Doug A.
Well-known member
Well apparently I'm going backwards in my recent purchasing pursuits. Earlier this spring I purchased a Voigtlander 58mm Nokton. A manual focus vintage style lens whose image rendering is incredible. I'm so enjoying using this lens and the requisite slowing down of the photographic process it requires that I purchased a used Nikkor 135mm Ai lens this week. An old school five element lens that I found for a song online. Most modern lenses are loaded with a dozen or more elements that do a fantastic job in correcting many imperfections (chromatic aberrations, vignetting, color fringing, etc.), but these older low element count lens designs seem to render with more character, better color saturation, and contrast. It must be something to do with there being fewer air/glass interfaces the light has to pass through. Fortunately, I'm primarily a landscape shooter so using these older lenses is not a problem for me. It does give me much more respect for the old time wildlife photogs who did there stuff with manual focus lenses back in the day.