Voigtlander Nokton 42.5 mm f/0.95 review - Coma, astigmatism and bokeh

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Voigtlander Nokton 42.5 mm f/0.95

17 January 2014

Arkadiusz Olech

7. Coma, astigmatism and bokeh

The rival PanaLeica 1.2/42.5 corrected the coma in a splendid way; the Voigtlander can’t boast of such a good performance. In its case the coma is distinct, both at the maximum relative aperture and on stopping down to f/1.4. It is clear that aberration contributes noticeably to the decrease of image quality on the edge of the frame.

Voigtlander Nokton 42.5 mm f/0.95 - Coma, astigmatism and bokeh

When it comes to astigmatism we don’t have any good news either – its level is significantly high. The average difference between lateral and vertical MTF50 values amounted to as much as 23%. The aberration becomes low only by f/2.8 and it disappears completely from f/4.0 onwards.

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The PanaLeica was praised by us for its nice out-of-focus images. The Voigtlander doesn’t fare here so well. At the maximum aperture you can notice distinct brightness loss on the edge of the circle, undoubtedly connected with the spherical aberration. What’s more, the shape of the aperture can hardly be called circular – although there are as many as 10 blades the circles you see are much more angular than in case of lenses with a smaller number of blades.