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

Super Wide-Heliar 15mm f/4.5 Aspherical

Cosina Voigtländer · LTM + Leica M · 1999 · Symmetrical, aspherical

single source, unconfirmed via machine translation — corrections welcome

Known as “SWH”

Also known as: Voigtländer Super Wide-Heliar 15mm f/4.5 Aspherical · Voigtlander Super Wide Heliar 15mm F4.5 Aspherical · SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 Aspherical · SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 Aspherical II · SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 Aspherical III · Voigtlander Super Wide-Heliar 15mm f/4.5 II VM · Voigtlander Super Wide-Heliar 15mm f/4.5 III VM · Voigtlander 15mm f4.5 L39 · Voigtlander 15mm f4.5 LTM · Voigtlander 15/4.5 Leica M · Cosina Voigtlander SWH 15mm · Voigtlander 15mm 4.5 Heliar · フォクトレンダー SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 Aspherical · フォクトレンダー スーパーワイドヘリアー 15mm F4.5 · コシナ スーパーワイドヘリアー 15mm

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
L39 screw mount (1999–2012) LTM 1999–2012 — —
VM II (2009–2015) Leica M 2009–2015 — —
VM III (2015– ) Leica M 2015 — —
  1. The specification block above is the original L39 lens of 1999: eight elements in six groups, ten blades, 0.3m, φ49.6 × 30.7mm, 105g, ¥65,000 with finder. The VM II shares the optics at 156g with a 52mm filter thread and 0.5m close focus; the VM III is a different eleven-element design at 247g with 58mm filters. Every figure is from Cosina's product pages, read through machine translation.
  2. The 105g and φ49.6 × 30.7mm of the screw-mount lens rest on Cosina's page alone; no reviewer fetched for this draft weighed the original. The VM II's 156g is confirmed by KJ Vogelius, the III's 247g and 55.2mm by Macfilos.
  3. The Nikon F-mount Super Wide-Heliar 15mm f/4.5 SL of 2003–07 is the same eight-element optical block as the L39 and VM II lenses in a different barrel and mount; it is catalogued separately as sl-super-wide-heliar-15mm-f45.
  4. Cosina's Japanese pages give release and discontinuation months. Stephen Gandy's CameraQuest pages, which would give the US import dates and prices for the 1999 lens, could not be reached for this draft.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • 110° across the diagonal on every version, f/4.5 to f/22
  • Needs an external 15mm finder on every rangefinder body; the widest built-in frame on any M or Bessa is 21mm
  • Three versions, three weights: 105g screw-mount, 156g VM II, 247g VM III

L39 screw mount (1999–2012):

  • 39mm Leica thread; silver or black finish
  • Eight elements in six groups, ten blades, focus to 0.3m, no rangefinder cam
  • The smallest version by a wide margin: φ49.6 × 30.7mm and 105g, with a partial hood machined into the barrel and no filter thread
  • Plastic-bodied 15mm finder in the box, a high-eyepoint design for spectacle wearers

VM II (2009–2015):

  • Engraved SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 Aspherical II; VM bayonet
  • Rangefinder-coupled from infinity to 0.7m, focus ring on to 0.5m
  • 52mm filter thread inside a hood that is part of the barrel
  • φ59.4 × 38.2mm and 156g — half again the weight of the screw-mount lens

VM III (2015– ):

  • Engraved SUPER WIDE-HELIAR 15mm F4.5 Aspherical III; matte black barrel matching the 10mm and the 12mm III
  • Eleven elements in nine groups — a new design — on ten blades
  • Rangefinder-coupled to 0.7m, focus ring to 0.5m; 58mm filter thread
  • φ64.8 × 55.2mm and 247g, the largest of the three

Specifications

Formula
Symmetrical, aspherical
Construction
8 elements / 6 groups
Aperture range
f/4.5–f/22
Diaphragm blades
10
Min. focus
0.3 m
Dimensions
49.6 × 30.7 mm
Weight
105 g
Years manufactured
1999
Country
Japan
Coating
Multi-coated
Original price
¥65,000 excluding tax, finder included (1999) (today ¥72,000)

What reviewers say

Optical Ratings

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

Chromatic aberration
lateral, correctable
Vignetting
strong, all versions
Flare & ghosting
well controlled
Distortion
very low
Optical formula — Symmetrical, aspherical

History

The Super Wide-Heliar 15mm f/4.5 Aspherical is where the Cosina Voigtländer story starts. It was released in February 1999 with the Bessa L — a Leica-thread body with a meter and no viewfinder — and the 25mm f/4 Snapshot-Skopar, the two lenses camera-wiki records as the first Cosina sold under the name; the Nokton 50mm f/1.5 and the rest of the screw-mount line followed later that year and over the next two. The idea was a body that needed no finder because its lenses used external ones, and a lens so wide that nobody would miss a rangefinder: 110° across the diagonal from eight elements in six groups, symmetrical, with an aspherical element to hold the lines straight, in a barrel 49.6mm across and 30.7mm long that weighs 105g, with a partial hood machined into it, no filter thread, ten blades, f/4.5 to f/22 and focus to 0.3m by scale. Cosina listed it at ¥65,000 excluding tax with the finder in the box, in silver or black. The finder is plastic, a high-eyepoint design for spectacle wearers, and Hamish Gill’s advice is to replace it with a metal one. Cosina’s page carries the lens as discontinued in December 2012.

