Initially, I had wanted to write an impressions piece on my foray back into Leicadom, albeit with a CCD based Leica M9P and a comparison between some ancient style ‘GLOW in M-mount 35mm F1.4s at F1.4…well since you are paying for the aperture, may as well use it. I had tried out an assortment of lenses in this class, from the brass titanium German version to the standard black ‘version 2’ from Canada and Germany, as well as the original MS-Optical Apoqualia and their later F1.3 (which I have in clear lacquered brass), to the 2 or some say 4 Voigtlander copies….and my conclusions are :
a) that I regret somewhat passing over the V1 Apoqualia, not that its imagery waxes so much more poetic than the F1.3, but rather it is less fiddly to use,
b) I cannot tell much difference between the version 1 and 2 Voigtlanders, either MC or SC and
c) the Leica pre-asph are similar no matter where or when they were made, but the brass Titanium version sure feels hefty!
In the end, I found a used VM v2 MC with an original hood and bought it as my day to day lens. On an 18MP CCD and using rangefinder focusing, it makes even less of a difference in terms of narcissistic minutiae, and the overall look is undifferentiable between the VMs and Leicas, and to me not enough to justify the price level jump.
I personally found little difference to make the jump to the original Leicas, although someday the Leicalust bug will bite hard and I will just have to scratch that itch…
Enough has been written elsewhere of the GLOW and with some swirly bokeh if used right, so I will leave you with some recent photos taken with my VM 35mm F1.4 MC v2.
Model – HZ
Leica M9P, Voigtlander MC v2 35mm F1.4
