The New Voigtländer APO-Lanthar 28mm f/2 Lens

credits: Cosina

Cosina has just announced the new Voigtländer APO-Lanthar 28mm f/2 Aspherical, a compact wide-angle lens built for full-frame Leica M-mount cameras. Designed with apochromatic correction, the lens practically eliminates colour fringing by balancing red, green, and blue wavelengths, giving you clarity and contrast from corner to corner. It’s built from 12 elements in 8 groups, including some exotic glass and two elements with double-sided aspheres.

While it’s made for rangefinder shooting and focuses down to 0.7 meters, you can actually get closer (0.5 meters, to be exact) if you're using live view on a mirrorless body. Cosina also put a lot of care into the manual focus feel, with a precisely machined all-metal helicoid that should feel smooth with just the right amount of resistance. Aperture is controlled via a dedicated 12-blade ring that’s all about creamy bokeh and smooth transitions in out-of-focus areas, even from harsh point light sources.

The whole lens is compact and classic, just 50mm long, weighs 265 grams, and takes 49mm filters. It comes with a specially designed petal-shaped metal hood that helps fight flare without getting in the way of your frame lines. Cosina plans to release it in July for around 150,000 yen, or a little over a grand in U.S. dollars, depending on where you pick it up.

You can see full details and sample shots on Cosina’s website here