Voigtlander 42.5mm f/0.95 Nokton Lens Review

Voigtlander Nokton 42.5mm f/0.95 Performance

This lens performs very well as far as sharpness is concerned. At f/0.95 sharpness in the centre of the frame is approaching very good levels, although the clarity towards the edges of the frame is only fairly good at this aperture, which is typical for a lens with such a fast maximum aperture. Stopping down greatly improves sharpness across the frame, resulting in outstanding clarity between f/2.8 and f/8 across the frame.

MTF @ 42.5mm

How to read our charts The blue column represents readings from the centre of the picture frame at the various apertures and the green is from the edges. Averaging them out gives the red weighted column. The scale on the left side is an indication of actual image resolution. The taller the column, the better the lens performance. Simple. For this review, the lens was tested on a Panasonic Lumix G3 using Imatest.

Chromatic aberrations are extremely well controlled at all apertures, barely registering a quarter of a pixel width at maximum aperture. This low level of colour fringing should be very difficult to spot, even in harsh crops from the edges of the frame.

CA @ 42.5mm

How to read our charts Chromatic aberration is the lens' inability to focus on the sensor or film all colours of visible light at the same point. Severe chromatic aberration gives a noticeable fringing or a halo effect around sharp edges within the picture. It can be cured in software. Apochromatic lenses have special lens elements (aspheric, extra-low dispersion etc) to minimize the problem, hence they usually cost more. For this review, the lens was tested on a Panasonic Lumix G3 using Imatest.

Falloff of illumination towards the corners is quite well controlled for a lens with such a fast maximum aperture. At maximum aperture, the corners are 2.09 stops darker than the image centre and illumination is visually uniform by f/5.6.

Imatest detected 1.64% barrel distortion, which is typical for a telephoto with a fast maximum aperture. The distortion pattern is uniform across the frame, so applying corrections in image editing software should be relatively straightforward.

Contrast is good, even when shooting into the light. A circular hood is supplied with the lens, which does a sterling job of shielding the lens from extraneous light that may cause issues.

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