Man, that M10-R BP with the classic heliar look so good together
Fred Miranda wrote:
I’ve compared the Voigtlander 50mm f/1.5 Heliar, a very popular lens in Japan, to the Leica 50mm f/1.5 Summarit. While their rendering is quite similar, each lens has its own unique characteristics. The Summarit’s resolution, contrast and draw are almost identical to the 50/1.4 Summilux version 1, though the Summilux has better flare resistance. The Voigtlander 50mm f/1.5 Heliar’s rendering seems to fall somewhere between Summilux versions 1 and 2, with improved flare performance over both Leica versions, despite being single-coated. The big advantage for the Voigtlander is the close-focus feature (0.5m).
I’ll post some side-by-side comparisons of the Summarit and Heliar here in the thread.
The Voigtlander 50mm f/1.5 Heliar is a great match for the M10-R Black Paint. Cosina designed it with weight in mind, using brass for some external parts and giving it a glossy black finish. I believe both the focusing and aperture rings are made from brass as well....Show more →
Thanks for the excellent pictures, Sonnar!
Makes me want this lens to be paired with steel rims rendering. Maybe I wait till the LLL Z21 is out and see it’s rendering.
But this classic heliar has painterly film look to it, but yeah like most people were saying, wish it was a tad sharper in focus areas.
Having Golden Week holidays in Tokyo now and I decided to take my Heliar classic 50/1.5 out for a long walk with my A7CII & LM-EA9 "MK2". This lens worked really nicely with the AF adapter, among the very best I've seen in terms of AF performance. AF was possible on rather large area, fast and reliable. The newly supported AI Auto Subject recognition is also very pleasant to use with this setup.
Juha Kannisto wrote:
Having Golden Week holidays in Tokyo now and I decided to take my Heliar classic 50/1.5 out for a long walk with my A7CII & LM-EA9 "MK2". This lens worked really nicely with the AF adapter, among the very best I've seen in terms of AF performance. AF was possible on rather large area, fast and reliable. The newly supported AI Auto Subject recognition is also very pleasant to use with this setup.
Everything was shot either at wide open f1.5 or at f5.6. At f5.6 I often focused on outer midframe to get best corner-to-corner results.
Thanks for sharing, Juha.
The CV 50mm f/1.5 Heliar is unique in that it offers excellent performance at close distances with a painterly rendering. At mid and long distances, SA seems to increase, which is the opposite of what you see in most character lenses.
One great thing about the EA9 adapter is that it allows for autofocusing much closer than the lens's native MFD, while still delivering impressive image quality.
In comparison, vintage lenses like the Leica 50mm f/1.5 Summarit tend to perform worse at close distances due to higher levels of aberration.
I think it's an underrated lens. Anyone looking for the older Leica 50mm f/1.4 Summilux pre-asph versions, especially version 1 or 2 (or even the Summarit), should definitely consider this one.
