As some of you have noticed, beginning of 2023 I set up a Discord server for the Phillipreeve.net community and I am happy to report that there are many active members and it allowed me to be closer to the community as well.
Also some memes have been exchanged/created and I thought for those that aren’t members (yet) I will share my favorites here.
Modern Voigtländer branded lenses are made by Cosina in Japan. These are all manual focus lenses but except for the M-mount lenses they all feature electronic contacts to communicate with your camera. This is an overview of ~50 of their lenses with my opinion summarized in one sentence to give you an overview and starting point before delving into our in-depth reviews.
Last Update: September 2025
The one sentence reviews are a new concept I am testing here, please tell me in the comment section what you think of it.
Continue reading Lens Reviews in one Sentence – Part 1: Voigtländer
At the beginning of the 1990s Nikon released two special portrait lenses featuring a “Defocus Control” mechanism, which allows you to make the bokeh smoother or harsher. This Nikon AF-D 105mm 2.0 DC is the shorter of the two DC lenses and In this review I will tell you how it works and if it is actually useful.
In 2022 Leica started updating some of their f/1.4 Summilux-M lenses. The first lens to receive this treatment was the Leica 35mm 1.4 Summilux-M Asph (now often referred to as “FLE MK II”). While the optical design seems to have remained mostly the same, the new lens features a different casing design and also focuses much closer. It is public knowledge: I was not a big fan of the first generation of this lens, so let’s find out if the seemingly minor update was enough to sway the scale!
Continue reading Review: Leica 35mm 1.4 Summilux-M Asph FLE MK II
This Harman Phoenix 200 is said to be a newly designed colour negative analogue film that hit the market in early 2024. Many people did not expect anyone except for Kodak and Fuji even being able to produce a (new) color negative film, so it created quite the buzz. I am all for more competition, but I am not really sure this is the film we were hoping for, let me tell you why.
Processing (C.41) and scanning was done at urbanfilmlab in Germany. The pictures in this article are from two rolls of film.
Continue reading Analogue Adventures – Part 33: Harman Phoenix 200