Introduction

I wasn’t sure, if after the Voigtländer VM 90mm 2.8 Apo-Skopar, Cosina will also produce a faster 90mm lens, but that thinking was put to a stop in early 2025, when they announced this Voigtländer VM 90mm 2.0 Apo-Ultron. A direct competitor to the Leica 90mm 2.0 Apo-Summicron, which was first released in 1998. Let’s see how it performs.

Sample Images

Most of the sample images in this review can be found in full resolution here.

Specifications

This is Cosina’ first 90mm lens with a maximum aperture of f/2.0. Currently they also offer a one stop slower 90mm 2.8 lens which is available for M-mount as Voigtländer VM 90mm 2.8 Apo-Skopar and with the same optics as Voigtländer 90mm 2.8 SL IIs Apo-Skopar for Nikon’s F-mount.

The full specifications of this Voigtländer VM 90mm 2.0 Apo-Ultron are:

• Diameter: 62 mm
• Length: 63 mm
• Weight: 338g (without hood[39g])
• Field of view: 27.4° (diagonally)
• Filter Diameter: 52 mm
• Number of Aperture Blades: 12 (rounded)
• Elements/Groups: 8/7
  
• Close Focusing Distance: 0.9 m
• Maximum Magnification: 1:7.8 (measured)
• Mount: Leica M
• Released: January 2025

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Handling / Build Quality

For some reasons I don’t understand there are always small differences when it comes to the casing design of Cosina’s Voigtländer lenses. This one looks and feels similar to the higher end Voigtländer lenses like the Voigtländer VM 21mm 1.4 Nokton and Voigtländer VM 50mm 1.0 Nokton, by which I mean the casing is completely black (no chrome ring up front) and a bayonet type lens hood is included. Unlike the 21mm and 50mm this is not a floating elements design though.

The focus ring has a nice, even resistance and travels 100° from the minimum focus distance of 0.9 m to infinity. It isn’t really a short throw, but the Leica 90mm 2.0 pre Asph offers 180°, which does make setting precise focus a bit easier, especially at longer focus distances.

The aperture ring has very distinct and equidistantly spaced half-stop click-stops. It is situated at the front of the lens and travels ~90° from f/2.0 to f/16.

A bayonet type lens hood made from metal with felt on the inside is included. I still don’t know what is the reason for some Voigtländer lenses shipping with a hood, whereas you have to pay a hefty premium for the hood of some others.

On compatible M-mount cameras this lens brings up the correct 28/90mm frameline pair. Without the hood, the 90mm frameline box isn’t obstructed, but parts of the outside area are.

I was never happy with using the rangefinder for focusing fast 90mm lenses. I find the rangefinder patch to be too small and the accuracy not high enough. I am exclusively using liveview to focus 90mm 2.0 lenses.

This Voigtländer 90mm 2.0 Apo-Ultron is a bit smaller than Leica’s 90mm 2.0 lenses (the pre Asph shown here and the newer Apo-Summicron are exactly the same size). The Leica lenses do feature a useful built-in retractable hood though, so if you add the hood to this Voigtländer lens it is bulkier than the Leicas.

The Voigtländer VM 75mm 1.5 Nokton features a bigger entrance pupil and is about the same size and weight, it doesn’t feel as solidly made as most of the other Voigtländer lenses though.

The lens can be mounted to Sony E-mount cameras (and several other modern mirrorless cameras) via adapters. If you are using a Sony E-mount or a Nikon Z-mount camera you can also equip it with basic EXIF data by using the TTArtisan 6-bit adapter or with autofocus by using the Techart LM-EA9 AF adapter. As is the case with most lenses, the AF only works properly in the central part of the frame. With a 90mm lens you also need to pre-focus a bit, the adapter’s extension is not sufficient to cover the lens’ whole distance range.

Vignetting

Light falloff

This Voigtlander VM 90mm 2.0 Apo-Ultron is the most compact 90mm 2.0 lens in the M-mount world and there is a price to be paid for that which is strong vignetting at f/2.0. The Leica 90mm 2.0 Summicron-M pre Asph shows half a stop less vignetting in the corners at f/2.0 and also in the midframe it collects more light.

