p.5 #1 · Cosina Voigtländer APO-Lanthar 90/4 VM officially announced for August release
Michael Gordon wrote:
Curiously if one place 25 mm extension of the lens that should lead to a mag of almost exactly 0.56 as well. That is what I do. The lens seems to behave nicely with extension. I do not recall that the diopter was achromatic and I think it was not. Anyone know for sure? Diopters are extremely convenient but not a fan of non achromatic ones.
I don't like the 90 as much as the CV 180/4 but I still like it. I would be interested in an updated 180 mm.
I haven't seen or used the Voigtlander-supplied close-up lens, but I have tested two different achromatic close-up lenses with the 90/3.5: the Kenko AC4 with +4 diopters and the NiSi NC with +5 diopters (official specs in each case). They both work well with the 90/3.5, which is a bit unusual because both of these have a tendency to cause severe linear distortion with other lenses-- one of the reasons that I typically prefer to use extension. The unusually good performance of the 90/3.5 with diopters may explain why Cosina felt that a close-up lens would pair well with this lens.
Note that these diopters cause the effective focal length to shrink, which is important to keep in mind when setting up the IBIS on the camera. The "naked" lens has a measured focal length of 88mm at infinity and 89mm at the minimum focus distance (which is a bit atypical; usually the gap is larger, and it is often in the other direction). The two close-up lenses I mentioned lower the effective focal length at maximum magnification to 67mm and 64mm respectively, while raising magnification to .704x and .791x. While the 90/3.5 works reasonably well with this setup I have better macro lenses, so I tend not to use it.
p.5 #2 · Cosina Voigtländer APO-Lanthar 90/4 VM officially announced for August release
I too am interested in how this compares to the 90/2 APO Ultron. I am looking for an additional lens for my travel kit. I know the size difference but the 90/2 is still small compared to the xf90/2 from Fuji .
p.5 #3 · Cosina Voigtländer APO-Lanthar 90/4 VM officially announced for August release
dan98 wrote:
I haven't seen or used the Voigtlander-supplied close-up lens, but I have tested two different achromatic close-up lenses with the 90/3.5: the Kenko AC4 with +4 diopters and the NiSi NC with +5 diopters (official specs in each case). They both work well with the 90/3.5, which is a bit unusual because both of these have a tendency to cause severe linear distortion with other lenses-- one of the reasons that I typically prefer to use extension. The unusually good performance of the 90/3.5 with diopters may explain why Cosina felt that a close-up lens would pair well with this lens.
Note that these diopters cause the effective focal length to shrink, which is important to keep in mind when setting up the IBIS on the camera. The "naked" lens has a measured focal length of 88mm at infinity and 89mm at the minimum focus distance (which is a bit atypical; usually the gap is larger, and it is often in the other direction). The two close-up lenses I mentioned lower the effective focal length at maximum magnification to 67mm and 64mm respectively, while raising magnification to .704x and .791x. While the 90/3.5 works reasonably well with this setup I have better macro lenses, so I tend not to use it. ...Show more →
Doing a bit of digging, it seems the CV CU diopter is +3 single element lens but closely matched to the optics. I bet a good achromatic 2 element version of the same strength may do as well. The 25 mm extension may result in more field curvature but that doesn't usually matter much for macro. I initially poo-pooed CU diopters but found well matched ones can be great and super convenient. Good point about the IBIS setting and very weird about the lack of FL shortening for close focus--nice feature to retain working distance.
p.5 #4 · Cosina Voigtländer APO-Lanthar 90/4 VM officially announced for August release
Catching up with the conversation, I think the less than stellar MTFs could be the result of them balancing the performance over a relatively long focus throw. It may only be a bit above average at infinity, but maintaining that performance throughout the throw would make it a standout for the focal length, particularly for the size and weight.
As for diopter use, I never push it past +3 (typically the Kenko No. 3). If I can't get it with that, then it's time to look to a dedicated macro.
Jul 30, 2026 at 02:20 AM
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p.5 #5 · Cosina Voigtländer APO-Lanthar 90/4 VM officially announced for August release
freaklikeme wrote:
Catching up with the conversation, I think the less than stellar MTFs could be the result of them balancing the performance over a relatively long focus throw. It may only be a bit above average at infinity, but maintaining that performance throughout the throw would make it a standout for the focal length, particularly for the size and weight.
As for diopter use, I never push it past +3 (typically the Kenko No. 3). If I can't get it with that, then it's time to look to a dedicated macro.
Brad I think that is a really good point. Those who are complaining about the MTF might do well to compare it to the 65 f/2 Macro and the 110 f/2.5 macro and of course it sits between those two in focal length. Comparing it to the 65 macro we have both lenses reported at f/4. Here are the numbers in percent contrast at 30 lp/mm and 40 lp/mm in the center, 15mm from the center and 20mm from the center I give both the average of sagittal and tangential and the astigmatism (the difference between sagittal and tangential reported in parentheses).
What do we see here? Despite the 65 being two stops down and. the 90 being wide open performance we get remarkably similar performance. Yeah the 90 beats the 65 in the center a little and the 65 beats the 90 a little at 15mm, but 20mm to e ia about a wash with the 65 having slightly higher contrast, but the 90 having a lot less astigmatism.
