due also to the APS-C sensor. So I’d just chuck a flash on the camera, set the focus at about a meter, and that was it. The (supposedly) purposefully stiff focus ring on this lens ensured a set focus point even after having a few drinks and dance or two.

By moving up in sensor size and focal length, the depth-of-field is narrower and the infinity point is at a greater distance. The latter is a topic that is rarely brought up in depth-of-field conversions across different sensor sizes. Yeah an Olympus 25mm f1.2 is roughly equivalent to a Sony 50mm f2.5 if you have your subject 80cm away. But what about 3m? With the Olympus you’ll already have maxed out your focus distance and hit infinity so there’s no way of blurring the background anymore. The Sony would still have a little bit in it.

With the Voigtlander, it’s the same issue just in reverse. At night or in dark situations, for me, it’s just not as easy and fun as the Samyang 12mm was. Suddenly I have to pay attention. The photos wouldn’t be massively out of focus, but enough to annoy me.

I’ve tried stopping the lens down to f8-11. It helped, but didn’t seem to cure the issue. The side-effect of that also, is that you need to power up the flash a lot more, and you end up blinding all of your friends.

I also found it to be a little bit too wide for me, didn’t think there would be such a difference in angle-of-view between an 18mm and a 15mm. I really wish this was the lens for me and it really could have been. After owning it for about 6-9 months, I have decided to sell it (if I can). For now the wide end of my zoom, will do me fine and if I need a super-wide angle again, I will maybe opt for the Tamron 17-28mm f2.8 or the Zeiss Batis 18mm f2.8.

Verdict

If you do enjoy this focal length though, I’d 100% recommend getting this lens! But I’m such a Voigtlander and Zeiss fanboy, so maybe don’t take me too seriously.

Samyang 12mm f2 for Real Estate Photography / January 2, 2022 by Jan

I already wrote a review about this Samyang 12mm f2 lens here, but I totally glossed over the real estate photography that I do with it. More and more photographers are getting onto me if this lens is any good for that, so I thought I’d write a little summary of my experiences with it thus far.

Quick and Dirty Bullet Points

Positives:

- The Samyang 12mm is very affordable
- It’s very versatile and can be used for other types of photography too
- Great image quality (definitely best value lens in the super-wide category)
- Great colours and contrast
- Vignetting is minimal when closing down to f4-5.6

Neutral:

- Since it’s a prime, I often (but not always) take a second lens with me
- Manual focus is love or hate

Negatives:

- Has a bit more distortion than I would like for this type of photography (see below for more info)

The Long Explanation

Let me expand on the above points; this lens is very good at photographing real estate. I live in Ireland where buildings and homes tend to be a bit on the smaller side, so that 12mm focal length is extremely important to me. I wouldn’t really be able to photograph half of the houses and apartments with even just a 16mm. That would be to tight already. For larger kitchens and living rooms it would be fine, but it’s very surprising how little you would be able to photograph of a standard sized 9m² bedroom for instance, nevermind a small en-suite. For the latter I often find myself squeezed up against the corner to be able to take a good, representative shot.

From an image quality point of view, this lens delivers more than enough for that. On that front I wouldn’t be worrying about anything.

The one re-occuring issue that I do have is straight lines. Getting straight lines when photographing kitchens for instance can be more difficult than you’d think. The super-wide nature of the lens exacerbates every slight degree you’re off, making the photo look much skewer than it would with say a 35mm or 50mm. This is normal for super or hyper-wide angles. So take your time setting your shot up and double and triple checking all angles and lines are as they should be. Then we get to the distortion. I usually don’t mind distortion at all. But for real estate photography, it can be a bit of an issue at times. Yes, you can remove it in Lightroom afterwards, but you do end up missing out a bit on the wideness. I also find that with this lens I can’t seem to get rid of the distortion 100%. I have read elsewhere that it has a more complicated ‘moustache shaped distortion’. Don’t know if that’s true. It’s not a deal breaker especially since there aren’t many viable other options in this price group (unless you want to go down the cheap, Chinese lens route), but something to be aware of.

