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

Snapshot-Skopar / Color-Skopar 25mm f/4

Cosina Voigtländer · LTM + Leica M · 1999 · Symmetrical, 7 elements in 5 groups

via machine translation — corrections welcome

Also known as: Voigtländer Snapshot-Skopar 25mm f/4 · Voigtlander Snapshot Skopar 25mm f4 · Voigtländer Color-Skopar 25mm f/4 P · Voigtlander Color Skopar 25mm f/4 P VM · Cosina Voigtländer 25mm f/4 · Voigtlander 25/4 · フォクトレンダー スナップショットスコパー 25mm F4 · フォクトレンダー カラースコパー 25mm F4P · L39 · LTM · VM

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
Snapshot-Skopar 25mm F4 (Leica screw, 1999) LTM 1999–2005 — —
Color-Skopar 25mm F4 P (VM, 2007) Leica M 2007–2016 — —
  1. Formula, aperture range, blades, minimum focus, coupling range, dimensions, weight, filter size, yen price and the on-sale and discontinuation months for both versions come from Cosina's own discontinued-product pages (cosina.co.jp/discontinued/). Stephen Gandy's CameraQuest pages, the usual source of the US prices for the LTM era, sit behind a Cloudflare challenge and could not be read, and the Internet Archive was unreachable, so no US price is given.
  2. The same 25mm f/4 optics were sold a third time as the SC-Skopar 25mm f/4 for the Nikon S and Contax rangefinder mounts (2001–2005), a separate family in this catalog; it is rangefinder-coupled and has no helicoid of its own.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • Both versions: 39mm filter thread under a screw-off hood, ten aperture blades, f/4 to f/22, 82° angle of view
  • A 25mm brightline finder is needed on any body without a 25mm frame

Snapshot-Skopar 25mm F4 (Leica screw, 1999):

  • 39mm Leica screw thread; no rangefinder coupling at all — scale focus only, with a lever and click stops at 1m, 1.5m and 3m
  • Engraved SNAPSHOT-SKOPAR 25mm F4 on the shallow front ring that is in fact the hood, which unscrews to reach the 39mm filter thread
  • Silver or black finish
  • φ49.5 × 29.5mm, 90g, 0.7m minimum focus¹

Color-Skopar 25mm F4 P (VM, 2007):

  • M bayonet, rangefinder-coupled from infinity to 0.7m, focusing on to 0.5m uncoupled — the P is the pancake barrel¹
  • Engraved COLOR-SKOPAR 25mm F4 P; a focusing tab and winged aperture ring in place of the LTM lens's click-stop lever
  • φ55.0 × 30.3mm, 144g — half again the weight of the screw-mount lens¹

Specifications

Formula
Symmetrical, 7 elements in 5 groups
Construction
7 elements / 5 groups
Aperture range
f/4–f/22
Diaphragm blades
10
Filter
39 mm
Years manufactured
1999–2016
Country
Japan
Coating
Multi-coated
Original price
¥45,000 excl. tax (1999, Leica screw) (today ¥50,000); the VM pancake was ¥50,000 excl. tax in 2007

What reviewers say

Optical formula — Symmetrical, 7 elements in 5 groups

History

The 25mm f/4 is where Cosina’s Voigtländer began. In February 1999 the Bessa L went on sale — a Leica-thread body with a meter and no rangefinder or viewfinder — and with it the two lenses that made sense of such a camera: the 15mm f/4.5 Super Wide-Heliar and this, the Snapshot-Skopar 25mm F4. Both were scale-focus lenses, because the body could focus nothing, and the Snapshot name was the argument: seven elements in five groups, symmetrical, 90 grams, 29.5mm long, a 39mm filter thread hidden under a shallow screw-off hood, and a focusing lever with click stops at 1m, 1.5m and 3m so the lens could be set by feel. Cosina’s page claims sharpness into the corners from wide open and almost no ghosting from its multi-coating. It sold at ¥45,000 excluding tax, in silver or black, with a hood in the box and — by camera-wiki’s and 35mmc’s account — a 25mm brightline finder to sit in the shoe. Production ended in December 2005.

