Introduction

We managed to gather the three most recent fast rangefinder 35mm wide angle lenses from Leica, Zeiss and Voigtlander, threw in the Zeiss Loxia and put them up against each other on the 42mp A7rII. So in case you are looking for a small modern high quality 35mm manual focus lens: read on!

Unlike my other reviews this is a pretty technical comparison without real world shots. So please also have a look at our in depth reviews of theses lenses: Zeiss Loxia 35mm 2.0, Voigtlander 35mm 1.7 Ultron, Zeiss ZM 35mm 1.4 Distagon and Leica Summilux 35mm 1.4 FLE Asph.

I only got the chance to use the Leica Summilux 35mm 1.4 FLE Asph for a short period of time, so I couldn’t include it in all of the comparisons.

Thanks

to Stuttgart based wedding and portrait photographer Rocco, who allowed me to use his Leica Summilux-M 35mm 1.4 FLE Asph for this comparison!

Specifications

Leica FLE 35mm 1.4 Zeiss ZM 35mm 1.4 Zeiss Loxia 35mm 2.0 Voigtlander 35mm 1.7 Diameter: 56.0 mm 63.0 mm 62.1 mm 53.0 mm Length*: 64.0 mm* 80.0 mm* 59.0 mm 67.0 mm* Weight: 328g + adapter 381g + adapter 340g 238g + adapter Filter diameter: 46 mm 49 mm 52 mm 46 mm Aperture blades: 9 (inwardly curved) 10 (straight) 10 (straight) 10 (straight) Focus throw: 95° 90° 180° 120° Elements/Groups 9/5 10/7 9/6 9/7 Close focusing distance: 0.7 m 0.7 m 0.3 m 0.5 m Mount: Leica-M Leica-M Sony-E Leica-M *with adapter and focused @infinity *with adapter and focused @infinity *with adapter and focused @infinity

Prices:

Leica Summilux 35mm 1.4 FLE Asph:

used starting at 4000$/4000€ on ebay.com/ebay.de*, new 4995$ on amazon.com/B&H*

Zeiss ZM 35mm 1.4 T* Distagon:

used starting at 1600$/1600€ on ebay.com/ebay.de *, new 1999$/1999€ on amazon.com/amazon.de/B&H*



Voigtlander 35mm 1.7 Ultron:

new 650$/770€ on ebay.com /ebay.de * or amazon.com/B&H*

Zeiss Loxia 35mm 2.0:

used starting at 950$/900€ on ebay.com /ebay.de *, new $1300/1150€ on amazon.com/amazon.de/B&H*

Adapter I have used for the Leica-M lenses:

Voigtlander VM-E close focus adapter: 309$/269€ on ebay.com /ebay.de* or 309$ on Amazon.com/B&H*

*affiliate links

Handling / Build Quality

Leica Summilux 35mm 1.4 FLE Asph (FLE):

The Leica is the shortest of the rangefinder lenses in this comparison but has quite some heft to it and feels very solid. It features an all metal casing, half stop click stops and a focus ring with perfect resistance even after years of usage. What I did not really like: this lens features a focus tab but apart from it the focus ring isn’t structured but completely even instead (apart from the paintings which are engraved). This contributes to the small size of the lens so one can’t really complain here.

This lens features a floating elements design but unlike the Zeiss ZM not an internal focusing mechanism, so the lens extends on focusing closer.

Zeiss ZM 35mm 1.4 Distagon (ZM):

Build quality is very nice, as is to be expected from a lens with such a high price tag. It feels very solid as it seems to be an all metal construction, which of course also adds to the substantial weight of the lens. The aperture ring has distinct 1/3 of a stop click stops and travels ~120° from f/1.4 to f/16. Personally I would prefer full or at least half stop click stops, but that might just be me. The focus ring feels very nice and from the minimum focus distance of 70 cm to infinity it travels 90°.

