After announcing it at the 2025 CP+ show, Japanese manufacturer Cosina recently released the Voigtländer Portrait Heliar 75mm f/1.8, a manual focus medium-telephoto lens currently available exclusively for Sony E-mount full-frame cameras.

Physically, the lens measures 88mm in length and 70mm in diameter, with a front filter thread of 62mm, and weighs 560 grams. The aperture diaphragm has nine blades and is controlled mechanically via a ring on the lens barrel. Focus adjustment is also manual, achieved through a metal focus ring with a diamond-patterned grip and a high-precision helicoid mechanism for smooth, consistent movement. The lens does not include built-in optical stabilization or autofocus. It features a maximum aperture of f/1.8 and a minimum aperture of f/11, with an optical design consisting of six elements in three groups. It offers a 32.2° angle of view and a minimum focusing distance of 70 cm, resulting in a maximum reproduction ratio of 1:7.4.

One of the lens’s defining characteristics is its spherical aberration control system. This mechanism, operated via a dedicated control ring marked with “under” and “over” indicators, allows for the adjustment of the lens’s rendering of out-of-focus areas (bokeh). Setting the control toward “under” produces a soft-focus effect with reduced contrast and sharpness, while “over” settings enhance sharpness and contrast, resulting in more defined out-of-focus highlights, such as bubble or ring-shaped bokeh. Adjusting this ring can sometime affect the plane of focus and can slightly shift the effective aperture by up to one-third of a stop; moreover, under-correction may introduce peripheral light falloff.