Voigtländer PORTRAIT HELIAR 75mm f/1.8 Lens Announced with Spherical Aberration Control

Lens News

by Jakub HanMay 26^th, 2025

Voigtländer PORTRAIT HELIAR 75mm f/1.8 full-frame lens for Sony E-mount offers a spherical aberration control ring that provides under- or over-corrected spherical aberration for a creative bokeh look. The lens has fully manual focus and aperture control, but the pins provide EXIF data and a manual focus assist.

In recent years, we have seen numerous fast manual prime lenses from Voigtländer. One example might be the Voigtländer 50mm f/1.0 Nokton lens from 2022 that covers full-frame sensors. Recently, Cosina (the lens manufacturer producing Voigtländer lenses since 1999) announced a new lens with a unique trick up its sleeve – the Voigtländer PORTRAIT HELIAR 75mm f/1.8. Let’s take a closer look.

Voigtländer PORTRAIT HELIAR 75mm f/1.8 lens

This new full-frame portrait prime lens comes with the Sony E-mount. Although its focus and aperture operation are fully manual, the lens features electronic communication pins for EXIF data transfer. Furthermore, the built-in distance encoder supports 5-axis image stabilization on the body side. Other features, enabled by the active lens-camera communication, include manual focus support (magnifying the finder display by operating the focus ring).

The aperture diaphragm comprises 9 blades to make the aperture opening as circular as possible. According to Cosina, point light sources have well-rounded out-of-focus areas. The aperture is available between f/1.8 and f/11. The optical structure of the lens includes 6 elements in 3 groups.

Spherical aberration control

The unique feature of the lens is the spherical aberration control ring located at the front of the lens barrel. It provides an adjustable under- or over-corrected spherical aberration. This results in a wide range of out-of-focus effects. In other words, it offers you the ability to adjust some aspects of how your bokeh looks.

There are a few technical aspects of the aberration control that you should be aware of:

• Turning the spherical aberration control ring changes the aberration and the focus position, so check your focus after adjusting the spherical aberration.
• Turning the spherical aberration control ring changes the f-stop (within 1/3 EV), so check exposure after adjusting spherical aberration.
• Turning the spherical aberration control ring to the underside will reduce the peripheral light intensity. Adjust the correction amount or retouch the image after shooting.

Key specs of the lens

• focal length – 75mm
• angle of view – 33.2°
• aperture – f/1.8-f/11, 9-blades
• minimum focus – 0.7m
• maximum reproduction ratio 1:7.4
• diameter x length – φ70.0×88.0mm
• weight – 560g (19.8oz)
• front filter thread diameter – 62mm

Price and availability

The Voigtländer PORTRAIT HELIAR 75mm f/1.8 lens should be available from June 2025. As Petapixel reported, the lens is supposed to cost around £750 plus VAT in the United Kingdom. The US pricing has not been announced yet.

Do you use Voigtländer lenses for your productions? What do you think about the new PORTRAIT HELIAR 75mm f/1.8? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section underneath the article.