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

Nokton Vintage Line 28mm f/1.5 Aspherical

Cosina Voigtländer · Leica M · 2024 · 10 elements in 8 groups with aspherical surfaces

single source, unconfirmed

Also known as: Voigtländer Nokton Vintage Line 28mm f/1.5 Aspherical · Voigtlander NOKTON Vintage Line 28mm F1.5 Aspherical VM · Voigtlander Nokton 28mm f/1.5 VM · Voigtlander 28mm f1.5 Nokton Type I · Voigtlander 28mm f1.5 Nokton Type II · Cosina Voigtlander Nokton 28/1.5 · NOKTON 28mm F1.5 Aspherical · フォクトレンダー ノクトン 28mm F1.5 · フォクトレンダー NOKTON Vintage Line 28mm F1.5 Aspherical VM

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
Type I — aluminium, silver or matte black paint (2024–2026) Leica M 2024–2026 — —
Type II — brass, silver or black paint (2024–) Leica M 2024 — —
  1. Type I and Type II are barrel versions of one lens: the same 10-element, 8-group optics, the same 43mm filter thread, 54 × 45.5 mm; only the material (aluminium against brass), the finishes and the supplied focusing knob differ. Cosina's product page, Phillip Reeve and Fred Miranda all state this.
  2. Weights are Cosina's: 250 g for Type I and 330 g for Type II. Phillip Reeve weighed a matte-black Type I at 249 g.
  3. Yen prices are Cosina's list prices excluding tax at launch. The US prices of $999 (Type I) and $1,049 (Type II) come from Phillip Reeve's review; no US distributor list price was fetched.
  4. Type I's end of production (June 2026) rests on Cosina's product page alone.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • Engraved NOKTON 28mm F1.5 Aspherical; VM bayonet with rangefinder coupling to 0.7 m and a focus scale that continues to 0.5 m
  • 43mm filter thread; no hood supplied — the bayonet LH-6 aluminium hood is an optional extra
  • Twelve straight aperture blades, half-stop clicks from f/1.5 to f/16
  • The four finishes: Type I in silver or matte black paint on aluminium, Type II in silver or gloss black paint on brass — a lens that feels heavy for its size is a Type II

Type I — aluminium, silver or matte black paint (2024–2026):

  • Aluminium barrel, 250 g; sold in silver and in matte black paint
  • Styling Cosina describes as recalling a 1970s lens; focusing lever with a finger hollow, no separate focusing knob

Type II — brass, silver or black paint (2024–):

  • Brass barrel, 330 g; sold in silver chrome and in black paint
  • Styling Cosina describes as recalling an early-1960s lens; a detachable focusing knob is supplied and screws into the hollow of the focusing lever

Specifications

Formula
10 elements in 8 groups with aspherical surfaces
Construction
10 elements / 8 groups
Aperture range
f/1.5–f/16
Diaphragm blades
12
Min. focus
0.5 m
Dimensions
54 × 45.5 mm
Weight
250 g
Filter
43 mm
Years manufactured
2024
Country
Japan
Coating
Multi-coated
Original price
¥125,000 excluding tax for Type I and ¥140,000 for Type II (2024); $999 and $1,049 in the United States

What reviewers say

Optical Ratings

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

Chromatic aberration
some at f/1.5
Vignetting
strong wide open
Flare & ghosting
faint ring flare
Distortion
low
Optical formula — 10 elements in 8 groups with aspherical surfaces

History

Cosina had made 28mm lenses for Leica-thread and M mount since the Ultron 28mm f/1.9 of 2001, and for two decades the fastest of them was f/1.9 or f/2. The Nokton Vintage Line 28mm F1.5 Aspherical, released on 19 January 2024, is the lens that closed the gap to the f/1.4 Summilux-M and, on Fred Miranda’s account, arrived because people had been asking Cosina for exactly this. It belongs to the Vintage Line, which means the barrel looks old and the glass does not: ten elements in eight groups with aspherical surfaces, designed with digital sensors in mind and with the corner colour cast of adapted wide-angles engineered out, in a body 54 mm across and 45.5 mm long that takes 43mm filters and focuses to 0.5 m, the rangefinder coupling running out at 0.7 m as usual.

There are two barrels and four finishes, and they are the whole of the identification problem. Type I is aluminium, 250 g, in silver or matte black paint, styled after a 1970s lens. Type II is brass, 330 g, in silver or gloss black paint, styled after an early-1960s lens, and comes with a small focusing knob that screws into the hollow of the focusing lever. The optics are identical; Cosina lists one formula, and both Phillip Reeve’s site and Fred Miranda measured the two as the same lens in different metal. Cosina priced Type I at ¥125,000 excluding tax and Type II at ¥140,000, which came to $999 and $1,049 in the United States, and its product page now says Type I ended production in June 2026, leaving the brass version as the one still listed. No hood is supplied; the vented LH-6 is an extra, which Bastian Kratzke found puzzling on a lens at this price when the cheaper Color-Skopar 28mm f/2.8 comes with one.

Reviewers agree on the shape of the lens’s performance because the shape follows from its size. Kratzke, on a Leica M10 and an adapted Sony, found it the smallest and lightest of the four fast 28s for M mount, very sharp at infinity, resistant to flare, low in distortion and pleasant in its out-of-focus rendering at short to middle distances — and, as the bill for all that, strongly vignetted wide open, prone to a faint ring flare between f/1.5 and f/2, and merely average off-centre at portrait distances, where a floating-element design like the Summilux or the Thypoch Simera does better at the cost of being much bigger. Fred Miranda put a production copy against his favourite 28, the 28mm f/1.4 Summilux-M, and found the infinity performance remarkably similar, the Voigtländer pulling ahead in the extreme corners from f/2.8, and the rendering close enough that he called it a match for a lens eight times the price. Jack Takahashi reached the same verdict on sharpness — on par with the 28 Summilux and the 35 Summilux FLE — but his copy was decentred, soft on the right at f/1.5 in the mid-frame at close range, which is the one buying warning that recurs: test a used copy on both sides of the frame wide open. Keith Wee, shooting a brass Type II on an M11 and on film, simply found nothing he needed that it lacked.

The obvious question for a buyer is which 28 to choose from Cosina’s own range, since the Ultron 28mm f/2 (in its second, compact version) and the tiny Color-Skopar 28mm f/2.8 sit beside it. Kratzke’s answer is that the three form a ladder of speed against size; Takahashi’s is that anyone who does not need f/1.5 should take the Ultron and pocket the difference. On a film body the lens wants a 28mm frameline — the 0.72 finders of the M6 and M7 and the wide-frame Bessa R4A and R4M — and on any camera the decision between Type I and Type II is a decision about eighty grams and the look of paint on brass, not about the pictures.

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

More sample photos elsewhere

These photographers keep all rights to their work — enjoy it at the source.

Sample photo wanted — shot with a Nokton Vintage Line 28mm f/1.5 Aspherical? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $830 across 26 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-19 (middle half $790–$850). First day tracked.

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

Show 36 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 28mm f/2.8 Aspherical · Color-Skopar 28mm f/3.5 · Nokton 21mm f/1.4 Aspherical · Nokton Vintage Line 35mm f/1.5 Aspherical · Nokton 50mm f/1.5 Aspherical · Ultron 28mm f/1.9 Aspherical · Ultron 28mm f/2

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.