And while I love that lens, in the process I had to buy at least four
other Voigtlander lenses, a couple by Zeiss, a Lester A. Dine, and a
small army of Nikon lenses. And I had to test every tube extension,
diopter, close-up lens, and tele-converter on the market to make
sure I was not missing something. I wasn’t. It is remarkable how
few lenses I actually need. What is brilliant about the Voigtlander
125 is:
(1) FAST – At f/2.5 few lenses are as fast and over 100mm. For my
work a fast lens means light in the viewfinder so that I can see to
focus in the early- morning light.
(2) LONG – 125mm means 1:1 image size, which is a definite plus
over anything less. The 200mm lenses (aside from not being as
sharp) are not as fast and many have short-ish focus throws.
(3) FOCUS THROW – This lens has a very long focus throw which
means I can turn and turn the lens barrel and get only a small
movement. This is, for me, key.
(4) SOLID – This lens is built like a tank and I put it through a lot of
work and travel. (5) SHARP – This lens is very sharp indeed. It is
not as sharp as say the Coastal Optics 60mm APO, but all things
considered it is sharp enough.
(6) APO – This lens is apochromatic which means it has no
chromatic or spherical aberration as most lenses do. It reproduces
subtle colors.
(7) MANUAL FOCUS – All my macro work is done with manual
focus. I never use auto focus when doing close- up work.
(8) LIGHT-NORMAL – Not sure what the right words are to
describe this quality, but the idea is that the lens is not too sensitive
to light and not too insensitive, but just stable and normal. It is a
perfect workhorse of a lens, day in and day out. No other lens
touches it for macro work IMO.
On the down side, the Voigtlander is not electronically linked to my
Nikon bodies, so everything has to be done manually, which is fine
by me. I prefer all manual settings. Above are the qualities I look for
in a macro or close-up lens. Some macro lenses have some of
these attributes, but the Voigtlander is the only lens I have that has
all of these qualities. It is unfortunate that copies of this lens are
rare and expensive, but it is not a flaw in the quality of the lens. I