Then there’s the matter of it being a prime. Sometimes I wish I had the Fujifilm 10-24mm so that I could zoom out to 10mm and also not need to take with a second lens for the outdoor shots or close ups. I will either take with my Samyang 21mm or Fujifilm 16-55mm to compliment the Samyang 12mm. Although often, I will just use the 12mm on its own. But photographing real estate isn’t my one and only photography gig, and my clients have all been really happy with the work I have delivered thus far with the 12mm. But I might upgrade in the future just to have the option to zoom, have a slightly wider end and have less distortion (I think the 10-24mm has less distortion but correct me if I’m wrong).

Bottom Line

I hope this helps. Bottom line, if you need a lens to photograph real estate, this is the one to go for if you don’t want to be spending as much money as on the Fujifilm 10-24mm or 8-16mm. You might need to put in a little bit more effort in regards to the manual focus and distortion and possibly bringing a second lens but it from the results, it won’t look much different. Lighting the rooms is a much more important aspect than if you’re using the Samyang 12mm or one of the Fujifilm zooms.

For more photos, check out my blog post on a house I photographed here, using the Samyang 12mm and the Fujifilm 16-55mm, or check out my real estate photography page here.

Samyang 35mm f1.2 versus Fujifilm XF 35mm f1.4 / August 1, 2021 by Jan

I keep yapping on and on about how great Samyang lenses are. My favourite lens of all time is the Samyang 21mm f1.4, and just recently I wrote a review on how good the Samyang 35mm f1.2 is. An incredibly underrated lens! I get it that a lot of potential users are discouraged of using a manual focus lens, but when a lens is this good, it’s worth revisiting.

Since the last review, I have bought and used the Fujifilm 35mm f1.4 and thought it would be interesting to compare the two lenses! They might be the same focal length and one might have autofocus while the other one doesn’t, but even I was surprised how different the images from these two lenses were. And surprisingly, the field of view doesn’t match up between these two lenses!

The following photos have been adjusted to have the same daylight white balance and the same film simulation, which in this case is Provia.

The first photo is the Fuji, second one is the Samyang (click to enlarge):

This shot indicates two things nicely; the difference in bokeh and the different colours these lenses produce. Both lenses were shot wide open, so either f1.4 or f1.2. I thought it would only be fair to do so, as you wouldn’t stop down the Samyang to 1.4 usually during a shoot. It’s either wide open or f2.8 or smaller.

Immediately, you can see in the yellow bush in the middle that the Samyang has much smoother bokeh, without appearing too clinical. With it being an f1.2 aperture, it is also blurred a little more than the Fujifilm. The latter has more defined edges to its bokeh.
Regarding colour, the greens with the Fujifilm are colder looking, the whole image is colder actually. A definite blue tint to it all. The Samyang has a much warmer, friendlier tone. The image looks way sunnier in comparison.

Interestingly, I set both photos to the standard ‘Daylight’ setting within Lightroom. That sets it to 5500K and +10 on the green/magenta scale. However when I changed the white balance of the Fujifilm to 5700k, keeping the secondary slider at +10, and changed the white balance on the Samyang photo to 5500k and +21, the two become much more similar than initially anticipated. I honestly didn’t think I could make them look so similar!

Again, first one is the Fuji, second one is the Samyang:

There’s still a definite difference in colour but the results have become much closer.

Next, we have some close ups of the centre glass. The left one is the Fuji, the right one is the Samyang:

The obvious remark here, is that the Samyang has absolutely no purple fringing. Besides that though, you can see how much better the Samyang is in sharpness and micro-contrast. There’s quite an obvious difference between the two!

Well, let’s have a look in the corners and zoom in on the left jar. Again, the left one is the Fuji, the right one is the Samyang:

Oh dear! Now we even have some hazing from the Fujifilm!

