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Quick Review: Zenitar 50mm Sony A7s with Voigtländer 15mm 4.5 Super Wide Heliar E Aspherical
0.95 E

Rolling Review: Voigtlander The Voigtländer 15mm 4.5 Super Wide Heliar E aspherical III is the first native E-Mount lens by Voigtlander. As
Nokton 21mm F1.4 E
there are three adapted Voigtlander lenses in my basic A7s-kit – see my reviews – I simply had to try this one
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Sony A7s | Voigtländer 15mm 4.5 SWH E | f/11 | full resolution

July 2019 (1)

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December 2018 (7)

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February 2018 (3)

January 2018 (6)

December 2017 (10)

November 2017 (9)

October 2017 (8)

September 2017 (6)

August 2017 (1)

July 2017 (9) Sony A7s | Voigtländer 15mm 4.5 SWH E | f/4.5 | ISO6400 | 30s | higher resolution
June 2017 (4)

May 2017 (5)

April 2017 (7) Specifications / Version History

March 2017 (5)
There have already been three versions of this lens for Leica (or Voigtländer Bessa) cameras. The first still in‐
February 2017 (4)
corporated a M39 (Leica Thread Mount) while the second one was already equipped with a Leica M-Mount. The
January 2017 (8)
optical formula of these lenses was the same and they not only struggled with the A7’s and A7r’s sensors but
December 2016 (3)
also with Leica’s digital sensors. Therefore around 2015 a third incarnation was released with a completely new
November 2016 (6)
optical design for Leica M-Mount. The improved optics came at the cost of increased size and weight, as ver‐
October 2016 (5)
sion III is noticeably bigger than it’s earlier siblings.
September 2016 (5)

August 2016 (7)

This lens is now also available with Sony E-Mount and while the optical formula is the same as the M-mount
July 2016 (5)
version, there are a few advantages when it comes to the handling of the lens. I will of course talk about those
June 2016 (7)
advantages in this review.
May 2016 (3)

April 2016 (5)

I am reviewing the brand new Sony E-Mount version here which has the following specifications:
March 2016 (10)

February 2016 (6)

Diameter: 66.4 mm
January 2016 (2)
Field of view: 110° (diagonally)
December 2015 (5)
Length: 62.3 mm
November 2015 (3)
Weight: 298g
October 2015 (4)
Filter Diameter: 58 mm
September 2015 (1)
Number of Aperture Blades: 10 (straight)
August 2015 (2)
Elements/Groups: 11/9
July 2015 (4)
Close Focusing Distance: 0.3 m
June 2015 (3)
Maximum Magnification: 1:12
May 2015 (1)
Mount: Sony-E
April 2015 (2)

March 2015 (1)

You may also have a look at Voigtländer’s official page.
February 2015 (2)

December 2014 (1)

You can get this lens on CameraQuest | amazon.com | amazon.de | B&H | ebay.com | ebay.de (affiliate links) for
November 2014 (1)
799$/799€ (new)
July 2014 (1)

May 2014 (1)

February 2014 (4)

Disclosure
January 2014 (2)

November 2013 (1) The Voigtlander 15mm 4.5 E Super Wide Heliar, was kindly provided free of charge by Voigtländer Germany
(Ringfoto) for reviewing purpose for a duration of 2 weeks.

CATEGORIES

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Minolta SR mount

Nikon Sony A7s with Voigtländer 15mm 4.5 Super Wide Heliar E Aspherical (aperture ring set to clickless)
Olympus OM

Opinion The build quality is very nice as the lens is an all metal construction and feels very solid, tolerances are
Pentax K-mount very low and the markings are engraved and filled with white (and red) paint.
photography

Postprocessing The focus ring hast just the right resistance, is distinctively shaped, quite broad and easy to grab without look‐
Projects ing at the lens. It takes roughly 90° turning it from Infinity to 0.3 m. The aperture ring has third-of-a-stop click-
Review stops and it takes a little less than 90° from f/4.5 to f/22.
Sony A-mount When you turn the focusing ring the camera zooms in automatically, this can also be turned off in the camera
Sony a7rIII menu. But there is an additional effect: a virtual distance scale is shown in the viewfinder and on the screen, I
Sony Alpha didn’t notice this when using the Loxia 35mm 2.0.
Sony Alpha 7

Sony E-mount The hood is non detachable and therefore – despite the generous 58 mm filter thread – using a slot-in filter
The creative process system like Lee, Cokin or Hitech is not possible.
The Team's favorites

Tokina The aperture ring can be declicked – a feature which is also availabe on Zeiss Loxia lenses – but the incorpo‐
Travel-Report ration here is way better in my opinion: there is a small ring right behind the aperture ring, you can pull it forward,
Uncategorized turn it by 180° and thereby change between click stops and clickless aperture (white dot on top: click stops,
Voigtlander yellow line on top: clickless). This feature was not mentioned in the very brief manual, so it may come as a
Zeiss suprise for some
Zeiss C/Y mount

