New Lens Day – Voigtlander 21mm f/3.5 Color Skopar VM

My Leica M mount collection grew today with the arrival of a Voigtlander 21mm f/3.5 Color Skopar VM lens.  This tiny little wide angle gets rave reviews for its compact size yet great performance.  This evening I mounted it to the Leica M10 and took it on a short hike to put it to the test.

Handling of the lens is great, with a nicely clicked aperture, smooth focus ring with a tab (which every rangefinder lens should have) and engraved markings for distance scale.  No complaints about build quality at all.

Image quality seems to be very high as well.  The corners have some slight falloff at apertures up to around f/5.6, but for such a small lens, I can ignore that.  If I’m doing serious landscape work, I’ll be on a tripod at f/8 or so.  Unlike the previous Voigtlander 21mm f/4, this new version has been optimized for digital sensors and doesn’t have any of the purple color casts that plague the old f/4 version.

It was a short hike, but I managed enough shots to come away satisfied with the new lens.  This was perfect timing as well since the Autumn foliage color change is just starting.  I hope to have many more images from this lens to share soon.