Comments (3)

By Brian, June 20, 2009 7:30 pm

Pancake lenses. Not many people use it nowadays, preferring the do-all zoom lenses. Going back to the old days when photographers would carry one prime lens per camera, and still be able to take amazing photographers, there is nothing a prime cannot do in the hands of someone with the right photographic vision. In short, nothing wrong with a pancake lens. In fact I love pancakes because it keeps the camera side profile smaller, making it possible to squeeze a pro-body with built in grip into a small bag. And most of the time you can zoom with your feet anyway.

Profile Comparison. ULTRON on the right, AIS on the left.

A pancake lens is the name given to low profile lenses, normally around the 50mm focal length range. Up for this test are the two that I own. First up is a Nikkor 50mm f1.8 AIS. Now there are many versions of this lens, and the 0.60m minimum focal length version is the one I have, which is noticeably shorter than the other models. The other lens I have been using quite a bit is a Voigtlander 40mm f2 SL ULTRON. Yes a mouthful, I’ll just call it AIS and ULTRON for the short version hereforth. They’re both manual lenses. And they only meter on Nikon’s semi pro bodies like the D300/D700 and up.

This is not meant to be a full on test, so I will not bother to perform an exhaustive test on it. On the question of bokeh, I have noticed that the ULTRON has this harsh donut shaped bokeh, perhaps because of the Aspherical element in the lens. But I’m not a bokeh freak so it is not an issue for me.

Continue reading 'Lens Test: Tale of two pancakes'»

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By Brian, September 1, 2008 11:23 am

After 4 years of deliberating, finally got my first DX wide angle lens on Saturday in Tokyo. It’s rated a little below mint because of overused mount, and somehow I didn’t see any rubber seal on it, so I guess it was replaced by the service centre.

So justification: I have been holding back on this lens but finally thought its time for my first AFS and DX lens (previous lenses are mostly AIS and AFD at most) because it seems to work at 18mm and above on my full frame film SLRs as well. The initial test yesterday confirms that at 24mm the lens is sharp. Can’t say too much about contrast as the weather was quite hazy here, but its nice to be able to go wide on my D2H now.