Detailed comparison | Voigtlander 50mm APO vs. Leica 50mm APO (and Summilux)

[JimmyCheng]

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I did as many tests as I can and hopefully you will enjoy it and find something useful. (hopefully you will also find out if the summilux is indeed APO design)

Edited December 18, 2021 by JimmyCheng

[AndreasG]

Great comparison, good to know as owner of an APO Summicron 2/50, thank you!

[Product Details]

Complete Overview 50mm Leica M-Mount Lenses

50 mm F1.0 Nokton (Amazon | B&H) – 50 mm F1.2 Nokton (Amazon | B&H) – 50 mm F1.5 Heliar classic (Amazon | B&H) – 50 mm F1.5 Nokton Vintage MC / SC (Amazon | B&H) – 50 mm F2.0 Apo Lanthar (Amazon | B&H) – 50 mm F3.5 Heliar Vintage (Amazon | B&H)

[JimmyCheng]

1 hour ago, AndreasG said:

Great comparison, good to know as owner of an APO Summicron 2/50, thank you!

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

[Al Brown]

@JimmyCheng Please also write the TL;DR summary of your findings in a sentence or two...

[Jon Warwick]

Thanks for the review. Nicely done.

It’s remarkable just how good the Voigtlander is compared to the M 50 Summicron APO, given the astonishingly different price.

I owned the M 50 APO for several years, and now moved over to the Voigtlander FWIW.

[Adam Bonn]

I guess the Cron APO scores over the CV with the integrated hood design, the lens coding, the (fractionally?) better edge performance and the smaller size.

Is that worth the price difference? lolz f**k no - but that’s what it costs, or put another way, if the CV and Cron APO cost the same who would ever chose the CV?

I own the 50 Lux ASPH and a planar 50/2 and I’ve still been tempted to get the CV 50 APO 🤣 (can’t really justify it though)

Nice video @JimmyCheng on point, too the point and well presented thank you.

 

[shirubadanieru]

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1 hour ago, Al Brown said:

@JimmyCheng Please also write the TL;DR summary of your findings in a sentence or two...

There’s literally a video he made (for free & using his own time) for our benefit…if you wanna know, go and watch it and make your own conclusions? Least you can do : ) 

@JimmyCheng Been watching your videos recently, really appreciate you add subtitles to the videos so that I can enjoy the content. Also, your collection is amazing ahah keep it up! 

[Al Brown]

2 hours ago, shirubadanieru said:

There’s literally a video he made (for free & using his own time) for our benefit…if you wanna know, go and watch it and make your own conclusions? Least you can do : ) 

Please NEVER tell me what I should or shouldn't do, do we have a deal?
I have a reason to write what I wrote.

Edited December 18, 2021 by Al Brown

[Prosophos]

This was great, thank you very much for your efforts.

—Peter.

[shirubadanieru]

1 hour ago, Al Brown said:

Please NEVER tell me what I should or shouldn't do, do we have a deal?
I have a reason to write what I wrote.

Sure didn’t mean to offend, my apologies. 

[Guest]

Great video and an excellent channel.

What i like is the enthusiasm and straight forward delivery with no bias shown to leica or anyone else.

Must get out of the habit of reading the english subtitles even though i am english!!

[SoarFM]

2 hours ago, Al Brown said:

Please NEVER tell me what I should or shouldn't do, do we have a deal?
I have a reason to write what I wrote.

 

6 hours ago, Al Brown said:

@JimmyCheng Please also write the TL;DR summary of your findings in a sentence or two...

 

2 hours ago, Al Brown said:

Please NEVER tell me what I should or shouldn't do, do we have a deal?
I have a reason to write what I wrote.

如果锐度和对比度是您的标准，那么 Voigtlander 绝对是最佳的价值主张。
我希望这有帮助。

[sebben]

4 hours ago, Jon Warwick said:

Thanks for the review. Nicely done.

It’s remarkable just how good the Voigtlander is compared to the M 50 Summicron APO, given the astonishingly different price.

I owned the M 50 APO for several years, and now moved over to the Voigtlander FWIW.

But look at the size difference. Getting it to perform so well and be small is the challenge 

[Gobert]

13 hours ago, JimmyCheng said:

I did as many tests as I can and hopefully you will enjoy it and find something useful. (hopefully you will also find out if the summilux is indeed APO design)

Which lens preset in the M10-R did you use for the VL? Or simply no lens recognition.

Edited December 18, 2021 by Gobert

[Nilei]

The difference in edge sharpness is a tiny bit better for the APO Cron. The size is smaller then the CV APO and the integrated hood is nice too. But the difference in flare resistance the LEICA APO is lacking is huge and makes photographing in back light situations difficult. This would be killer criteria for me to buy the Leica APO even both would cost the same. But for sure this is only my personal preference.

[Edax]

The recess in the mount of the APO Voigtlander 50mm makes it easy to code it. I used the code for the APO-Summicron-M 50mm (which cannot be selected from the in-camera menu). The code for the APO-Summicron-M can easily be found on Ebay... 😇

Edited December 18, 2021 by Edax

[JimmyCheng]

8 hours ago, Gobert said:

Which lens preset in the M10-R did you use for the VL? Or simply no lens recognition.

I did not take advantage of the Leica lens code here, to make it more fair.

[JimmyCheng]

7 hours ago, Nilei said:

The difference in edge sharpness is a tiny bit better for the APO Cron. The size is smaller then the CV APO and the integrated hood is nice too. But the difference in flare resistance the LEICA APO is lacking is huge and makes photographing in back light situations difficult. This would be killer criteria for me to buy the Leica APO even both would cost the same. But for sure this is only my personal preference.

great summary! that's my concern as well. Because when shot wide open, often times we only care about center sharpness. It is when shot stopped down with more things in focus that we start to care about edge Sharpness. So this disadvantage is actually nonexistent for many people I guess. 

[JimmyCheng]

15 hours ago, Al Brown said:

@JimmyCheng Please also write the TL;DR summary of your findings in a sentence or two...

Some one just did a great summary for you to save you some precious time : )

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[JimmyCheng]

9 hours ago, steve 1959 said:

Great video and an excellent channel.

What i like is the enthusiasm and straight forward delivery with no bias shown to leica or anyone else.

Must get out of the habit of reading the english subtitles even though i am english!!

Thank you so much for your kind words! Since I also contribute contents to a mandarin based platform so I happen to shoot lots of videos in mandarin, hence the subtitles haha! It actually takes a lot of time to do the translation. I still couldn't find a piece of software that can do the translation perfectly.