Is the Heliar 50mm 3.5 over hyped?

Bringing an old thread back to life. I've had the S-mount version of the Voigtlander 50mm f3.5 Heliar for a couple of months now and really like it. Don't know about the hype, but the lens is super sharp wide open (on digital and film) and I love the OOF rendering. It's very light, aperture movement feels perfectly damped, and just works really well. Interesting thing I noticed when looking at images of the VM version, I thought both lenses were identical, with just the M mount and helical added to the VM version, but then I noticed the aperture ring turns the opposite direction on the VM version compared to the S-mount version, so I guess they might have entirely different internal construction.

Here's my S-mount version attached to my Z6.

Z6w50Heliar.jpg


Best,
-Tim
 
Using an Amedeo adapter, I put my Voigtlander 50mm f3.5 Heliar on an M-9 Monochrom to see just how sharp it was wide open on the Leica. Below are the results, both shot wide open. The first was shot with focus at minimum (about 1 meter):

Voigt50-3.5a.jpg


This is 100% zoom crop, straight out of the camera with no sharpening:

Voigt50-3.5b.jpg


The second was shot with focus near infinity, again wide open:

Voigt50-3.5c.jpg


And again, this is 100% zoom crop, straight out of the camera with no sharpening:

Voigt50-3.5d.jpg


It's a pretty sharp lens, even wide open.

Best,
-Tim
 
I think it’s a very nice lens but wide open at 3.5 is considered stopped
down for most other 50mm lenses. By that I mean the vast majority of 50mm lenses are sharp when stopped down to 3.5/4 and beyond.
 
I think the Voigtlander 50mm f3.5 Heliar Vintage Line VM lens is a pretty damn good lens; I sure like it! Here are some shots I took today with mine.

Voigtlander 50mm f3.5 Heliar Vintage Line VM lens, Sony A7III
Yokohama, Japan - April 2018

DSC00482.JPG


DSC00527.JPG


DSC00568.JPG


DSC00522.JPG


Mike
 
Dunno whether the lens is overhyped. I have two -- the conehead for Nikon and the nickel plated for Leica. The trick is that most of the milliondy-billion 50's out there perform superbly by f:3.5. By that point, most common aberrations have begun to moderate due to stopping down, depth of focus is covering small errors in focus, or issues related to focus-shift. I thought it was ballsy to produce the lens, given those facts. My 3.5 Heliar is just about the equal of Nikon 1.4 Millennium and a 50 1.4 Apo stopped down to about the same aperture. But I rarely choose either Heliar for a day out, because the 1.4's give me superb quality at f:3.5 and several extra stops if I want them. But it is good that it's out there if folks want them.
 
Here are three pix taken on an older Olympus Pen with adapters. The first is a backlit scene of a coffee cup taken with a 50 Sumilux Apsh wide open. The second is a detail from that scene. The third is the same detail with the Heliar wide open.

Full scene:

Lux-full%20scene.jpg


Lux detail @1.4

Lux%201-4.jpg


Heliar detail @3.5

Heliar%203-5.jpg


What this shows is that for my samples of these lenses, the Heliar is almost as sharp, and controls flare almost as well as the Lux, when both lenses are wide open. Pretty impressive given the disparity in price between the two. But owning both, there is no reason not to choose the Lux for a day out on the town.
 
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