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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Three Generations
Well, it's not “Three Generations” quite in the same way as this shot or this one, but you get the idea.
As you can tell by my lean posting schedule of late, I'm buried with work on my Lightroom plugins, hoping Lr3 doesn't come out before I'm ready. But I had the opportunity to use an amazing lens today, and took it for a short stroll near my place.
The lens — an all-manual Cosina Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — is a full 100% macro, something I'd never used before. I got close with the 64% macro of the Sigma Bigma + 2× TC combination that I reported on in Walkabout with the Sigma Bigma: Versatility Galore a month ago, but this lens is in a different class.
(While the Voigtlander might be in a diffretnt class, unfortunately, I'm still in the same class, so the quality of these first shots are somewhat lacking...)
One of the very first shots I took when I got my hands on it, scrambling around the house for something to try it out with, was this shot of some flowers still hanging on from our wedding anniversary two weeks ago...
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/100 sec, f/4, ISO 3200 — full exif
Creamy Jumble
nothing's really in focus, but I like the vibe
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 3600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Spider Web
( you won't see it until you look at the 100% view, then will be amazed at the clarity )
( direct out of Lightroom with default settings )
What really amazes me about that shot is that the wind was whipping the little guy around, and you can see some movement blur on him, but the spider web is sharp as can be, so the movement at that one instant must have been in a direction exactly parallel to the web.
At 125mm, it's the longest telephoto I've ever used without VR (anti-vibration technology), and I could most certainly tell the difference. If I ever find free time again, I definitely need to break out the tripod.
There were only a few dandelions in the area I was walking, but I seem to have been attracted to them....
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Moss
Those “big” red plants in the background are almost invisible to the eye unless you're looking... they're very small. Compare to this shot with the Sigma at 32% macro.
I don't really care for the shot... the thin depth of field is more annoying than artistic in this case.
Here's another one I don't care for, but it's illustrative of the close-up abilities:
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/800 sec, f/4, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
taken with
My New Best Macro Lens
Compare with the identically-titled photo on my post about the Sigma Bigma. Today was lacking the bright sun that gave the other shot such great texture, but unfortunately I wasn't at liberty to change the weather to suit my personal needs, so I went with what I had.
Here's a non-macro shot. The full-res version is nicely sharp....
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/500 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Shirakawa River
Kyoto Japan
And finally, a crop from a larger photo..
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5, highly cropped— 1/800 sec, f/4, ISO 1400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Dinner
baby bird is about to get a beak full of bug crammed down its throat
A 125mm manual-focus lens is not really what one would use for wildlife photography, but they were feeding in front of me, and I had the camera, so why not.
All the photos on this post are straight-out-of-Lightroom at the default settings, except for the crop in the last shot, a touch of extra exposure in two shots that I'd underexposed, and a white-balance fix on the Creamy Jumble (because it was taken in incandescent lighting, which Nikon's cameras tend not to auto-whitebalance very well).
Welcome to the CV125! It’s a rare bird, maybe 2200 made in Nikon mount (http://forum.mflenses.com/voigtlaender-sl-apo-lanthar-serials-and-production-volumes-t24547.html) and I was lucky enough to land one over a year ago. It is, as you mentioned, in a league of its own. Remains to be seen if Cosina re-issues it in an SLII version. By the way, I think you meant to say this was the longest lens you’ve used WITHOUT vibration reduction (see above).
Oops, thanks that’s what I get for writing at 1am. Fixed. Thanks for the link. —Jeffrey
Noooo! My one remaining lens advantage has now been eliminated…..
Jeffrey –
Do you store images that are checked in your exif viewer? In other words, if I look at a censored photo in the exif viewer to make sure I successfully and securely censored it and the original uncensored image comes up, do I have to worry that the uncensored image will be stored or viewable by the public?
Not sure why you put the comment on this particular post, but yes, they are cached locally for a while to avoid having to refetch the same image over and over, and a robot cleans them out after a period of inactivity. If you change the image at the end of a URL after having checked it, the exif viewer won’t notice the change right away, so yes, others checking the same link will see the old version for a while. I never considered this situation, but perhaps what I use when testing/debugging is useful: when viewing a photo with it, append “&reload=1” to the url (sans quotes) and hit enter, and that should have my system refetch the latest version. —Jeffrey