[finaldesignrb]

I think he meant the voigtlander nokton 40 f/1.4...but it can do a heck of a lot more in

terms of usability{than a 45mm f2.8 lens}.

Heck of a lot more? Maybe for some people.



Many others of us find no use for f1.4 lenses, even in APS-C, because of the shallow depth-of-field.

For example can't remember selling any photos with very little depth of field, most people tend to want

their paid photographer to produce photos with lots of detail and clarity. Have been paid for very few

photos in my life that were taken at less than f5.6 or f8. Now before electronic viewfinders, it was

nice to have fast lenses for easy viewing/focusing, but those days are long gone now that EVIL has

spread across the land.



However thanks for the tip, hey the Voigtlander 40mm f2 seems particularly interesting and the Photozone tests

are indeed superb, and happily there's one on eBay for $150.

Plus anyone wanting the cleanest image wanting to go for an APS-C is a bit beyond me.

Hey old-timer, have you looked at the latest APS-C hardware? Full frame 35mm is starting to feel about

as practical as my old 4x5 view camera, and Mamiya 645 medium-format iron.

[url="http://www.flickr.com/photos/finaldesign/5078361256/lightbox/"]APS-C-SonyNex-demoPhotoISO800[/url]



Hmm, what if all you want is a very clean image for enlargements up to a likely maximum size,

such as 8x10 inches (20x30cm)--rather than the abstract Platonic ideal of "the cleanest" image?

Not much meaning to talk about "the cleanest image" without more specifics, because on their own

such statements can be equally read to imply that really high-quality photographs demand the use of

11x14 inch view cameras.



I for example see little point in providing clients with more than 150 dots per inch resolution in

their final color prints, which rarely exceed 8x10 inches even for magazine ads.



And the Nex APS-C 3000x4500 pixel sensor at ISO 800 already has way more quality

than my clients will ever notice in their final prints. Even with the none-too-spectacular kit

zoom lens used in my demo photos, that Klaus has so clearly described in terms of adequacy for many tasks.

While the flange distances for the SLR mounts are long (e.g. ~42-55mm), the rangefinder mounts have much closer ones. E.g. Leica M mount is 27.80mm, which is a much thinner adapter than what you'd need for a Nikon F, relative to the thickness of the Nex body too.

Sounds like you are reaching to make the superb, inexpensive Nikon 45mm lens that is only 17 mm long

look big and unwieldy. Yes, I suppose the adapter is "much thinner" for Leica M mounts on the Nex

than the Nikon adapter. But then, the Nikon f2.8 pancake at the top of this discussion is perhaps

in your words "much thinner" than the Voigtlander...with a final height of about 43mm for adapter

plus Nikon pancake lens.



Not sure why we would encourage people to ignore the sweet, small, plentifully available Nikon pancake

medium portrait lenses (67mm full frame equivalent), just because we can find some (for many people

pointlessly) faster, shorter focal length Voigtlanders that cost a lot more and are in the end no smaller.



Anyway, the point of this thread is to find out if the cheap GN Nikkor 45 2.8's are optically equivalent

to the somewhat harder to find Ai-P Nikkors that tested out so well at Photozone. You seem pretty anxious

to want to suppress the question, but the tone of dry written forums is hard to divine, and I am sure

that if we were all standing around talking to each other in person we would not be quite so

argumentative. (But in that circle of friends you would not remain standing the longest, weighed down

as it were with your old-timey 4x5 press camera/Pentax 6x7/35mm full frame armor/whatever.)