Ok, let’s look at another sample. First one is the Fuji, second one is the Samyang:

I really prefer the rendering of the Samyang in this as well. The bokeh is just so much creamier, especially when you have a look at the kettle and spatula or whatever metal utensils they are in the centre of the image. Or looking at the vertical lines on the cupboard above them, the Samyang manages to smooth them out better than the Fujifilm.
The colour difference is aparent again, this time the skin tones in the Fuji image look redder than the Samyang. The Samyang again, having a definite summer vibe to it.

Here are the photos again with the same white balance correction as above:

Again, they look quite similar, but I would still prefer the Samyang.

An obligatory close up. Again, Fuji is on top:

Conclusion

I wish that Samyang would make an autofocus version of this lens! Of all their APS-C mirrorless lenses actually. I don’t mind manual focusing and it’s not that difficult to do on a Fuji camera, but when I’m photographing events or weddings, it does drain my energy levels quicker than when I’m using an autofocus lens that works well. I still have moments though where I’ll just pop on a manual focus lens because the autofocus lens is distracting me too much. But I’m a little old school in that way of thinking and working. It’s all personal preference at the end of the day, but I just love the simplicity of manual focus lenses. And nothing annoys me more than having to swap autofocus modes or continuously having to switch the ‘Eye AF’ function on and off constantly because the camera is focusing on the wrong subject.
Is the Fujifilm 35mm 1.4 a bad lens? No, not at all. Is it as good as the entire internet seems to think? No, not at all.
Having said that, I’m not mad that I own it, or that it exists. I did for instance take these lovely family portraits with it. In this scenario, the autofocus really helped me keep my mind clear and allow me to focus on directing the family (see photos below). The autofocus actually helped me achieve these photos, which would probably have been quite difficult to do with the Samyang lens. Or I would have had to have stopped the lens down to f8 or f11 to have a massive depth of field and cross my fingers that everyone is in focus. I think the photos came out really great and I’m not left thinking, “If only I used another lens.”
It does remind me of some of the Zeiss lenses in that regard that the specs don’t always look great on paper or if you dissect the image, like I did above, but when you take a step back and look at the whole image, it does look great. But I believe this lens can be improved upon and look forward to what Fujifilm will deliver with their rumoured 33mm. Sigma also wants to bring out their 30mm f1.4 to the X-mount. I’d be very interested to see how they are, in terms of autofocus performance and image quality and look. And in the case of the Sigma, if they will finally make one in X-mount after all! It’s been such a long term rumour after all.

My pros and cons list:

Fujifilm 35mm f1.4

Positives:
+ Autofocus lens
+ Good image quality, not as good as the Samyang but good enough
+ Love or hate lens
+ Cool looking lens hood
+ Incredibly lightweight

Neutral:
ᵒ I’m not always that fond of the bokeh, can be a bit busy at times (since it’s very subjective, I’m not counting it as a negative)

Negatives:
- Lens hood comes off easily, as does the square, rubber lens cap
- Autofocus isn’t the best but good enough

Samyang 35mm f1.2

Positives:
+ Superb image quality, best 35mm lens for the Fujifilm X-mount (currently)
+ Great looking photos, super creamy bokeh
+ f1.2 aperture, great for low light and extra bokeh
+ Very affordable (can be found on the used market for just €200-250 in various mounts)
+ Pure manual nature of the lens means it will last you a lifetime and use less power, so your camera batteries last longer
+ Good size, balances nicely on cameras
+ Great quality lens hood
+ Personal preference, but I like that the aperture goes in ½ steps instead of ⅓’s

Neutral:
ᵒ Manual focus is either good or bad depending on the wants of the photographer, although manual focus is great if you’re doing video too

Negatives:
- Would prefer a metal body with etched numbers, instead of printed numbers
- Focus ring is a bit stiffer than I’d like

Let me know what you think of my findings! And check out my Samyang 21mm f1.4 review here, the Samyang 35mm f1.2 review here, and the Samyang 12mm f2.0 review here.