Walking about with the Voigtländer APO-Lanthar 50mm F2 - A review

I usually want as little camera as possible between me and the shot. Auto ISO, subject detect autofocus, twenty frames a second, let the tool disappear. This lens is the opposite of every one of those things. And I love it.

Quick TLDR up front: a fun, optically brilliant lens that's tactile and a joy to use, but it has a steep learning curve and a high price tag if you're coming from modern autofocus systems. Now let's get into it.

I picked up the Voigtländer APO-Lanthar 50mm F2 recently to pair with my ZF. I've been eyeing the Voigtländer manual focus line for a while, and I wanted to really experience it. I had initially set my sights on the 40mm f/1.2, but going down the research rabbit hole I ran into this gem. For those who don't know me well, I used to own a Leica Q3, and I loved it but a lot of things didn't work quite right for me. 28mm being one. The fact that it didn't import color profiles into Lightroom being another. So I sold it to fund my wildlife gear and don't regret that decision. But there was a specific magic to Leica glass that I missed, and I personally think it's down to microcontrast rendering and a specific 3D pop effect. When I saw the Voigtländer had similar characteristics, I changed my mind and went all in.

Quick word on what the APO in the name means, because it actually matters to the look. APO is short for apochromatic, which refers to how a lens corrects chromatic aberration, the colored fringing you sometimes see along high-contrast edges. A standard lens brings two wavelengths of light into focus on the same plane. An APO lens brings three into the same plane. The practical result is cleaner color, crisper contrast at the edges of things, and that microcontrast/pop people talk about when they describe Voigtländer or Leica glass. It's not magic, it's just very careful optical engineering, but the effect is real and it's a big part of what you're paying for.

I'll do my usual thing and tell you up front: this lens is phenomenal. That exact pop and microcontrast I'd been missing from almost every other lens I own except the Plena (Nikon's 135mm f/1.8), well, this has it in spades. At a great walk-about size that looks phenomenal on the ZF. I had the chance to take it to downtown Leesburg.

And to Riverfest in Occoquan to play around with it.

Fair warning, I am not a street photographer. Doing street makes me deeply uncomfortable, and this was amplified on a manual focus lens where it takes more time to set up a shot, even with the wonderful focus assist baked into the ZF. You'll see a couple of moments below where this becomes visible. Sorry in advance.

There was one moment where I shot up at two people on a balcony and one noticed me and yelled hey, I did not get that shot it was blurry and I was uncomfortable, but I will go through the shots I did get while we talk about this exceptional piece of glass.

It's worth mentioning that a true manual focus lens is very different from the focus-by-wire you get on modern AF lenses. I hate that focus-by-wire feeling. This is fully mechanical and I love it. It feels great to use.

The lens is all metal, with a smooth manual focus action that's just a joy to use. And like I mentioned, modern mirrorless gives me focus peaking plus subject detect, so the camera sees the eye, I turn the focus ring, the box around the eye turns green, and I'm in focus. Press the shutter. It's training wheels for manual focus, and I'm all for tech that makes the old ways more approachable. I have little to no desire to move to something like a rangefinder, for example.

The rendering is crisp and controlled. I love the colors and the overall feel. It's the reason I bought this lens and it did not disappoint. There's also something genuinely fun about shooting a manual focus lens. It forces you to be dialed into the exact moment, focused on the camera in a way you usually aren't.

Which brings me back to what I said at the top. The way I usually shoot, I want the camera to vanish. The Voigtländer is the opposite. Knobs to adjust, micro-tweaks to focus, aperture set by hand. The tool is a big part of the workflow, not something I'm trying to forget about. It's slow, it's deliberate, and it makes me present as a photographer in a way the wildlife rig never does. I wouldn't take this thing into a marsh to chase a heron, but for downtown wandering and a slow afternoon, it's a completely different way to enjoy taking pictures.

I did get to point it at nature and landscapes a little, when the opportunity came up.

Where I See This Living in My Kit

Honestly, I'm glad I picked this up. I definitely need more practice with manual focus, and at $1000 I get that it's a hard ask for a lot of people. Manual focus alone limits its usability and the use cases.

I'm not sure how often I'll actually use this as a street lens. Where I see it fitting is as a portrait accompaniment to the Plena. I think those two, with their similar rendering and the 50mm-and-135mm focal pairing, make an ideal little portrait kit. Portraits are so much more controlled and less fast-paced than street, which means I can take my time locking focus and not feel like a creep. I messed around with this a little at my local camera shop, but I'd rather not share portraits without permission, so instead here's a picture someone there took of me with the lens.

Yeah I definitely see it as an accompanying portrait lens.

The TLDR is a fun optically brilliant lens thats tactile and a joy to use, but has a steep learning curve and a high price tag if you're coming from modern systems and autofocus.

To close out, a few more from my time with it so far.