Now let's compare the 90 to the 110 where we have charts for both at f/5.6
In this comparison we again see really similar performance, but the 90 has slightly higher contrast in the center and slightly lower contrast at 15 and 20 mm, but remarkably lower astigmatism. In general, I think people are too worried about the contrast in the edges and corners for the 90 and not recognizing how good it is with having lower astigmatism. I expect we will see that when we see actual shots the 90 will look just as good as these other fine Voigtlandr lenses and maybe just a touch better. I think it may well compared to the 110 here as that dramatically lower astigmatism I think will beat the slightly higher contrast.
p.5 #6 · Cosina Voigtländer APO-Lanthar 90/4 VM officially announced for August release
I received the Voigtlander 90mm f/4 APO-Lanthar today, though I haven't shot with it yet.
It's slightly longer than the 75mm f/2.8 APO-Skopar, but the two seem to share the same width. Interestingly, the 75mm f/2.8 extended to its MFD is the exact same length as the 90mm f/4 at infinity. So if you own the 75mm f/2.8 APO and want a preview of the 90mm f/4's size, just rack it out to MFD.
Like the 75mm, the 90/4 has very distinctive clicks and a smooth focus rotation. It has twice the focus throw of the 75mm to accommodate its 0.5m MFD, much shorter than the 75mm's 0.7m. I appreciate the tactile marker indicating when rangefinder focusing is no longer possible past 0.7m on the 90mm.
At 0.5m, the 90/4 extends quite a bit, almost doubling its length. But having a 90mm that focuses down to 0.5m is a very welcome feature.
p.5 #7 · Cosina Voigtländer APO-Lanthar 90/4 VM officially announced for August release
It's another example of the unwillingness to even moderately inform your user group of lens performance at focus distances other than infinity. What is the frequency profile of the usage of lenses by focus distance? It's highly likely to be dominated by the band: MFD to medium distance for mainstream lenses. How about for macros, or close focus lenses? Does it make much sense to report a macro's MTF solely at infinity?
They often don't even inform you that their MTF is taken at infinity!
Which of these two lenses represented below do you prefer, based on their MTF? I don't do trick questions, they are one and the same lens - the Otus 85/1.4, one of the very few CZ/Cosina lenses for which you can find both infinity and what Zeiss call 'near focus', stated before they omitted that data from their reporting. Well, how 'near'? It's not stated in their data sheet. It's obvious they softened it for portrait usage (hence low 40lpmm), and 85mm being Zeiss's long term favorite focal length for people photography.
p.5 #9 · Cosina Voigtländer APO-Lanthar 90/4 VM officially announced for August release
Knut. wrote:
I‘m really looking forward to how this lens behaves on the thick Sony stack. Since you also own the 90mm Sigma I would be extremely interested in a comparison to this lens from you!
I would bet the corners will be only modestly affected given the focal length. I'd rather have a native E mount one though for exif and not having to input the FL for the IBIS. I have very few quibbles with my SL-1 OM mount version on Sony though despite its imperfections. I brought it to Kyrgyzstan as a compact portrait lens:
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p.5 #10 · Cosina Voigtländer APO-Lanthar 90/4 VM officially announced for August release
Michael Gordon wrote:
I would bet the corners will be only modestly affected given the focal length. I'd rather have a native E mount one though for exif and not having to input the FL for the IBIS. I have very few quibbles with my SL-1 OM mount version on Sony though despite its imperfections. I brought it to Kyrgyzstan as a compact portrait lens:
If you look at Fred's review thread for this lens he posts the results with a Sony camera, it looks like the corners aren't affected at all. If you want EXIF data and automatic update of the focal length for IBIS, then you can use an adapter that reports that like the TTartisans 6-bit adapter.
p.5 #11 · Cosina Voigtländer APO-Lanthar 90/4 VM officially announced for August release
Excellent. Thanks for mentioning that adapter. I had totally forgotten about it. When I go back and look, I think I wrote it off as some august members of FM mentioned that it tended to be a tad short. That may through off the APO character a bit. I still like the less than perfect but "classic" rendering of my CV 90/3.5 SL1. I did read on FM that there were more problems with the VM versions. I'd love to see side-by side portraits with the SL1 and the new 90 F4.
p.5 #12 · Cosina Voigtländer APO-Lanthar 90/4 VM officially announced for August release
rscheffler wrote:
Wow, that's USD 580.00 pre-tax. I'm guessing it will retail for $699 on this side of the Pacific.
rscheffler wrote:
I might be off by at least $100.
The 75/2.8 sells for about $450 pre-tax in Japan and retails here for $699. The 90 is about 30K Yen more, so maybe it will be intro-priced more around $800-850.
That's actually a lower 'premium' over domestic Japanese market pricing than many other VM lenses. Only about 23%, whereas with the 75/2.8 it's about 35%. I wonder if Cosina increased the JPY domestic price? I think they may have done so on at least some lenses, as one I was interested in appears to have increased about $100-150 since the spring. Interestingly though, despite the apparent price increase, the 90/2 APO is still slightly less than the 90/4 APO, in Japan, but $150 more in the US market.
That's actually a lower 'premium' over domestic Japanese market pricing than many other VM lenses. Only about 23%, whereas with the 75/2.8 it's about 35%. I wonder if Cosina increased the JPY domestic price? I think they may have done so on at least some lenses, as one I was interested in appears to have increased about $100-150 since the spring. Interestingly though, despite the apparent price increase, the 90/2 APO is still slightly less than the 90/4 APO, in Japan, but $150 more in the US market....Show more →
Official Cosina price of 90/2 (before tax) is 120K yen and 90/4 is 110K, but CV lenses tend to get discounted a bit in most Japanese shops after they've been in the market for a few months or longer. I don't think Cosina have raised official prices of lenses in the market (they never seem to change the official prices over time, but prices for new releases can go up a little compared to similar releases into the past) but street prices sometimes go up a bit in all shops, sometimes to the same level they were at launch, and start coming down again later, not sure what that is based on...
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