hmzimelka
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 Re: Voigtlander 50mm f/3.5 APO-Lanthar Review | |
highdesertmesa wrote:
hmzimelka wrote:
Fred Miranda wrote:
hmzimelka wrote:
My two APO 50/3.5 arrived today.
Type I Black and Type II Silver.
Lovely lenses but again quality control issues strike again... both copies have a front focus.
The Type II silver lens has a nice sizeable piece of lint inside what looks to be in the middle of the lenses possibly in near the aperture assembly.
I'm now thoroughly fed up with 3 poor samples of Voigtlander lenses in a row. My rangefinder is accurate. My Zeiss Planar, Summicron-m 50mm V, Nokton 75/1.5, Ultron 28mm ASPH II, Tele-Elmarit 90mm, Skopar 35mm, Skopar 21mm are all accurate.
It would seem that both lenses are not cam'd on the ring that moves the rangefinder focus. Unlike both my Zeiss and Summicron that are slightly cut to adapt the lens focal length to the rangefinder focal length.
The reason I looked if the ring has a cam is because infinity focus matches my camera's rangefinder, but at anything closer than infinity the rangefinder starts progressively front focusing. All my 50mm and longer lenses have an angled or a cam ring and track focus properly throughout the focus range.
That looks quite troubling. Is it possible to exchange the lens?
I just checked my three copies for dust in the elements and alignment with the rangefinder. Like the chrome pre-production version, the other two copies are also perfectly aligned at 0.7m, 2m, and 5m. Their infinity hard stops are identical, which I used to compare their resolution performance.
Regarding dust or lint, I didn’t find any particles in any of the three lenses. It seems you might have had some bad luck. I hope you can arrange an exchange. If not, try removing the rear core to see if you can clean the dust. @yukosteel@@@'s advice might be helpful here.
Unfortunately our customs and excise rules here are strangely complicated, enforced by officials who have no idea how things work. With the Skopar lens, I enquired with UPS how much it would cost to return the lens, since it arrived from Robert White via UPS. It cost around £47 to ship from the UK to me, however, the return would cost around £201! On top of that, I will have no way of claiming back the import duties I paid, which work out to around 16.5% of the invoice amount.
Robert White has offered to enquire about return shipping of all three lenses, but I have no hopes that it will be economically feasible. Since the Skopar will be returned to Cosina Japan, and likely be looked at and deemed " in spec". I'm just very pessimistic about the problem.
Regarding the lint, I don't think that would be a difficult fix. But that is the least of my concern. The front focus issue make the lenses practically useless on the M11. Removing a shim won't fix the issue since that influences the focus issue equally over the entire range, and therefor will create a back focus problem when it comes to infinity subjects.
The non linear behaviour could be a camera issue, but seeing that none of my other lenses, of which I have several, show this type of behaviour. I can quite confidently rule out a camera issue. Besides, I have no issue with the Nokton 75mm f/1.5 with which I can consistently achieve focus at wide open aperture. The M11 rangefinder is fantastic with accuracy, and my eyes are up to the task.
At this point, if I were an impulsive person, I would have considered selling everything and moving back to Nikon. The stress or anxiety involved with getting stuff shipped to an African country, and then testing for a string of issues to determine if its a good lens copy, is just sucking the joy out photography for me. It's just not worth it. I would gladly pay double for Voigtlander if they can guarantee their quality.
In this case I bought two APO 50/3.5 lenses and both are not good. Its absurd.
Do ask Robert White to try to arrange return shipping. I say that because a while back, I went thought the rather frustrating task of trying to find good copies of several different Zeiss C/Y lenses. They are notorious for haze and other issues, so many required returning them from the US to Japan or China. A few of the returns, I had to ship back to them myself, which cost on average around $95 each. However, when vendors would provide me with a return label and customs instructions, the cost was zero dollars to me. One could make the argument that if your vendor is willing to sell Voigtlander lenses to you in Africa, they should stand behind their sales and arrange return shipping at their cost.
Indeed, it would be nice to hear what Robert White can do and is willing to help with. However, anything other than an outright replacement is probably not worth the effort for me.
Our customs is very convoluted with rules. A lens leaving for "repair" has to come back with the same serial number. If it goes out under repair, but the supplier were to later decide to replace it, customs will not clear the parcel without a new commercial invoice and forfeit any claim for a refund of the original duties refund. I've not known anyone that has successfully managed to send in a claim and get their money back, so the above point is moot. So it's a guaranteed loss of my original 16.5% I paid, plus another payment of the 16.5% for re-importing.
I'm still waiting for the duties refund for my M10M camera that I had to return to Leica almost 3 years ago. Those USD 1700+ are gone for all intents and purposes.
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