Voigtlander Apo Lanthar 50 mm f/2 Aspherical review - Summary

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Voigtlander Apo Lanthar 50 mm f/2 Aspherical

15 July 2021

Maciej Latałło

11. Summary

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Pros:

very solid, metal casing,
sensational image quality in the frame centre,
excellent image quality on the edge of the APS-C sensor,
very good image quality on the edge of full frame,
negligible longitudinal chromatic aberration,
slight lateral chromatic aberration,
lack of problems with spherical aberration,
practically zero distortion,
excellent coma correction,
very low astigmatism,
original appearance of circles in blurry areas,
decent performance against bright light.

Cons:

too high vignetting on full frame.

The Voigtlander Apo Lanthar 35 mm f/2 Aspherical, tested by us not so long ago, was an outstanding lens. At that time it was difficult to imagine a better performance. Its 50 mm brother, though, showed clearly that it is completely possible to fare even better – it managed to achieve an excellent or outstanding result practically in every testing category, apart from vignetting.

Even the Voigtlander's Apo Lanthar 2/50 high price tag, amounting to about $1050, is not able to change our favourable assessment of this lens; in this case we feel such a high quality is worth paying for. When a lens comes with a long list of assets and is practically devoid of flaws we always grant it our 'Editors' Choice' badge. We feel the Voigtlander fully deserves it.