It has always been very hard to guess what Voigtländer lens Cosina will come up with next. By the time many people started giving up the hope for a fast 28mm M-mount lens we got exactly that: the Voigtländer VM 28mm 1.5 Nokton. Is this the fast 28mm lens I know many of you have been desperately waiting for? Let’s find out!
For obvious reasons I prefer reviewing lenses I am also personally interested in. But every now and then I also review lenses where this is not the case. Sometimes, because I think that lens might still be interesting for you, sometimes, because I just want to see if the manufacturer made any progress since their last lens I reviewed. This AstrHori 50mm 2.0 is one such case, so let’s have a closer look.
We have seen a few exciting lenses from Laowa in recent years, especially in their Argus product line, which seems to be Laowa’s premium line of lenses. The one here, Laowa Argus 25mm f/0.95 CF APO is one of them. A manual focus “standard/wide-angle” lens for APS-C cameras with an ultra-fast maximum aperture of f/0.95. It has an unusual focal length of 25mm (fullframe equivalent of 37.5mm*), between the more usual 23mm and 27mm focal lengths (FF equivalents of 35mm and 40mm*). The 0.95 aperture promises impressive and nice background separation and hopefully a nice bokeh and extreme low-light capabilities. Besides, the APO designation indicates Laowa has used its APO technology in this lens and it should give much better correction of spherical and chromatic aberrations than non-APO lenses. Let’s see how good it is in the real world!
* The fullframe equivalent focal length of 37.5mm is true for Sony, Nikon, and Fujifilm cameras, while on a Canon APS-C, it will be equivalent to a 40mm lens on a fullframe camera.
I tested this lens on a Nikon Zfc
You can see this review a YouTube video here
Continue reading Review: Laowa Argus 25mm f/0.95 CF APO (APS-C)
Originally designed as Leica Summicron-C 40mm 2.0 to ship with the Leica/Minolta CL, this Minolta 40mm 2.0 M-Rokkor version with same optical design (but allegedly improved coatings) was one of the three M-mount lenses destined to be used with the improved Minolta CLE. This is still one of the most compact M-mount lenses and one of few options if you are looking for a 40mm, so let’s have a closer look.
This lens will be reviewed on the 42mp Sony A7rII and the 24mp Leica M10.
When visiting Japan in early 2023 I exposed 8 rolls of film, this is a collection of pictures from that trip.