The same glass came back on 18 May 2007 as the Color-Skopar 25mm F4 P, the P for pancake, in VM mount at ¥50,000 excluding tax. What changed was the barrel: a rangefinder cam coupled from infinity to 0.7m, close focus to 0.5m beyond the coupling range, a focusing tab and a winged aperture ring in place of the lever, and 144 grams in a 55mm-wide, 30.3mm-long body. Camera-wiki calls the two optically identical, and Cosina describes both as the same five-group, seven-element symmetrical design. It ran until March 2016. Between them came a third barrel for a different world — the SC-Skopar 25mm f/4 of 2001 for the Nikon S and Contax rangefinder mounts, coupled, without a helicoid of its own, and a separate page here.

Reviewers of the screw-mount lens tend to write about how it is used rather than how it draws, because the drawing gives them little to complain about. Eddy Lambert put one on a 1936 Leica III and found the click stops turned the camera into a point-and-shoot, with a finder that is bright, true and almost weightless, sharp and contrasty pictures, little distortion, and vignetting that is gone by f/8. Martin Bluhm calls it a hidden gem for street work and even infrared, where it shows no hot spot at f/8, and notes that with this much depth of field it is hard not to focus correctly. His caveats are the paint, which wears faster than Leica’s, and digital: on a Sony A7R it does poorly. That warning is louder for the M-mount pancake. Breedfreak found it clean and nearly free of vignetting on film from an M7, then watched a Leica M10 lay a magenta band along both edges of the frame that no profile quite removed, and sent it back. KJ Vogelius, also on the VM version, was pleasantly surprised — good flare resistance, low distortion, strong by f/8 — while noting the clear drop toward the edges at f/4 and an aperture ring that moves on its own. The DC Watch review at launch settled on f/5.6 to f/8 as the sweet spot and found the short standard hood inadequate.

For a buyer the two versions are different tools. The Snapshot-Skopar needs the screw-to-bayonet adapter on an M body and, being uncoupled, ignores the rangefinder entirely; it is at home on a Bessa L, a Barnack Leica or a mirrorless camera, always with a finder in the shoe. The Color-Skopar P couples, but no Leica M shows a 25mm frame — Vogelius’s grumble — so it too wants the external finder on anything but a Bessa R4. Either way, check that the hood is present, since the filter thread lives under it, and that the finder came with the lens, because the two are often sold apart. Both are film lenses first: on a digital M the edges go magenta, and every reviewer who tried says so.

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 Snapshot-Skopar / Color-Skopar 25mm f/4
Snapshot-Skopar 25mm f/4 in Leica screw mount: the scale-focus lever below and the engraved ring that is really the hood (say_cheddar) — say_cheddar, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
Sample photo taken with the Snapshot-Skopar / Color-Skopar 25mm f/4
Arcade — Leica IIIg, Snapshot-Skopar 25mm f/4, Kodak Tri-X (Mark Roy) — Mark Roy, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
Sample photo taken with the Snapshot-Skopar / Color-Skopar 25mm f/4
Bang Bao pier, Koh Chang — Leica IIIc, Snapshot-Skopar 25mm f/4, Kodak Portra 400 (Mondo79) — Mondo79, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Sample photo wanted — shot with a Snapshot-Skopar / Color-Skopar 25mm f/4? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $330 across 15 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-19 (middle half $310–$400). First day tracked.

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

Show 2 more listings

Buying from Yahoo! Auctions outside Japan. It is a domestic marketplace: sellers ship within Japan, and most will not register an overseas buyer. A proxy service bids on your behalf, receives the item and forwards it, for a fee and a wait. Buyee, Jauce and ZenMarket each accept a Yahoo auction number directly. Listed alphabetically for information — none is recommended over another, and none of these is an affiliate link.

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/3.5 · Color-Skopar 35mm f/2.5 · SC-Skopar 25mm f/4 · Super Wide-Heliar 15mm f/4.5 Aspherical

Sources (9)

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.