Voigtlander Heliar Ultra Wide 15mm f/4.5

I have a trip to Iceland coming up in a few weeks, and intend to come back with at least one giant landscape shot, which you usually want a wider angle lens for.  I do have a 28mm f/1.9 Voigtlander Ultron that you could call "pretty wide", but what if I were to go wider?

You may have noticed that my recent color stuff has been very blue in the shadows.  I think my developer is going off.

So, I got the Voigtlander Heliar 15mm f/4.5.  Yeah, max aperture of f/4.5 is kinda considered slow, but if it were any faster, a lens this wide would have to be much, much bigger, heavier, and more expensive (okay, comparing Zeiss and Voigtlander is like comparing apples and porterhouse steak, but this is just what's on the market).

Anyway, the Heliar comes with an external viewfinder because there's no rangefinder with an internal viewfinder that would ever cover 15mm.

I was super excited to put it to use.  Wide angle means exaggerated perspective lines, wild distortion (not of the barrel/pincushion sort), tons of context, and being able to photograph the entire Flatiron building from across the street...

...and then I quickly realized how tough this thing is to use.  I took it out to the High Line and the Flatiron district for a test run.

On the M3 with no TTL meter, I encountered my first hurdle: exposure.  There is just so much stuff in the frame that you have that many more things to consider exposing for.  Background or foreground?  Land or sky?

These are normal decisions to have to make with any focal length, but if you were to stand in the middle of a city block and point it across the street, you can fit the entire block in the frame, and all of its different lighting situations.  It didn't help that I was shooting Kodak Ektar, which is very contrasty.

Another problem: my finger.

There were two shots where my left index finger was in the frame.  The lens is just so short and wide that if you're fiddling with the focus when you take the picture, it'll catch it in frame.  

Luckily, the lens is so wide that the depth of field is enormous, even at f/4.5.  After a while I learned to just focus it to 10 feet and leave it alone.  Everything from background to foreground would be in focus.

Size comaprison.  Left to right: Voigtlander Heliar 15mm, Voigtlander Ultron 28mm, Leica M3 body

Lastly with the ultra wide angle: blocking out the noise.  There are so many people in the city and so much text and advertisement all over the place that sometimes it's hard to get the point across of what you're taking a picture of.  Unless you're right up in your subject's face (in the Flatiron building pic, I was about 8 feet away from the guy and still got him all the way in frame), or you set up a lot of stuff to frame it in, it will certainly get lost.  

So, this lens has got me kind of scared.  I've shot lenses as wide as 23mm, but I had no idea what I was in for with this.  The field of view feels really unnatural.  

Normally I'm able to imagine framelines before I bring the camera to my eye, but it's pretty much impossible with this lens because for the most part it would be wider than anyone's eye can see, so I have to take time swiveling my eyes around to look at the hundred things I'm about to take a picture of and figure out how to arrange them into a photograph.

I expect things to be much better when we get to Iceland where there are no skyscrapers creating awkward lighting situations.  It is difficult to use this lens in the city, but that's not to say it will just bad photos in the city.  

On the contrary, if you can find those rare opportunities in the city where you can really bring the wide angle under control, you will end up with rare photos.