£649/$699 www.voigtlaender.de
The Voigtländer D23mm f/1.2 Nokton Z adds extra nostalgia and some rich heritage to the Nikon Z fc and other Z DX system cameras he Voigtländer D23mm f/1.2 Nokton Z Aspherical is steeped in history.
Voigtländer started making lenses all the way back in 1840, more than 180 years ago. The D23mm builds on a pioneering spirit and great attention to detail, being a thoroughly modern lens with real retro charm. Factoring the 1.5x crop factor of Nikon Z DX (APS-C format) camera bodies into the equation, the lens has the same field of view as using a 35mm lens on a full-frame camera. This ‘effective’ focal length is widely favoured by street photographers, who pride themselves on capturing definitive moments. Indeed, manual focusing is the convention for this type of photography,so you can set the focus distance in advance and shoot from the hip, so to speak. We’ll come back to that later.
Nikon recently launched its first Z DX format prime lens, in the diminutive and very affordable shape of the Z DX 24mm f/1.7. Another cut-price contender is the excellent Viltrox AF 23mm f/1.4 Z. Both of these lenses are autofocus lenses, although the Viltrox adds an aperture control ring and has an all-metal rather than all-plastic build. The Voigtländer beats them both for aperture speed and has definite handling benefits if manual focusing is your thing.
Key features
Although it’s a manual focus lens, it’s not a fully manual ‘dumb lens’. It has electronics for data communication with the camera body. Even so, unlike most electronically equipped lenses with a manual aperture ring, you can’t control the aperture from the camera body when the ring is set to its narrowest setting (f/16 in this case). You can therefore only effectively shoot in aperture-priority and manual modes, but not in Program AE or shutter-priority shooting modes.
At the time of writing this review, there were no foreseeable Z DX cameras on the horizon with in-body image stabilization. However, electronic coupling lets you shoot on a Z FX (full-frame) body in DX crop mode and take advantage of 3-axis IBIS without the need to dial in ‘non-CPU lens data’.
Typically for Voigtländer lenses, the D23mm looks something of a retro item but the optical design is bang up to date. There are 10 optical elements, featuring a complex double-sided aspherical element and two ‘abnormal partial-dispersion’ glass elements to minimize chromatic aberration.
Sharpness
