Voigtlander 23mm f/1.2 Nokton X Initial Impressions

This weekend was spent camping and for the majority of the time, I had the new Voigtlander 23mm f/1.2 Nokton mounted to my X-Pro3.  I picked up a like-new used copy of this lens from CameraQuest (spoke with owner, who was knowledgeable and shipped super fast) and since I unboxed it, hasn’t left my camera.  This is the 2nd lens from Voigtlander that has full electronic communication with certain Fuji cameras which greatly helps in its use.  With an X-Pro3, that means that as you change focus, the framelines in the OVF move to correct for parallax and aperture value is displayed.

The lens was recently released and has been getting some mixed reviews, like it’s 35mm sibling.  Some are finding that it has flare and field curvature issues and some are either not noticing or not caring too much about it.  I tend to be in the latter camp in that from what I’ve seen so far, it’s a wonderfully fun lens to use and the images have an interesting look to them.  It is not perfection, as some of Fuji’s newer glass, but something different.  From here on out, all images below are shot with the Voigtlander 23mm f/1.2 lens on a Fuji X-Pro3 body.  I added a 7Artisans focus tab to the lens to complete the look and help with focusing.  I feel this lens should have come with a focus tab as standard.

The build quality feels superb.  Focusing is smooth, the aperture has very defined click stops in 1/3 increments and the overall heft is just right on an X-Pro body.  It’s nothing but metal and glass.  If you have every held a Voigtlander before, you know what you are getting.

The primary reason to buy this lens is to enjoy the process of having a having a manual focus and aperture lens that is very compact and very bright.  I am different than most in that my daily driver is a car with a manual transmission and I love lever action rifles.  There is no doubt that an automatic is faster; whether it be an autofocus lens, auto-transmission or a semi-automatic rifle, but the same enjoyment isn’t had.  With this lens, you get the shot, not the camera.

I spent the entire weekend camping with my family and only used manual focus glass.  Rarely did I have the urge to put a different lens that would do the work for me.  Those stayed in the camper in the backup camera bag.  This lens is compact, very bright and a joy to use.  The image quality isn’t perfect, but I can’t say that bothers me much.  I mostly shot with this using the optical viewfinder on the X-Pro3 in ERF mode that shows a tiny portion of the LCD in the lower right corner.  I set this up to show a magnified focus area with focus peaking.  This made it fairly easy to frame the shot with the OVF’s framelines and then quickly get focus using the corner magnified view.  Using this pair really made me understand the X-Pro3 designers intentions in the ERF design.

Is the Voigtlander 23mm f/1.2 Nokton X a perfect lens?  Absolutely not.  While I think the MSRP is rather high given some of the optical characteristics of the lens, I was lucky to find a mint used copy for over 20% off.  At this price, with the electronic communication with recent Fuji camera’s, I think it’s a great lens.  If you are looking for perfection and want a lens to shoot resolution charts, get something else.  If you want to slow down and experience photography as it used to be and want something with a different style of rendering, this lens could be right up your alley.