VOIGTLANDER 35mm f1.4 Nokton Classic E-Mount Lens [VGTBA347A]

This is a very well made lens which should last a very long time and should be a joy to use. It's is compact and not too heavy and the focus and aperture dials are lovely to use but unlike the Voigtlander 40mm f1.2 there's no declick option, but that doesn't bother me.On my A7 the lens provides exif and if you set your camera up to do so the magnified view will be activated when you turn the focus ring. I don't use that option and I prefer to manually call up the magnified view when I want it.The image quality is in my opinion good with the lens being sharp enough throughout most of the frame from wide open and even very sharp when stopped down - but - the extreme corners are never great and always display some smearing but the good news is that this is only the extreme corners so only people wanting to see perfection in the extreme corners at 100% are ever going to see this.The bokeh may well divide opinion, I'd describe it as being old lens funky when wide open but it settles down as you stop down and by f2 or even a touch less it's much less of a divisive look.To summarise, in my opinion the good points are the excellent build and handling and the overall image quality with the only downside being the few pixels in the extreme corners that are never good but if you want corner to corner sharpness there's always the excellent Sony 35mm f2.8 or the Voigtlander 40mm f1.2 which I also have and which gives good corner performance and overall a more modern lens look.The bokeh at the widest apertures may be the question mark for many. Personally I either don't mind it or often actually quite like it as it's quite like classic lenses of the film era. It's therefore maybe best to remember that this lens includes the word "classic" in its name for a reason.I can imagine owning and using this lens for a very long time.

I had purchased this lens for my new Sony A7III. I really wanted a lens in the 35mm range with a large aperture, for shooting portraits and city night scenes. The 35mm f1.4 Nokton is the newest iteration of the 35mm variant from Voigtlander, and has been designed specifically for Leica and Sony FE cameras. So a modern lens, designed partially for the digital age of Sony mirrorless. I had owned a number of Voiglander lenses before on Nikon and Leica: these were good to excellent. So surely a winner with the 35mm Nokton? Well not quite. And here's why.The good.- Lovely design. Compact. Really light and exceptional build quality. Focus is smooth. The aperture ring does not click, which will be good for those of you wanting to shoot video without any noise.- Good image quality the centre of the frame from f2 onwards.- Nice colour rendition; something which is quite characteristic of Voitlander lenses.- Looks great on the A7 body (for those of you into the aesthetics and looking like a hipster - not me mind...)- My cats looked OK (but they only posed because I promised them some food)The bad.- Bokeh is noisy. This is especially the case when shooting with foliage, trees etc in the background. The bokeh looks all a bit busy and distracting. Some people of course will like this. And some reviews have put this down to the 'character' of the lens.The ugly.- Wide open the lens is unusable. At f1.4 you can never attain critical sharpness. Even on a less demanding sensor like the 24MP of the A7III. I dread to think how it renders wide open on the A7RII/A7RIII. Some will again say this is a 'classic character' of the lens. It is indeed a 'character'. Just one that is horrific to the eyes. If you paid £40 for a lens and it did this, you probably would not mind. But when you pay £600 you expect to get something approaching usable at least.- The corners between f1.4/f2 are again, well quite frankly a bit of a horror show (my eyes, my eyes!!!!)- Chromatic abberations are really quite nasty wide open. Photoshopping these out does help a bit, but artefacts still exist (check the white text in the photo on the lamp post)- Sharpness in the corners never really improves until f8. So forget about that night shooting in the city that I wanted to do without massive ISOs.I feel a bit cleansed now that I have let it all out now. The lens has gone back and I am still recovering from the energy I put into trying to get this lens to work. I really wanted to like it. It looks great (not a hipster honest). It handles really well. And there isn't another 35mm fast and compact alternative out there that can be used shooting wide open on the A7 series. Maybe time to look into purchasing one of the Voigtlander 40mm f1.2 lenses. If I can get hold of one....