Voigtlander Nokton 35 mm f/1.2 X / Z review - Coma, astigmatism and bokeh

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Voigtlander Nokton 35 mm f/1.2 X / Z

7 November 2022

Maciej Latałło

7. Coma, astigmatism and bokeh

Sad but true – in case of such a small, fast, and not especially complex lens one part of optical aberration has to be left uncorrected. The producers took proper care of the correction of two types of chromatic aberration, they fought distortion a bit, but when it comes to coma they gave up. As a result its level is really huge.

If you want to be precise you have to add that in this case coma doesn't influence images of a diode from the frame corners as much as an aberration of higher degree called the sagittal component of diagonal spherical aberration. It contributes to such long 'wings' as you can admire in images we show below.

X-T2, f/1.2, center	X-T2, f/1.2, Corner

X-T2, f/1.8, center	X-T2, f/1.8, Corner

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Astigmatism, understood as an average difference between horizontal and vertical MTF50 function values, amounted to 12.8% and it's a value on a borderline between medium and high level. It should be also mentioned that the area closest to the maximum relative aperture contributes the most to that result. From f/2.0 upwards astigmatism amounts to practically zero. Defocused circles of light look very well. Light spread inside them is very even, without any local extremes or onion ring bokeh. If you look closely you can notice that the centre of the circle is a bit brighter but it doesn't influence the quality of blur in a negative way. With such a small lens we are not surprised by the influence of mechanical vignetting – it is present even after stopping down the aperture by 2 EV.