Just a little update story on my search, in case anyone else is also still searching and frustrated, know you are not alone and this is not unusual:
I am still not able to find any good Voigtlander 35mm F2 A-L lenses. A third copy finally landed on our shores but it needed no thorough study to be dismissed immediately. My entire country has seen only three(!) E-mount units all told since they began shipping worldwide. The first two had subtle field curvature which I noticed but did not fully pay attention to until it was almost too late. I was not expecting the A-L lenses to vary in field curvature by this much, having never experienced it in multiple copies of the 50/2, its closest sibling, nor the 65/2 which the 50's design was based on.
This third copy is decentered enough that it's not even sharp on-axis. The bottom edge is significantly sharper than the center! And the top edge is just mush. It's a semicircle of blurriness of the top half of the frame, appearing like under-corrected spherical aberration on-axis and all sorts of messes off-axis. Pity, since this copy has no tilt or swing.
I think I'm cursed to never find great 35mm lenses, ever since desiring a great one since 2016, or more likely this focal length is just very challenging to make well. Fred went through 4 copies for E-mount before finding a good one. Another forum member who shared with me full resolution test frames from his copy, I've since been able to diagnose from them a more pernicious issue of asymmetric astigmatism, ignoring the subtle crookedness of that copy. No amount of DIY shimming to straighten the lens can fix that. That's 7 out of 8 bad copies. I saw one from Japan which also seems to be slightly curved, though perhaps less than mine, but is tilted. Lenstip's copy is horribly swung and could be somewhat decentered. So 9 out of 10 bad ones so far, sampling from across the globe.
I've been told Cosina's factory isn't interested in making very many of this species, since there is little demand for it (unlike the VM mount version, which has a lot of demand), plus they have announced so many other new lenses recently. Sony E-mount has something like over 30(?) different 35mm focal length lenses for that platform! That's nuts. My dealer is helping to put in a special notice to get more copies in a few months time, so I have to wait again. This lens is a vital component for the kind of astro pictures I would like to make. I believe a great copy would be on par with the formidable Leica SL 35 F2 APO (not the M mount), and will soundly beat the Otus 28mm. I gather the Sony GM 35 1.4 has mostly been a miss too, as well as the new Sigma 35 1.4 DG DN, most copies failing to meet their published spec. And both of those have far too much focus breathing. I'm not needing "nice rendering" nor AF for this purpose so a great copy would really be the ideal lens, given its diminutive size and weight, and beautiful mechanical manual focus feel.
I'll add a second part to my story about the CV 50/2 in the thread for it.