Unlike most of the other rangefinder lenses (and also the VM and Loxia in this comparison) this one features an internal focusing mechanism, meaning nothing moves externally when focusing. It is also the only lens in this comparison where no hood is included in the package, which is a bit ridiculous considering the price of the lens.

Voigtlander VM 35mm 1.7 Ultron (VM):

Build quality is very nice as well and this lens also seems to feaure an all metal construction. The focusing ring travels 120° degrees from infinity to 0.5 m and has a distinctive, unusual shape – which didn’t bother me – but I think its resistance could be a little higher. Unlike the aperture rings of the Zeiss lenses this one features half-of-a-stop click-stops, which I prefer over the third-of-a-stop click-stops.

A very short screw-in type lens hood is part of the package.

Zeiss Loxia 35mm 2.0 Biogon (Loxia):

The build quality of the Loxia is also very nice and the most part of the lens is made of metal. There is also a blue rubber gasket at the rear of the lens for weather sealing (albeit there is no E-mount camera body with weather/dust resistance available to date).

The focus ring has just the right resistance and it takes ~180° from infinity to 0.3 m. The aperture ring has third-of-a-stop click-stops and turns about 120° which is a little more than I prefer as it takes quite some time to go from f/2.0 to f/11. One can also “de-click” the aperture ring to make it stepless which I think is mostly interesting for filming purposes.

The included hood is mostly made of metal, but sits not very tight.

As this is a native E-mount lens with electronic contacts there is also another feature: when turning the focus ring the camera automatically zooms in but to be honest I found this behaviour to be slowing down my shooting (as I prefer to move the box first and then zoom in), so I turned it off in the camera menu.

In comparison to each other:

One really has to be splitting hairs here, as the build quality of all of these lenses is on a very high level.

As being a native lens the Loxia offers a little more comfort with the transfer of EXIF data and focal length (nice), the declick mechanism (I don’t need) and the auto magnify (I don’t like). The design also fits the A7 cameras very very well.

Despite being half a stop faster the Voigtlander Ultron is smaller in diameter, only marginally longer and even lighter (with most adapters) than the Loxia. I like the half-of-a-stop click stops of the aperture ring but I would have preferred the focusing ring to be just a little bit tighter.

The Leica 35mm 1.4 FLE is interestingly the shortest lens in this comparison and significantly smaller and a bit lighter than the ZM 35mm 1.4 Distagon which features the same parameters. Because of the long minimum focus distance I would really recommend getting a helicoid adapter like the VM-E close focus adapter for these two lenses which will unfortunately further increase the weight of the packages. Many Leica users think the Zeiss ZM is too big and also too heavy, but compared to the native Sony/Zeiss FE 35mm 1.4 ZA Distagon it is still a significantly smaller and lighter lens.

Vignetting

If you read our reviews of these lenses you already know the M-mount lenses in this comparison have huge vignetting wide open – the minituarization certainly takes its toll here.

Wide open the Leica FLE 35mm 1.4 vignettes the most with ~3.4 EV followed by the ZM 35 1.4 with ~3.1 EV in the extreme corners, the half a stop slower VM 35mm 1.7 lags not far behind with ~2.8 EV and even the Loxia 35mm 2.0 shows 2.3 stops darker corners compared to the center.

Keep in mind though: these lenses have all different maximum apertures and if you check my review of the ZM 35mm 1.4 you can see stopped down to f/2.0 it is pretty much the same as the Loxia at f/2.0.

And stopped down f/8.0 they are all also pretty much the same with ~1.2 EV in the extreme corners, only the Leica still shows ~1.6 EV.

Sharpness

You might have already come across this article, explaining how to get better corner performance with rangefinder wideangle lenses by the use of a front end filter. As I now possess two 5m PCX filters which drastically improve the performance of these 35mm lenses I decided to include these here.

