Voigtlander Portrait Heliar 75mm f/1.8 Aspherical - Sony E

The PORTRAIT HELIAR 75mm F1.8 is Voigtländer's first full-frame interchangeable lens with spherical aberration control, a large-aperture manual focus medium telephoto lens exclusively for Sony E-mount. It covers the full-frame image circle and its optical design is optimised for the image sensors of Sony mirrorless cameras.

The lens focuses on the relationship between spherical aberration and bokeh and allows arbitrary control of under- and overcorrection of spherical aberration to produce a wide variety of bokeh expressions.

The lens construction is of the HELIAR design with six elements in three groups and large aperture of F1.8. Spherical aberration is controlled both by the spherical aberration control ring and by the aperture. In images under-corrected, the centre of focus is soft-focus with flares in the highlights. The rear bokeh is gently rendered. In over-corrected images, on the other hand, the centre of focus remains and the after-blur is bubbly. These tendencies have been regarded as defects that should be corrected from the point of view of ideal optical design, but this lens was planned and designed with the aim of making the characteristics of spherical aberration lead to unique photographic expression. Fluctuating spherical aberration will, in optical principle, also shift the focus position, but this issue has been addressed by incorporating a mechanism that cancels out the misalignment by changing the distance between the internal lens groups in conjunction with the control ring. When operating the control ring, a small finger point is provided at the position where the left thumb touches it, allowing the approximate state of correction to be known tactilely.

This lens is equipped with electronic contacts providing Exif information of the shooting data. It does not rely on in-camera lens optical compensations, and the performance of the lens itself is captured in the image. The lens also has a built-in distance encoder which is also compatible with camera models with 5-axis in-body image stabilisation, which use distance information to the subject for shift stabilisation. 

The metal focus ring has a diamond pattern for excellent grip. The high-precision metal helicoid provides a silky, greased operating feel even when the focusing. The aperture is controlled by the lens, not by a command dial on the camera. The lens has a nine-element aperture, which allows the out-of-focus parts of point light sources to be rendered in a well-defined shape.

Main Features

• Various bokeh expressions with the spherical aberration control ring
• Compatible with Sony E mount cameras
• Highly rigid and durable all-metal lens barrel
• Manual focus for reliable focusing
• Beautiful bokeh with 9 aperture blades