There is something else we need to talk about here, the Voigtländer VM 90mm 2.8 Apo-Skopar shows almost 1 EV less vignetting at f/2.8 than this 90mm 2.0 Apo-Ultron does at f/2.0. That means – taking a picture with both lenses set to their maximum aperture with the otherwise same settings – this 90mm 2.0 only collects more light in the central part of the frame.

It is recommended to have a look at this article first to get an idea how this brightness graph works.

Optical vignetting

Fast lenses usually show a noticeable amount of optical vignetting, especially so the compact ones. Without going too much into technical details optical vignetting leads to the truncation of light circles towards the borders of the frame.
In the center of the frame almost every lens will render a perfect circle, but only lenses with very low optical vignetting will keep this shape in the corners.
So in the following comparison we move from the center (left) to the extreme corner (right) and see how the shape of the light circle changes.

I did shoot both lenses side by side and with the help of a test target situated at 1.0 m from camera it was ensured the results are directly comparable.

We see something interesting here: the Leica 90mm 2.0 actually has a slightly bigger f/Stop than this Voigtländer VM 90mm 2.0 Apo-Ultron. Focal length and maximum aperture are usually defined at infinity, but this difference could also be down to rounding. Either way, the Leica also shows less optical vignetting. Not too surprising, considering the difference in size and weight.

Sharpness

Focus shift

Good news: I do not see any field relevant focus shift here.

infinity (42mp Sony A7rII/24mp Leica M10)

On the Leica M10 we see an impeccable performance from f/2.0 across the whole frame, similar to the Voigtländer f/2.0 Apo-Lanthar lenses.

On the Sony A7rII the corners do look slightly worse thanks to its thicker filter stack. Peak performance in the corners is reached around f/5.6 to f/8.0 here. The corners don’t look that bad at wider apertures, but if you bought this lens for its impeccable image quality at f/2.0 you might not be super happy with using it on a Sony camera.

I haven’t tried the Leica 90mm 2.0 Apo-Summicron-M myself (yet), but luckily Fred Miranda did and came to the conclusion this Voigtländer VM 90mm 2.0 Apo-Ultron easily outperforms it in terms of resolution and contrast. I am not surprised by that, as the Leica had been released in 1998. Of course the same is also true for the even older Leica 90mm 2.0 Summicron-M pre Asph.

At infinity I found the Voigtländer VM 90mm 2.8 Apo-Skopar to perform slightly worse, as it is a bit softer at f/2.8, whereas this VM 90mm 2.0 Apo-Ultron does not have any of that softness at f/2.0. From f/4.0 (latest f/5.6) they perform the same.

Portrait 2.3 m (24mp Leica M10, 24mp Sony A7III)

For portraiture it isn’t so important how flat the field is, it is more interesting to see what the sharpness is like when focused at different parts of the frame to take field curvature out of the equation.

We will be looking at 100% crops from the 24mp Leica M10 as well as the 24mp Sony A7III.

Leica M10 <—> Sony A7III

Also here we see a very good performance on the Leica M10. While the contrast is slightly lower off center, this will hardly be visible in actual pictures.

Also here the performance is slightly worse on the Sony A7III with its thicker filter stack.

If you are deciding between this 90mm 2.0 and the one stop slower Voigtländer VM 90mm 2.8 Apo-Skopar, the 2.8 lens does perform better at its maximum aperture, as its performance in the midframe matches that in the central part. Comparing both at f/2.8, that difference shrinks notably.

Close 0.9 m, 1:7.8 (42mp Sony A7rII)

A maximum magnification of 1:8.0 is decent for a short portrait tele.

While this Voigtländer 90mm 2.0 is full of special glass elements, it is still a simple unit focus design (both also true for the Voigtländer 90mm 2.8) and those can not be optimized for every shooting distance.

This 90mm 2.0 does still perform very well at f/2.0 even at its minimum focus distance and also about one stop better than the Voigtländer 90mm 2.8.

Flare resistance

Many short tele lenses have an issue with veiling flare, especially at their maximum aperture. To my surprise this is one of the very few that doesn’t. With two very specific positions of the sun inside and outside the frame I managed to spot a red ghost, but that is actually easy to avoid by slight reframing (only possible when using liveview and not the rangefinder of course).

Stopped down the performance is even better, only with the sun in the very corner I encountered some veiling flare.