Furthermore the Zeiss ZM 35mm 1.4 and the Leica Summilux 35mm 1.4 FLE Asph have been factory calibrated respectively replaced (in case of the Leica) by the manufacturer after purchase.

infinity

Wide open the faster lenses show some purple fringing and the Leica without filter looks the softest, but I would consider all of them usable to good (at least). By f/2.8 they all look very good, the Loxia might show a little less contrast. By f/8.0 diffraction already starts to reduce the image quality.

Unfortunately wide open the 5m filter has a negative influence on the midframe of the VM and even more so on the ZM, but interestingly leads to better results on the FLE. The VM without filter looks best to me, followed by ZM without and FLE with filter.

The Loxia looks pretty bad because of the spherical aberrations inherent in the optical formula of the lens.

At f/2.8 things even out and there are only subtle differences except for the Loxia which still has some issues with spherical aberrations.

By f/8.0 they all look very good in the midframe.

The rangefinder lenses wide open without filter look awful by comparison which was to be expected. With a 5m filter things look very different and the ZM and VM might have actually the highest resolution in the corners, but are somewhat spoiled by the very high vignetting, therefore the Loxia looks best at first sight.

At f/2.8 the ZM +5m filter actually resolves finer details in the corners than the others, followed by VM +5m filter and Loxia.

At f/8.0 the ZM +5m filter still looks best to me, showing the highest contrast and resolving most fine details, but the Loxia, Leica and VM +5m filter all follow very close.

close focus @ 0.5 m



Only the VM and the Loxia where used at distances they were designed for, for ZM and FLE the VM-E close focus adapter was necessary to reduce the minimum focus distance from 0.7 to 0.5 m.

Two things are very apparent: wide open at 50 cm focusing distance the ZM is clearly in a league of its own, despite the fact one has to use a helicoid adapter to actually be able to even focus down to 50 cm.

Furthermore the ZM is the only lens which does not show a significant focus shift at this distance. The FLE and VM show a massive focus shift and one should keep this in mind when critical sharpness stopped down (from f/2.0 to f/5.6) is required. I found this to be also true for shots at infinity with the VM.

Bokeh

I have shot 5 different scenes with various focusing distances (0.5 m, 0.6m, 1.2 m, 2.5 m and 6.0 m). I have also uploaded all shots in full resolution to my flickr account so you can download the ones you are interested in.

The bokeh comparisons have been shot with the same configuration as the sharpness infinity charts: rangefinder lenses with and without 5m filter in front + Loxia, so a total of 7 shots for each scene (unless stated otherwise).

Electronic first curtain shutter – which can have a negative influence on bokeh as described in this article – was turned off, as was IBIS.

I only took shots wide open as with 35mm lenses you want to shoot wide open to get some bokeh in your shots anyway, unless you are near the minimum focus distance, but here the differences are rather subtle (as you will see).

The full resolution shots can be found in this flickr album.

Personally I think the differences are rather small here and there isn’t a lens that stands out as looking particularly good or bad.

The full resolution shots can be found in this flickr album.

At these distances the influence of the correction filter is negligible, so you only get 4 shots (1 per lens).

The Loxia clearly looks worst with its distinct outlining and unevenly lit light circles. The ZM looks best to me as the light circles are evenly lit with almost no outlining. On closer examination you will notice the onion ring structure in the FLE’s light circles and towards the borders there is also increased outlining which is why I would prefer the VM over the FLE.

The cat’s eye effect is quite pronounced to pretty much the same degree by all lenses except for the Loxia.

So my rating here is: ZM > VM > FLE > Loxia.

The full resolution shots can be found in this flickr album.

The fence should give you an impression regarding the transition zone, the area just barely out of focus. And the tree in the upper left corner is good for showing how “difficult” backgrounds are rendered.

My rating regarding the background is as this: ZM > VM > Loxia > FLE. The ZM shows least outlining and compared to the slower VM and Loxia also bigger light discs. The FLE shows very strong outlining combined with loCA, not my cup of tea.

