Voigtlander Ultron 40mm f/2 SL-II S Aspherical Lens for Nikon, Black Rim

I love the solid "built-for-a-lifetime" construction and smooth, perfectly damped manual focus of my old Nikkor AI-S lenses. However, those lenses are little soft for high-resolution sensors and not optimal when used on a modern DSLR. This Voigtlander lens basically puts modern, high-performance optics in a tried-and-true package--and includes a chip so you can use auto-exposure.I personally find 40mm to be an ideal "normal" length--50mm is often too restrictive for me. This lens is quite compact--not a true "pancake" like the previous version but I appreciate a little extra room to grip the focus ring without getting my fingers in the shot. Also, this lens focuses very close without needing an adapter--it has allowed me to get some nice close-ups of bugs and frogs without needing to carry a macro lens.Optics: Sharp corner-to-corner. Wide open there is a little vignetting that can easily be removed in Lightroom, but little to no distortion to my eye.Ergonomics: Feels great! The long focus throw from 0.25m to infinity makes focusing a little slow, but very precise. Works great on my Nikon FM2n--my trusty old 50mm 1.4 AI-S might not get much use anymore! Works well on my Nikon D750 as well, but with a couple quibbles: 1) the aperture ring has to be set at f22 (aperture is controlled on the dials on the camera body), and it is easy to accidentally bump it out of that position. All it needs is a locking switch like the old Nikkor AF-D lenses. 2) my D750 (and most DSLRS) are not really optimized for manual focus (unless you physically switch the focusing screen). The "green dot" focus indicator of my my D750 is not precise enough for shooting at wide apertures--but that's a quibble with Nikon, not the excellent Voigtlander lens!Overall a great value and an almost perfect lens!

This thing is beautifully built.Focus ring is buttery smooth.Just understand what you are purchasing.This is a MANUAL FOCUS LENS!That is not a secret. If you can't manually focus or just don't want to, then don't buy this lens.So irritating when someone gives this lens a poor star rating because it's manual focus. Nobody lied and said it wasnt!That's like buying a stick shift car and complaining the car isnt automatic. Or Not getting the premium sound system and complainig that it didnt come with the premium sound system!This lens takes beautiful images. The colors! Gorgeous. Super easy to focus. And if you arent good at manual focus, use focus indicator. Works fine.Tested on D800, D750, D600, D7100, D7000, D5300, D3200, F3t and F3.

I thought this was going to be more pancake than it really is. It’s the first and maybe only lens I’ll buy for this slr as a walk around. Focusing with this is easy/buttery and every image on my roll came out perfectly focused which feels rare for my manual and film cameras. The focal length and quality is best for up close portraits - like chest up. Beautiful for that intimacy. Other scenes are sharp but maybe not as interesting. My next lens would be to find something a bit wider for more interesting viewpoint in other situations. I did buy an adaptor to use it on my fuji xpro2 but I couldn’t figure out how to make that work - it’s a setting I’m sure that’s holding me up. I’m sure that’ll result in gorgrous images.

I have preference for Carl Zeiss lenses for digital and film photography. This Voigtlander 40mm is superb. Sharp, even wide open. Sharper still stopped down. Great micro contrast, reminiscent of the way Zeiss lenses render subjects. Superb optics, superb build quality, and significantly less expensive than Zeiss or Leica counterparts. If you regret buying this lens, your probably don't know what you are doing anyway. Just buy it.

Very tight fit to camera, not a good feeling. Significant focus shift. Not the usual Voigtlander performance. Returned.

I got this lens because of its size. We're going on a trip, and I don't want to lug around larger lenses. This lens would be perfect for backpacking. Really pleased with its performance - it renders colors quite well, nice contrast, and it seems to be sharp all over the image. 40 mm is a wide angle lens, right? This produces a slight bowing of walls in a small room, but you have to look for it. Consider this is a "wide normal" lens - on the wide side of normal. There is slight vignetting at f2 (and I like that look) - it's gone by f2.8. The focusing is smooth. This is a high quality little lens, and I feel like sharing it with the world. Really pleased.

Voigtlander did a good job which Nikon no longer does. The material and build are excellent. It feels very nice mounted on D610, F2, or FM. The digital images looked good.