This is one of the best performances I have seen from a short yet fast tele lens. Better than the Voigtländer 90mm 2.8 Apo-Skopar (which I did not expect) and also better than the Leica 90mm 2.0 Summicron pre Asph as well as the Leica 90mm 2.0 Apo-Summicron (which was to be expected considering their age).

Coma

I see a low amount of Coma at f/2.0 and a minimal amount at f/2.8.

Stopped down to f/2.8 this 90mm 2.0 performs a bit better than the Voigtländer 90mm 2.8. The Leica 90mm 2.0 pre Asph needs to be stopped down to f/5.6 to match the performance of the Voigtländer lenses at f/2.8.

Distortion

This Voigtländer 90mm 2.0 shows minor pincushion distortion, as was already the case for the Voigtländer 90mm 2.8. It is a bit higher here, but still only noticeable with straight lines close to the edges of the frame. It can be easily corrected by dialing in -3 in Lightroom/Photoshop, which I did for some of the sample pictures.

Bokeh

A 90mm 2.0 lens allows for a similar amount of background blur as the more common 85mm 1.8 lenses. Today, we have 85mm 1.2 and 105mm 1.4 lenses, so that isn’t all that spectacular if you are after shallow depth of field photography, but the benefit is, that these 90mm 2.0 M-mount lenses are very compact, which is an attribute highly valued not only by the Leica users.

A minimum focus distance of 0.9 m is rather typical for 90mm M-mount lenses. It allows to get reasonably close and in these scenarios the depth of field will also be very shallow, as can be seen from the samples above.

At mid distances, the cat’s eye shape of out of focus highlights towards the borders is definitely noticeable.

The optical vignetting leading to those cat’s eye shapes also leads to less smooth bokeh off center at longer distances. It makes sense to pay attention to the background here: the statues in front of the castle are a bit of a worst case scenario due to harsh light and the complex structures in the background.

But how does this new Voigtländer VM 90mm 2.0 Apo-Ultron compare to other fast M-mount portrait lenses? Let’s find out in the next section.

Compared to: Leica 90mm 2.0 pre Asph and VM 75mm 1.5 Nokton

I own the famous Leica 90mm 2.0 Summicron-M pre Asph designed by Walter Mandler, so that is a natural candidate for this comparison. The Voigtländer VM 75mm 1.5 Nokton can be cropped to a 90mm 1.8 lens, so I decided to include it as well.

Scene 1: Forest 2.0 m

Scene 2: Forest 2.5 m

Scene 3: Forest 3.2 m

Scene 4: Forest 3.8 m

Scene 5: Forest 4.5 m

Observations

In the optical vignetting section I told you that the Leica 90mm 2.0 pre Asph has a slightly bigger f/Stop than this VM 90mm 2.0 Apo-Ultron and this is something that is also clearly visible here – in all of the scenes. Especially off-center the Leica creates stronger blur and it generally looks smoother.

In terms of contrast and resolution the difference between the Leica (which had first been released in 1980) and this four and a half decades(!) younger VM 90mm 2.0 Apo-Ultron is smaller than I would have expected. The Leica does not feature the Voigtländer’s superior flare resistance though, and in Scene 5 that clearly shows, as veiling flare notably reduces the contrast in the Leica’s picture.

In terms of contrast and resolution the VM 75mm 1.5 Nokton looks worst here, but that doesn’t come as a surprise, as the pictures taken with it are blown up to match the framing of the 90mm lenses. In terms of bokeh it looks very similar to the Leica and therefore smoother than the VM 90mm 2.0 Apo-Ultron. The 75mm 1.5 was a bit harder to focus than the 90mm lenses.

What is the conclusion here? I already told you in the reviews of the Voigtländer Apo-Lanthar lenses: trying to correct all optical aberrations perfectly does not necessarily lead to the most pleasing bokeh rendering.

Personally, I think the VM 90mm 2.0 Apo-Ultron has pretty good bokeh, but there are lenses that create a more pleasing look, at least to my eyes. As bokeh quality is a subjective matter, you may come to a different conclusion though.

Sunstars

This 90mm 2.0 features Cosina’s newer aperture diaphragm design with 12 straight aperture blades which yields very distinct sunstars already from f/2.8.
If you want to know more about sunstar rendering of different lenses have a look at this article.

Chromatic aberration

Lateral

Only minor lateral CA are visible. Easy to correct in post with just one click, e.g. in Lightroom.