My rating regarding the fence (between the leaf and the pole in the center of the image) is as this: VM (by a hair) > ZM > FLE > Loxia. If you stop down the ZM to f/1.8 (f/1.7 is not easily possible) it looks very similar to the VM, but there is just a very small area where the VM still looks smoother. The FLE is a little harsher to my eyes than the other two and the Loxia is a bit lacking because of its slower maximum aperture.

The full resolution shots can be found in this flickr album.

This is the distance one would mostly use for environmental portraits. But as no one can (or wants to) hold still long enough this statue had to suffice. Focus is on the lions nose.

Again very subtle differences regarding bokeh.

The full resolution shots can be found in this flickr album.

At these distances background blur is rather limited, but one can see the differences the 5m filters make regarding the background bokeh, for further information on this topic see this article.

Honestly I think the differences aren’t that groundbreaking here. I like the ZM and the VM a little more than the Loxia and FLE, but these are personal preferences and you may come to a completely different conclusion.

further observations from this comparison:



If you take a closer look at the bokeh comparison shots in the flickr albums you will notice the VM is a very good performer when it comes to off center sharpness in the midframe wide open at distances ranging from ~0.9 to 3.0 m. The ZM catches up at f/2.4.

In pretty much every scenario the ZM will yield the highest contrast.

You can check that by looking at the lion or the fence samples from ZM and VM side by side.

Looked at 100% you will notice the VM shows more details wide open, but look at the shot as a whole and the ZM will look “sharper” because of its higher contrast.

Even on the A7rII’s BSI sensor the Leica FLE still shows some greenish colorshift which I didn’t correct here but would for real shots. Check out the lion sample and compare FLE and ZM.

Flare Resistance

With these shots I tried to make every lens look the worst, this is the reason for the different framing.

The Leica 35mm 1.4 FLE clearly looks worst to me: rainbow artifacts and very obstrusive purple ghosts, you can see many more of these in my upcoming review of this lens.

The Voigtlander VM 35mm 1.7 looks best to me, it is very difficult to produce ghosts no matter what you do.

This leaves us with the two Zeiss lenses in between. Both produce some artifacts but the contrast stays on a much higher level with the ZM.

So my rating here is: VM > ZM > Loxia > FLE.



Coma

So far all rangefinder lenses I have used were a bit (or more than a bit) lacking when it comes to the coma correction. I just think this is not something particularly high on the priority list when designing such lenses. Nevertheless you will be looking at only a very small portion of the whole frame (see the red rectangle in the lower left corner above) in the following crops.

Wide open they all look pretty bad. If I had to choose the least worse it would be ZM +5m, as the artifacts are the smallest here.

Same goes for f/2.8, second best being the FLE.

Even stopped down to f/4.0 there are still obvious differences: ZM and FLE are the best here and very close, whether VM or Loxia is on place 3 depends on your preference (triangle or oval).

My rating here is: ZM > FLE > Loxia = VM.

Sunstars

The FLE uses 9 curved aperture blades while the other 3 use 10 straight ones and look pretty much exactly the same.

This is a question of personal preference, you may want to have a look at this article.

Chromatic Aberrations

Wide open the differences are rather small, I tend to say the biggest difference is the loCA on the Loxia have slighty different colors. At f/2.8 the differences are even smaller but you might see the effect of a slight focus shift on the Loxia and the VM.

I couldn’t include the FLE here, but it behaves similar to the ZM.

Conclusion

Let me first say: without the ability to improve the corner performance of rangefinder lenses with front end filters (see this article) I would be writing a very different conclusion right now, so as a fan of rangefinder lenses I must once more direct a huge “Thank you!” to HaruhikoT, who originally came up with this idea.

