Is the Voigtlander Nokton 40mm 1.2 the best manual focus prime lens for Nikon Z?
The compact full-frame Voigtlander Nokton Z 40mm f1.2 Aspherical mirrorless camera lens occupies a specific niché and does it well. It is a precision-crafted, high-fidelity piece of equipment, but is it right for you?
The Voigtlander Nokton 40mm Aspherical f1.2 prime lens is a manual-focus, manual-aperture prime lens for Nikon Z system full-frame cameras. It’s great for travel, street photography, landscape, and documentary photography. Its aperture opens up to a very fast and bright f 1.2.
Most photographers interested in analog, film, or Leica M cameras are familiar with Voigtlander. Formerly an entirely German company, they are the oldest lens maker in the world. The name is now held by a company called Cosina, which is based in Japan where their products are manufactured. They focus on modern-retro lenses and high fidelity modern manual focus lenses. Leica M-mount lenses make up the bulk of their products, branching into Nikon f-mount, Canon DSLR lenses, and some of their m-mount lenses are reconfigured and offered for mirrorless Sony A, and Nikon Z lems mounts.
Spoiler alert: The Voigtlander 40mm 1.2 is a masterpiece. It is one of those rare pieces of gear that makes the world look like a better place than it really is, and is also a joy to operate. However, some aspects might not work for your photography, specifically. I’ll review some of the finer points of this prime lens. There are almost no bad things to say about it, but considering it is a specialty item in today’s market that depends greatly upon your shooting style and what you’re looking for.
EXAMPLE PHOTOS
WHY THe 40mm focal length?
40mm has gained more popularity in recent years, and for good reason. It offers a middle ground between the two most popular prime lenses, 50mm and 35mm. If you take a few steps forward, it does the job of a 50mm. A step back, and it manages to fit where a 35mm lens would.
Having historically been faithful to 50mm, the 40mm works well for me. It keeps me from needing to carry another lens to manage an indoor shot, or to achieve a more pronounced foreground/background dichotomy while shooting scenery and landscapes. That being more than a 50mm lens would provide. Being longer than 35mm, it is also a bit more appropriate for portrait and excels at environmental portraiture as a 35mm lens does.
You get the picture by splitting the difference.
test method
You certainly won’t see test targets, comparisons of “corner sharpness at every aperture,” or much hard science in this review. I’ll touch on a few technical aspects with some examples, but this review is more about capturing a broad range of images in the real world. That’s where this lens excels.
Also, I don’t shoot video. This is a still photographer’s review.
workflow
Nikon Z6 > Adobe Lightroom is my most straightforward and most frequent process. (CC or Classic – iPad or Macbook Pro – sync’d)
For what I shoot with a lens like this (General photography), I most often apply a film simulation with an Adobe Lightroom profile + Basic Adjustments.
For black-and-white, I use my own custom in-camera Nikon Picture Control presets modeled after TMAX and Tri-X films and make basic adjustments in Lightroom.
The images in this article are shown @2000 pixels on the long edge.
I record both RAW and JPEG files in-camera, and lately, I’ve been relying more and more on the Nikon Z system’s in-camera RAW processing. It produces superior results over Lightroom for initial processing and saves me some time when applicable. Rarely do I open images in Adobe Photoshop for travel, street, or daily “walkaround” type of photography.
availability
The Voigtlander 40mm 1.2 Aspherical for Nikon Z costs $899 at the time of this review was written.
It can be found at B&H Photo & Video or wherever Voigtlander lenses are sold.
build quality
Build quality is something to love about Voigtlander (Cosina) lenses, and the Nokton 40mm f1.2 is exceptionally well built, as expected. I’m not sure how much of this lens is brass and how much is aluminum, but everything is metal, glass, or more metal, or even more metal… It is solid. The aperture and focus rings are buttery smooth, with a hard anodized finish and grippy knurling, mounting quickly yet snugly to the camera body.
One could criticize the lack of weather sealing, but that isn’t part of the Voigtlander thing. I consider this lens’ build quality to be essentially perfect.
technical specs
| Lens Mount | Nikon Z |
| Focal Length | 40mm (60mm DX) |
| Maximum Aperture | f 1.2 |
| Minimum Aperture | f 22 |
| Optical Construction | 8 elements, 6 groups, aspherical |
| Mount Material | Metal |
| Weather Sealing/Resistance | No |
| Vibration Reduction | No |
| Focus Motor | Manual Focus |
| Controls | Manual Focus, Aperture Ring |
| Close Focus Distance | 30cm |
| Aperture Blades | 10 |
| Filter Size | 58mm |
| Weight | 315g |
| Dimensions | 53.9mm L, 67.7mm diameter |
Complete lens description and specs available here from Voigtlander
EXAMPLE PHOTOS
A trip to the jazz club. I like to shoot at night in the city. This lens excels due it’s high speed and manageable size.
handling & ergonomics
Handling & Controls
All we have are the focus and aperture rings, and they feel exactly right. Ultra smooth turn with just the right amount of resistance, and grippy fine knurling. The aperture ring indents at 1/3 stop increments marked by full stops. I would prefer only full stop indents but 1/3 plays nicely with the camera’s IQ.
The focus ring does have a caveat, but that depends on how you shoot and what you are used to. The direction of the focus ring is true to Nikon, it turns in the opposite direction than most other brands lenses. In my opinion that is the correct way to build a lens specific to a Nikon mount. I have a cabinet full of vintage, legacy Nikon lenses and cameras. They all focus in that direction. The way the lens should. If you are new to Nikon manual focus lenses consider this aspect to mark your initiation.
I FOUND A FLAWS!!!… well, sort of….