Vignetting and colorcast

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Similar to the Voigtlander 12mm 5.6 Ultra Wide Heliar reviewed by me this lens has a symmetrical optical de‐
sign which allows for quite compact wide angle lenses with very low distortion (in comparison to retrofocus de‐
signs) but leads to noticeable vignetting throughout the whole aperture range. There is no Lightroom pro‐
file for this lens yet but you can use the profile for the corresponding M-mount lens which does a great job at
correcting the vignetting as well as the distortion. Keep in mind though: correcting the vignetting means push‐
ing the corner regions by a few stops, this may lead to visible noise in these areas.
In contrary to the Loxia lenses vignetting is not corrected in camera.
I couldn’t find any traces of color casts, something that could not be said about the earlier versions of this
lens.

Testing the vignetting of lenses this wide isn’t all that easy and in real world shooting things don’t look as bad as
the graph may suggest, so to finish this chapter I included a small comparison with and without correction:

comparison shot at f/11: uncorrected vignetting (before) vs corrected vignetting (after)

Sharpness
infinity

Everything but the extreme corners is very good from the start. So it isn’t surprising that with the A7s’ 12mp
resolution I can’t see any improvements in the center on stopping down. The extreme corners steadily improve
until f/11, which I think is the best choice for even sharpness across the whole frame. Nevertheless: I wouldn’t
hesitate using this lens wide open if needed.

There is also not the slightest hint at any field curvature.

In comparison to the older wide angle designs for M-Mount cameras this is really a great performance, you may
take a look at the 12mm 5.6 review to get a grasp of the differences.

The centering quality was very good, but I actually never had any issues with Voigtlander lenses in this regard.
One thing to notice: in the compilation above I increased the exposure on the corner crops to make them compa‐
rable in terms of sharpness.

close focus

Sony A7s | Voigtländer 15mm 4.5 SWH E | f/4.5 | full resolution

You may expected to see the 1$ bill here once again, but with a maximum magnification of about 1:12 this
simply didn’t make any sense, so I choose this target instead. The sharpness up close is quite good already at
the maximum aperture but to be honest I don’t see myself using this lens for close ups a lot, mainly due to
the moderate maximum aperture and the rather long minimum focus distance.

100% crop of photo above

Flare resistance

Sony A7s | Voigtländer 15mm 4.5 SWH E | f/11

Many ultra wideangle designs struggle in this regard, but the Voigtlander 15mm 4.5 III E does a pretty good
job here most of the time. I found out that with a strong light source positioned in the edge of the frame (see
photo above) some ghosts may appear, but apart from that shooting directly in the sun is no problem at all,
even the contrast stays on a very high level. I haven’t used every wide angle lens with 15mm available today,
but among the wide angle lenses I have used (to name a few: Nikon 14-24mm 2.8 / Nikon 16-35mm 4.0 /
Nikon 18-35mm 3.5-4.5 / Samyang 14mm 2.8 / Tokina 16-28mm 2.8 / Tokina 17mm 3.5 RMC SL / Voigtlander
12mm 5.6 M39) this is one of the best performances I have seen.

Sony A7s | Voigtländer 15mm 4.5 SWH E | f/22 | full resolution

Coma

With a maximum aperture of f/4.5 this is not one of the fastest ultra wideangle lenses, but also only one third
of a stop slower than e.g. the Sony/Zeiss FE 16-35mm 4.0 ZA. The coma performance is really good already
wide open.

Use for Astrophotography

Sony A7s | Voigtländer 15mm 4.5 SWH E | f/4.5 | ISO10000 | 30s | full resolution

For astrophotography I want my lenses to be wide, fast and as free from coma as possible. The 15mm 4.5 is
very wide and mostly coma free but not very fast. Compared to e.g. a 14mm 2.8 you are gathering less than
half the light over the same period of time with the same ISO setting.
If you plan on shooting the milky way with this lens and want to include some foreground in your shoots it may
be a good idea to take a second very long exposure for the foreground and blending the two shots together
in Photoshop. Nevertheless, if milky way shooting is not your main concern and you just might come across
shooting it some day you can certainly use this lens for that application.

Distortion
As already mentioned above one advantage of a symmetrical lens design is the very low (barrel) distortion
and the Voigtlander 15mm 4.5 E III is certainly no exception here. There is no Lightroom profile for this lens yet
but you can use the profile for the corresponding M-mount lens which does a great job at correcting the distor‐
tion.
But to be honest: the amount is so low even in many of the architecture shots it would have not been necessary
to correct it.