I will give you my opinion on every lens, its strengths, its weaknesses and what I think it is best used for:

Zeiss Loxia 35mm 2.0 Biogon (Loxia):

I have used this lens quite a lot last year and took many great shots with it. I think it is not nearly as bad as its reputation suggests, but one should definetly be aware of its limitations: until stopping down to f/4.0 the corners and even the midframe will look rather bad due to spherical aberrations. So in case you are looking for a lens for astrophotography, for handheld shots of cityscapes at dawn or architecture shots wide open: this lens is not for you.

But in case you are looking for a highly portable lens for mostly stopped down shooting where you need high contrast and clarity or you just happen to like the look that comes with the spherical aberrations I would take this one any day over the other native 35mm lenses. Especially if you can make use of the comfort features that come with native lenses with electronic contacts.

used starting at 950$/900€ on ebay.com /ebay.de *, new $1300/1150€ on amazon.com/amazon.de/B&H* *affiliate links

Voigtlander VM 35mm 1.7 Ultron (VM):

This is probably the best allrounder in this comparison as it is lightweight, compact, decently priced and offers great image quality. Regarding some aspects it even supersedes the more expensive f/1.4 lenses (flare resistance and midframe sharpness wide open come to mind here).

The question I will get asked most will probably be: what are you giving up compared to the ZM?

Obviously half a stop of speed, which might matter for some and not for others. Corners at infinity are not as good. Performance wide open at closer distances is visibly worse. Focus shift is much more apparent. Coma correction is worse.

But the most obvious difference might be contrast, and it depends on your taste and your subjects what is “better” here: the ZM is very contrasty in general while the VM is a little more subtle.

For architecture and landscape I prefer the ZM for portraiture one might prefer the VM.

Still, especially paired with a 5m PCX front filter, this is a very capable, highly likable lens.

new 650$/770€ on ebay.com /ebay.de * or amazon.com/B&H* *affiliate links

Zeiss ZM 35mm 1.4 Distagon (ZM):

This is the most complex and also the biggest and heaviest lens in this comparison. I often got the impression, Zeiss threw everything in here they have learned over decades to design the best 35mm 1.4 while still keeping it portable. And the last part is the important one here: compared to other high end 35mm 1.4 lenses (Canon EF 35mm 1.4 L II, Sigma 35mm 1.4 HSM Art, Sony SEL35F14Z, Samyang 35mm 1.4) this is actually a small and lightweight lens (only Leica users will disagree, but we will get to that).

This is not to say we are dealing with a lens without flaws, the most obvious being a visible midzone dip until f/2.8, which is slightly exaggerated by a 5m filter, and the not-as-good-as-VM flare resistance.

But apart from these two issues I see it in many categories as the best lens in this comparison: contrast, across frame sharpness at infinity (with 5m PCX filter very good at f/2.8 already), sharpness close range, bokeh and coma correction.

This makes it the ideal architecture and landscape 35mm for me (except for flare resistance where the VM excels) while also being able to use it for some environmental portraits at f/1.4 if necessary (which is also the real benefit I see for myself over the Loxia).



used starting at 1600$/1600€ on ebay.com/ebay.de *, new 1999$/1999€ on amazon.com/amazon.de/B&H* *affiliate links

Leica Summilux 35mm 1.4 FLE Asph (FLE):

It is often said when it comes to “high end” devices (regardless if we talk about phones, cars, notebooks or anything else) the last 10% of performance are very expensive, meaning you can often get 90% of the performance of the most expensive product for much less money with another product. But with this Leica lens I still wonder where that 10% of performance are.

Except for its size and weight I failed to find anything which is better about this lens than the ZM.

And to be totally honest with you: I would also rather want to use the Voigtlander than this lens even if they were priced the same.

Of course this lens was never meant to be used on E-mount cameras with a thick filter stack, but this is also true for the other two rangefinder lenses in this comparison, so this is not an excuse for me.

This is not to say its performance is bad, it definetly isn’t, but I just don’t see any category where it really excels except size.

used starting at 4000$/4000€ on ebay.com/ebay.de*, new 4995$ on amazon.com/B&H* *affiliate links

Further Reading