I guess it comes down to wether you are to make money with the lens or not and what kind of work you want to realize with it. If you want a lens with character, the voigt will give you just that In short: You'll always get more with the zeiss/leica in terms of image quality because you pay twice for the zeiss and x-times as much for the leica. of course this isn't the most desirable thing for some photographers, for me it's good value and customers like it.so who am i to complain? you can write me an email to and i can send you one or the other non commercial DNG, do whatever you want with it One thing that I noticed with the 35 voigt is the rather strong flare, however it is the most beautiful (imho) flare i know, hard to describe but the flare's "rings" seem always to be in places where it doesn't bother maybe even enhances the image, giving it some kind of "retro" look. I also own the leica 50 f2 and 90 2.8, two of the most excellent leica lenses considering sharpness and color rendition (imho as always) it makes sense as the leica/zeiss lenses you mentioned are 2 stops slower than the voigt, a little bit of an unfair comparison when comparing color rendering and sharpness you will get better results with the leica (which i've tested) and the zeiss (i own a 25mm f2.8 zeiss, simply amazing). I own the 35 1.4 voigt and I'm impressed by the performance although i havent printed any really large prints at 1.4 (yet?). If you want to compare the 35mm f1.4 lenses, well you wont be able to afford the lens cap for the leica 35mm f1.4. Hmmm, the voigtländer is 2 stops faster, if you want to compare 2.8 lenses you should chose the voigt 35mm 2.5, which is closer.