Voigtlander Nokton Classic 40mm f/1.4 MC Lens

Been using with Leica 240 and Fuji X-E4. Think I like it more with the Fuji. The colors those two produce are amazing!

For me this lens is an f/8 and shoot type of lens, with the wide apertures for the just in case situations. At the moment I'm using on the Nikon Z6ii, and its fairly well behaved. Field curvature is there, but its not unwieldily. At f/8 I can get just as good, if not a little better landscape images compared to my Distagon 35mm f/2 ZF.2. This is mostly due to the field curvature at the edges leading away from the camera providing sharp infinity edges while the Distagon has a subtle bow shaped curvature leading towards the camera. It's sharp at the centre wide open, with a little haze at f/1.4, but at half a stop closed down the centre is contrasty and micro contrast makes the subject pop. The mid frame focus plane can seem nervous all the way up to f/5.6. I feel f/5.6 is pretty much the best all round aperture to shoot with. From f/4 the background blur is also calmed down a lot. In many situations, surprisingly, blur disks in the background retain a round shape even though the iris is not perfectly round. I chose this lens for the low price and compact size. I find the focus and aperture tabs fiddly and a little annoying. My copy is pretty much optically symmetrical left to right, but top to bottom it's a little different; A slight tilt and slightly different sharpness at the edges of the top and bottom. Noticeable at f/5.6 and larger when shooting vertically. Also, my lens may have been an open box unit. Not sure how that's possible but my lens came without a plastic wrapper and while very clean, there was a bit of lint and dust behind the lens cap. I live too far away to justify sending the lens back.

I like it, small size and good quality. The only reason I did not give it five stars because its a little soft. But I guess that is expected.