Glass Bodies a variant-level encyclopedia of vintage lenses and cameras by iwillpat

Color-Skopar Vintage Line 21mm f/3.5 Aspherical

Cosina Voigtländer · Leica M · 2019

Also known as: Voigtländer Color-Skopar 21mm f/3.5 Aspherical VM · Voigtlander Color Skopar 21mm F3.5 Vintage Line · COLOR-SKOPAR 21mm F3.5 Aspherical · Voigtlander 21/3.5 VM · Cosina Voigtländer 21mm f/3.5 · フォクトレンダー カラースコパー 21mm F3.5 · COLOR-SKOPAR Vintage Line 21mm F3.5 Aspherical VM

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
Type I (2019) Leica M 2019 — —
Type II, black or silver (2021) Leica M 2021 — —
  1. Cosina lists one specification block for both types except weight (Type I 180g, Type II 220g). Whether the Type II's extra forty grams is a change of barrel material is not stated on Cosina's page and is left open here.
  2. The optional LH-11 bayonet hood (¥10,000) has a crystalline paint finish; the lens ships without a hood.
  3. Rangefinder coupling stops at 0.7m; the helicoid continues to 0.5m for scale focus and for mirrorless bodies on an adapter.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • All-metal barrel, φ52 × 30.0mm, 39mm filter thread
  • Ten aperture blades, f/3.5–f/22
  • Engraved COLOR-SKOPAR 21mm F3.5 Aspherical; the f/4 predecessor carries no Aspherical mark

Type I (2019):

  • 1950s styling: knurled rings and a focusing stick rather than a tab
  • 180g on Cosina's figures

Type II, black or silver (2021):

  • 1970s styling with a focusing tab in place of the stick — the grip of a first-party Leica M lens
  • 220g, forty grams over the Type I, in black or silver

Specifications

Formula
9 elements in 8 groups, one aspherical and one low-dispersion element
Construction
9 elements / 8 groups
Aperture range
f/3.5–f/22
Diaphragm blades
10
Min. focus
0.5 m
Dimensions
52 × 30 mm
Weight
180 g
Filter
39 mm
Years manufactured
2019
Country
Japan
Coating
Multi-coated
Original price
¥95,000 excluding tax (2019); $799 in the United States (today ¥103,000)

What reviewers say

Optical Ratings

Aggregated from the reviews above — follow the links for the full picture.

Chromatic aberration
lateral, correctable
Vignetting
heavy, slow recovery
Flare & ghosting
well controlled
Distortion
wavy barrel
Optical formula — 9 elements in 8 groups, one aspherical and one low-dispersion element
ⓘ What these charts mean

MTF (modulation transfer function) shows how much contrast the lens keeps at a given fineness of detail, from the center of the frame to the corner — the coarse curves track punch, the fine ones resolving power, and a gap between solid and dashed lines means astigmatism. Relative illumination (falloff) shows how much darker the corners are than the center at each aperture. Manufacturers only began publishing these for modern lenses; no 1950s maker issued them, which is why older families here cite period magazine bench tests instead.

History

The Color-Skopar 21mm f/3.5 Aspherical is what Cosina built when the 21mm f/4 pancake, drawn for film in 2001, had spent a decade painting magenta into the corners of digital frames. Released on 25 January 2019 with the Ultron 35mm f/2, it opened the Vintage Line: a 1950s exterior — all metal, knurled, engraved in the old manner — over an entirely new formula of nine elements in eight groups with one aspherical and one low-dispersion element, which Cosina’s own page describes as designed against colour cast at the edges of a digital sensor. It kept everything that made the f/4 useful: a 39mm filter, ten blades, f/22, close focus of 0.5m with rangefinder coupling to 0.7m, and a barrel 52mm across and 30mm long that weighs 180g. The price was ¥95,000 excluding tax, or $799 through CameraQuest, not far short of double the f/4 it stood beside for six more years; when Cosina ended the f/4 in November 2025, this was the lens named as carrying on.

There are two types and one set of glass. The Type II of 16 December 2021 changed the outside to the look of the 1970s and put a focusing tab where the Type I had a stick — the grip, as PetaPixel put it, of a first-party Leica M lens — and came in black or silver at the same price, forty grams heavier at 220g. Cosina’s page lists a single optical specification for both. Jack Takahashi, who owned a Type I, would buy the Type II next time for the tab and the plainer look, and that is the whole of the choice: the pictures are the same. Neither type ships with a hood; the LH-11 bayonet hood, with its crystalline paint, is a ¥10,000 extra.

The reviews agree on more than they dispute. Bastian Kratzke’s measured falloff — 2.4 EV wide open, still 1.9 EV at f/11 — is the number every other reviewer describes in words: Takahashi calls the uncorrected vignetting strong, Steve Huff calls it easy to fix, and all three lean on a lens profile. Sharpness is good in the centre at every aperture, and the corners depend on where the reviewer stands: Kratzke sees contrast drop on a high-resolution sensor and slightly wavy barrel distortion with field curvature up close, Takahashi sees corner-to-corner sharpness once the field curvature settles by f/8 and no distortion he noticed, Huff sees a lens that is sharp without being oversharp and prefers it that way. Flare is the strongest suit — Kratzke found it very hard to make look bad — and the ten-blade sunstars are a recurring pleasure. All three measure it against the same two lenses: the f/4 it replaced, which it beats on contrast and colour cast, and the Leica Super-Elmar 21mm f/3.4, which Takahashi finds it very hard to justify paying vastly more for.

For a buyer the questions are few. Type I or II is a matter of stick or tab; silver exists only on the Type II. The box holds no hood and, unlike the f/4 in screw mount, no finder — a Bessa R4 frames it natively, and a Leica M needs the 21mm or 21/25 finder in the shoe. The listing to avoid is the Sony E-mount version of the same name, which is a different lens body and does not fit an M.

Expand Collapse

This history is AI-written, from the sources listed at the foot of the page. Where the record is silent it says so rather than filling the gap — but no human wrote these sentences.

Example photos

Sample photo taken with the Color-Skopar Vintage Line 21mm f/3.5 Aspherical
Horseshoe Bend, Arizona, December 2023, Color-Skopar 21mm f/3.5 (Sergiy Galyonkin) — Sergiy Galyonkin, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Sample photo taken with the Color-Skopar Vintage Line 21mm f/3.5 Aspherical
Times Square, September 2023, Color-Skopar 21mm f/3.5 (Sergiy Galyonkin) — Sergiy Galyonkin, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Sample photo taken with the Color-Skopar Vintage Line 21mm f/3.5 Aspherical
Paddington station, Elizabeth line, February 2024, Color-Skopar 21mm f/3.5 (Sergiy Galyonkin) — Sergiy Galyonkin, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Sample photo wanted — shot with a Color-Skopar Vintage Line 21mm f/3.5 Aspherical? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $680 across 10 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-19 (middle half $660–$690). First day tracked.

Asking prices from the listings scanned, not sales; junk-flagged rows and auction lots excluded; other currencies are not converted.

Listings updated 2026-09-19. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.

Related: Color-Skopar 21mm f/4 · Color-Skopar 28mm f/2.8 Aspherical · Color-Skopar 35mm f/2.5 · Nokton 21mm f/1.4 Aspherical · Ultron 21mm f/1.8 Aspherical · Ultron Vintage Line 35mm f/2 Aspherical

Sources (7)

Every page here is assembled from public sources, and the gaps are real ones. If you own this lens, know a serial number I'm missing, or can see where I have it wrong, tell me — corrections, serials and sample photos are all worth having.