Two M-mount versions followed, and the way to tell the three apart is by the scales. The VM II of April 2009 is the same glass in an M bayonet with a rangefinder cam — coupled from infinity to 0.7m, ring on to 0.5m — with a 52mm filter thread inside a hood that is part of the barrel, 59.4mm across, 38.2mm long and 156g, and at ¥65,000 the same list price as the original a decade earlier; Cosina ended it in September 2015. The VM III of 19 March 2015 is a new lens: eleven elements in nine groups, recomputed for digital sensors so the corners hold, ten blades, 58mm filters, coupled and scaled the same way, 64.8mm across, 55.2mm long, 247g, ¥95,000 excluding tax, and still current, with the 15mm Viewfinder M a separate ¥29,500. An E-mount III of the same optics followed, and the Nikon F-mount SL of 2003–07 is the original eight-element block in yet another barrel, with a page of its own.

The reviews divide cleanly by sensor. On film everyone likes it: Gill, shooting the screw-mount lens against a Contax Hologon on 400-speed film, found it surprisingly hard to criticise — higher contrast making up for a shade less corner resolution than the Zeiss, only the slightest note of pincushion, vignetting milder than the Hologon’s — and called it the sensible choice for a practical ultra-wide at a reasonable price. Steve Huff zone-focused one on a Leica M8 and found it as sharp as could be at f/5.6, at around $400 for the lens. On full-frame digital the original and the II come apart in the corners: Paul Amyes, on a 36-megapixel Sony A7r, got smeared corners until f/11, a magenta cast that stopping down did not cure and obvious barrel distortion, and would not recommend the lens to anyone who did not already own one; Bastian Kratzke’s VM II on a Leica M10 gave across-frame sharpness at every aperture and good sunstars, but 3.8 stops of vignetting, lateral colour and a magenta corner cast, with field curvature added on a Sony’s thicker filter stack. KJ Vogelius, on an M9 and an A7, saw the same pattern — perfectly straight lines, pronounced vignetting, edges that suffer on digital and recover on stopping down. The III is the answer to all of that, and Dirk Saeger’s M10 review of it finds the lens sharp to the edge for anyone but a pixel-peeper, the vignetting gone by f/16, and the rangefinder coupling functional but nearly superfluous at this depth of field. Nobody disputes the build: all-metal, engraved, with an aperture ring Gill found tighter than on his other Voigtländers.

Buying one is a matter of body first. The screw-mount lens needs an L-to-M adapter on an M or a Bessa R2 and up, and which frame the adapter brings up does not matter: nothing on the body frames 15mm, and the picture is composed in the shoe-mounted finder, so check it is in the box, and expect the plastic original rather than the metal 15mm Viewfinder M. On a Bessa L or T it screws straight in, which is the pairing the lens was designed for. The II and III couple to the rangefinder and will focus properly on an M6, an M7 or an R4, though at f/4.5 and 15mm the scale does most of the work anyway; the II is the small one, the III the one that behaves on a digital sensor, and the E-mount III will fit nothing with a rangefinder at all. Filters are impossible on the original, 52mm on the II and 58mm on the III. The front element of every version sits close behind a hood that cannot come off, so look there first for cleaning marks, and read the engraving — a lens marked SL is the Nikon F version, however many M adapters are stacked behind it.

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 Super Wide-Heliar 15mm f/4.5 Aspherical
Kyoto Chuo Shinkin Bank, Higashigojo branch (1924) — the screw-mount Super Wide-Heliar 15mm f/4.5 on a Canon L2, Ilford XP2 Super (colbwt) — colbwt, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
Sample photo taken with the Super Wide-Heliar 15mm f/4.5 Aspherical
Murcia, Spain, 2006 — Bessa T with the screw-mount Super Wide-Heliar 15mm f/4.5, by the photographer's Flickr tags (Aslak Raanes) — Aslak Raanes, via Flickr and Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
Sample photo taken with the Super Wide-Heliar 15mm f/4.5 Aspherical
The VM III on Cosina's VM-E Close Focus adapter (Dllu) — Dllu, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sample photo wanted — shot with a Super Wide-Heliar 15mm f/4.5 Aspherical? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $370 across 45 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-19 (middle half $330–$470). First day tracked.

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

Show 94 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 · Snapshot-Skopar / Color-Skopar 25mm f/4 · Heliar-Hyper Wide 10mm f/5.6 Aspherical · Super Wide-Heliar 15mm f/4.5 SL Aspherical · Ultra Wide-Heliar 12mm f/5.6 Aspherical

Sources (13)

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.