It is 60mm long and, due to its odd flared shape, is 64mm wide at the end of the barrel. This is a solid mass of a lens, weighing in at 335g. At f/1.9 it's also the fastest 28mm lens ever made, sharing that honour with the Voigtlander Ultron. Today I ventured out with one of the very special models from that list, the only one to bear the 'Vivitar Series 1' name. But this is not to say that I don't still shoot with these lenses. Stopped down performance is very good and indistinguishable from benchmark lenses most of the time.It's been a while since I've posted anything relating to the Great Vivitar 28mm Bestiary, mostly because I view the work of compiling those lens variants to be complete.Some might even prefer the character to more highly corrected alternatives. The gentler rendering can look quite appealing.Plays well with more cameras than most of its peers.The add on focusing lever gives flexibility in how to focus depending on your preferences. Excellent build quality and pretty styling.The wide angle of view and large maximum aperture makes for a lens that can be used under almost any conditions and circumstance.Voigtlander 28mm 1.9 Fps Pros Voigtlander 28mm 1.9 1.4 It’s nice that the hood is included but its design is less than optimal in several ways, making it pretty close to useless in practice.There’s noticeable and distracting blockage of the framing area in the viewfinder of most M-mount cameras.Susceptibility to flare, spherical aberration and slight focus shift just to name a few. Low level of correction of several of the common aberrations.

At wider aperture in particular performance isn’t up to the standards of benchmarks in the class. Overall rendering lacks a bit of zest with low contrast and muted color palette.

It’s a little on the slow side though and here the Ultron certainly has an edge.

It’s also very compact and light and would probably make a very good fit on an LTM camera. There are a few versions with different ergonomic features, most looking slightly better than on the Ultron. Still the prices are reasonable and it looks like a pleasant performer overall. It’s not exactly rare but not super common either. I’ve been keeping an eye out for this little LTM lens for a while now.