Jonathon Delacour
Subscriber Member
This may be of interest to the Sony users who are dissatisfied with the Sony 100/2.8 Macro and/or are longing for the Zeiss Makro-Planar 100 in a Sony mount. I just noticed that there is a Voigtlander SL 125mm F2.5 APO Lanthar in Sony/Minolta mount for sale on eBay.
This lens has a superb reputation, with the Photozone review being typical:
This lens has a superb reputation, with the Photozone review being typical:
The Voigtlander SL 125mm f/2.5 APO Lanthar is certainly not a lens for the masses simply because it lacks AF. If you don't mind manual focusing it represents an excellent offer (at around 600€/US$) because it has basically no weaknesses. The resolution figures are excellent straight from f/2.5 and neither CAs nor vignetting and distortions are something to worry about. The bokeh (out of focus blur) is exceptional as you may have noticed from the sample images above. According to the owner of the lens it is somewhat prone to flare though. On top of its optical qualities the Voigtlander offers macro capabilities down to a max. object magnification of 1:1. The build quality of the lens is great - also a side effect of the manual focus design which allows tighter tolerances. Highly recommended! If you're interested in this lens it may be a little difficult to find a dealer outside of Japan though.
The current bid (as I write this post) is US$375.00 although it will certainly fetch a lot more than that, since the user reports that I've read suggest that the APO-Lanthar would give the Zeiss Makro-Planar some stiff competition. (I have the 90/3.5 and 180/4 APO-Lanthar lenses in Nikon mount and, while they are both excellent, the 125/2.5 is acknowledged to be better.)