Longitudinal

When a modern lens carries an Apo tag I expect a perfect correction of all color aberrations. Purple fringing is indeed corrected perfectly (which by the classic definition is enough to call it apochromatic), but minor bokeh fringing can be visible, as you see below. This was already the case for the Voigtländer 35mm 2.0 Apo-Lanthar E and the Voigtländer VM 90mm 2.8 Apo-Skopar.

Compared to most lenses the correction can still be considered very good, but if you look close enough you will be able to spot some outlining in high contrast scenes in the out of focus areas.

Conclusion

The quality of Cosina’s releases has been extremely consistent over the past years and also this Voigtländer VM 90mm 2.0 Apo-Ultron does not disappoint.

The table above already paints a clear picture and here I actually had to search for a point of criticism and all I could come up with is that the focus throw could have been a little longer. Not a dealbreaker by any means.

Once more, I am sure this Voigtländer VM 90mm 2.0 Apo-Ultron is exactly what people expected of it, as again it outperforms the several times more expensive Leica pendant in almost every category while being smaller and lighter. What is not to like here?

buy from Amazon.com | ebay.com | ebay.de | B&H (affiliate links) for $899 or find your local Voigtländer distributor

Alternatives

Leica 90mm 2.0 Apo-Summicron-M Asph
I haven’t reviewed this lens myself yet. Luckily Fred Miranda already compared it to this Voigtländer VM 90mm 2.0 Apo-Ultron. Have a look at his comparison. If the slightly better optical vignetting is worth paying $4800 more to you get this Leica lens. I expect most of you would rather enjoy the better resolution, contrast and flare resistance as well as the lower weight of this Voigtländer lens.
For a lens released in 1998 it still performs very well though.
buy from ebay.com | ebay.de | B&H (affiliate links) for $5700 (new) or ~$2000 (used)

Leica 90mm 2.0 Summicron-M pre-Asph
A lens designed by Walter Mandler, which still has a lot of fans today. In terms of optical performance it cannot really compete with the aforementioned Apo-Summicron as well as this Apo-Ultron though.
buy from ebay.com | ebay.de (affiliate links) for ~$700

Zhong Yi 90mm 1.5 M
If f/2.0 is not fast enough for you – or you are looking for something cheaper – this Zhong Yi 90mm 1.5 can be a very appealing 90mm M-mount option. It does not correct most aberrations as well as this Voigtländer VM 90mm 2.0 Apo-Ultron, but if you are mainly looking for a portrait lens that might also not be needed.
buy from the manufacturer’s homepage | B&H | ebay.com | amazon.com for $399 (affiliate links)

Voigtländer VM 90mm 2.8 Apo-Skopar
The Voigtländer VM 90mm 2.8 Apo-Skopar is one stop slower and a bit cheaper, lighter and smaller. If you don’t need (or want) the f/2.0 maximum aperture this lens probably makes more sense for you, as it is better corrected at f/2.8 than this Apo-Ultron at f/2.0. Only if you are doing a lot of backlit shooting I would recommend to go for the Apo-Ultron, even if you don’t really need its one stop faster maximum aperture.
buy from Amazon.com | B&H | ebay.com | ebay.de (affiliate links) for $749 or find your local Voigtländer distributor

Voigtlander VM 75mm 1.5 Nokton
The difference in focal length is of course noticeable, but this 75mm lens is not only faster but also offers an even bigger entrance pupil. Its build quality sits slightly below many other Voigtländer lenses, as it seems to be more weight-optimized.
buy from amazon.com | amazon.de | B&H | ebay.com | ebay.de for $999 (affiliate links)

Sample Images

Most of the sample images in this review can be found in full resolution here.

Further Reading

• All Lens Reviews
• Best Fullframe Lenses from China
• Review: Voigtländer VM 21mm 1.4 Nokton
• Review: Voigtländer VM 40mm 1.4 Nokton MC
• Review: Voigtländer VM 50mm 1.0 Nokton

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BastianK

My name is Bastian and I am your expert here when it comes to ultra wide angle lenses, super fast portrait lenses (ranging from a 50mm f/0.95 to a 200mm f/1.8) and I also have reviewed way too many 35mm lenses. Don't ask me anything about macro or wildlife shooting though.

Latest posts by BastianK (see all)

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