FULLY manual aperture. Considering that the 40mm f1.2 is optically identical to the Leica M-mount version, reconfigured to fit the Z-system, the camera cannot leave the diaphragm open for shooting and then close it down briefly for the exposure (like most other lenses do). The f-stop remains where you set it all times, nor can the camera body control the aperture at all. That leaves Automatic (green) and Shutter Speed Priority (S) shooting modes useless. Manual (M) or Aperture Control (A) only.
Conversely the lens is coded and communicates it’s aperture, focus point and profile (for in-body stabilization and advanced metering) to the camera. It also provides manual focus confirmation in the viewfinder and communicates exif data into the file. If you were to adapt the m-mount version to your Z system camera none of that capability would be there. Automatic aperture is the only thing missing.
(…Enter the Voigtlander Nikon f-mount 40mm f2 pancake lens. Another high-fidelity, precision, manual focus 40mm prime lens offered by Voigtlander. Mounted to the Nikon FTZ adapter it is roughly the same size and offers full aperture control through the camera. I wouldn’t say I like that lens nearly as much as the 1.2 though. I have owned it twice, and sold it twice, for little reason other reason than *not feeling the vibe*, and I felt it had too much barrel distortion for a 40mm. But it is a high-quality optic, half the price of the 1.2 reviewed here, and boasting aperture control. Something to think about, especially if you have Nikon SLR’s in your quiver.)
Flaw #2: 58mm, not 52mm filter threads. Every Nikon f-mount lens from the 1960s until sometime during the 90s had 52mm threads. It’s a Nikon thing, just like the opposing focus ring direction. As a Nikon enthusiast, I own 52mm filters and zero 58mm filters. I have a 58-52mm conversion ring on my Voigtlander Nokton 40mm 1.2 Z lens, which works without vignetting issues. It would have been easy enough for Voigtlander to build 52mm threads onto the 40, and considering their attention to the focusing ring direction, it would be an appropriate, Nikon-correct design aspect for this lens.
On camera
On my Nikon Z6, the 40mm 1.2 balances well and feels just right in my hand. It feels like it was designed by Nikon, for Nikon.
Aesthetics
This is a great-looking lens that splits the difference between retro and modern design aesthetics. Most Nikon Z lenses are decidedly modern. They look good on most Z bodies but terribly out-of-place on retro cameras like the Fz and Zf. The Voigtlander looks great on both modern and retro camera bodies.
One thing mystifies me, though. For some reason Voigtlander didn’t include the “Aspherical” red text on the front of the lens as they do on other variants, such as the m-mount version. It’s inconsequential, but lens makers are usually eager to brag about aspherical design, so it seems odd not to include it and something that might leave a buyer wondering.
image quality
Artistic attributes & the subjective
An artistic tool in the finest sense of the word. This lens makes the world look like a better place. If you seek a more organic look than most modern mirrorless lenses offer yet want to maintain exceptional detail and fidelity, look no further.
Sharpness
Outstanding, Zeiss-level sharpness. This is no surprise, considering that Cosina, the company that manufactures their lenses, also manufactures Zeiss lenses.
Chromatic Aberration
Being an aspherical lens, there is none.
Distortion
I haven’t studied the distortion or field curvature, but I’ve never noticed any getting in my way, either. This runs contrary to the Nikon f-mount 40mm f2 from Voigtlander which I moved on from largely due to distortion. I consider the problem 100% solved by the Nokton 40mm 1.2
Close Focus
Excellent at only 11.8″. This is an increase over the m-mount version, which offers only 1.6′
Autofocus
Just to be 100% clear, this is a fully manual focus lens. The action is buttery smooth and ergonomically excellent.
Vignetting
Excellent and perfectly artistic, this lens provides a beautiful vignette at its larger apertures. I consider it a strong point. The vibe and intended market for a Voigtlander manual focus, semi-retro lens fits vignetting.
Flare
This is a high-quality aspherical lens. Flare is not a significant issue.
Speed
It’s hard to find an ultra-fast f1.2 in a lens this small. It’s my favorite for urban night photography or low-light situations. At wider apertures, it provides a short depth of field that looks dreamy, and even more so at closer focus.
EXAMPLE PHOTOS
More monochrome night images! Rest assured that the color from this lens is very rich.
Pros & CONS
- Image Quality
- Build Quality
- Speed
- Size
- Close Focus
- Artistic Intangibles
- Exif data & Focus Conf
- Ergonomics
- Completely Manual Aperture
- Not Weather Sealed
- 58mm Filter Threads (Nikon Incorrect)
- Price $$$
conclusion
You probably wouldn’t be reading this unless you favor manual-focus, artistically minded lenses like Voigtlander builds. If so, I strongly recommend the 40mm f1.2 aspherical. It has become my number one daily lens over the Nikon Z 40mm f2 (Another great 40mm lens I reviewed here that cost 1/3 as much). I miss the autofocus (sometimes) and the lightweight of the 40mm f2, but the image quality, build quality, and overall user experience of the Voigtlander are far superior, and precisely right for me.
There are trade-offs with lenses like this, the price of $899 being one of them; however I consider them well worth it considering all of its exceptional aspects.
Jim Hill
Travel, landscape & urban photographer with a BFA in Photographic Illustration & Process from RIT.
Formerly a product & advertising studio photographer, and a fine-art darkroom printer, I have recently reconnected with the spirit that attracted me to photography to begin with: The moments and scenes I find outside of studios and photo labs while travelling or exploring the Boston and New England area.
I value the art of printing and finishing photos for the wall, just as I do sharing my images and adventures on the screen.
@bnw_by_jim
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