MF Lenses Mania: Voigtländer Color-Ultron 50/1.8

A few months ago, an sudden LBA crisis leaded to the buy of a nice Voigtländer Color-Ultron 50 f/1.8, with an M42 mount.




Despite its name, this sample comes from Singapore, according to the copyright on the mount.

Up to now, i haven't been unable to get some spare time for taking sample pictures but, yesterday i decided it was time to go ...

Taking advantage of the sunny day, i brought this lens (and others, too, but this will be the subject of later posts) to one of my preferred shooting locations, the Jardin des Plantes in Toulouse.

Here a sample picture at f/4:




Here another one at f/2.8:




For the aficionados, these pictures are straight from the raw files, processed by Silkypix only to adjust the exposure and lowering the contrast, read below why. As usual no Photoshopping (or the like) here ...

My impressions:

• This lens is really compact (as all the 50/1.8 around) and easy to handle. Nevertheless, it focuses and stops down in the opposite way wrt the classic Pentax lenses (i.e., you turn left to both reach the infinity and stop down the diaphragm).
• The excellent contrast (a bit excessive, sometimes) makes focusing really easy.
• The lens is a bit soft when used wide open (samples on my Flickr photostream), but it becomes razor sharp starting at f/2.
• Only issue found up to now: the lens being an auto-only one, an adapter with an inner flange is required (i don't like too much stop-down pin surgeries). I don't know if this is an issue of my sample, but i found that the pin shall be fully pressed to reach f/16. This doesn't happen with the adapter ring of my Pentax K10D, thus i have been able to stop down only up to f/5.6 (but i'm planning more tests with my 5D Mark II).

If you want to see more sample pictures at full resolution, the (growing) set is available on my Flickr photostream clicking here ...

Coming back soon with new samples with other lenses ...