Voigtlander APO-LANTHAR 50mm F3.5 VM -- Photos

[Yokosuka Mike]

Fun with the 50mm f3.5 APO-Lanthar VM lens

Sony A7III camera
Voigtländer 50mm f3.5 APO-Lanthar (Type I aluminum) VM lens
Yokohama, Japan
July 2025​

 

[Yokosuka Mike]

Fun with the 50mm f3.5 APO-Lanthar VM lens
*Note: this is not the same image I posted in the W/NW Trees thread

Sony A7III camera
Voigtländer 50mm f3.5 APO-Lanthar (Type I aluminum) VM lens
Yokohama, Japan
July 2025​

 

[dkreindler]

I am debating between this lens and the 3.5 Heliar. I shoot B&W film and make darkroom prints if it's a really great image. What would I gain/lose with the Heliar over this?

 

[Archiver]

I am debating between this lens and the 3.5 Heliar. I shoot B&W film and make darkroom prints if it's a really great image. What would I gain/lose with the Heliar over this?

The Heliar seems to have a more rounded 'organic' rendering compared with the APO Lanthar, which has a very crisp, almost clinical look. See if you can compare Heliar images with APO Lanthar images to see any differences in rendering/look.

 

[Rob-F]

View attachment 4853400
Spherical. Just a mistype, unless @Yokosuka Mike is hiding something special that we don’t know about.

Actually, I've noticed there is such a thing as a 50mm aspherical APO-Lanthar. But it's an f/2, though, so seemingly a different breed of lens altogether. I wonder how that one stacks up. Might the slower version be better corrected than the f/2 version, just because it's so much harder to correct a lens that is nearly two stops faster, whether aspherical or not?