The (Near) Perfect Lens for a (Digital) Leica M

The Leica 35mm ƒ/2.4 Summarit with its dedicated hood

This isn't a holiday post (despite today being Festivus*), but it continues the ideas of several recent posts. You know how I like to follow threads.

In the Comments to the "Inglorious Excess" post of a few days ago, Peter Wright wrote:

"Thirty-five millimeters is my favourite focal length, and I want to give a shout out to my latest acquisition: A Leica 35mm ƒ/2.4 Summarit. (I already own other 35mm M-mount lenses, but 'needed' to add this one.) It is not an inexpensive lens, and probably does not test as well as the Sigma [the big 35mm ƒ/1.2 we were remarking on —Ed.]. (Is that blasphemy!) But of course, I don't know for sure as I don't own the Sigma. What I can say is that the optical performance of the Summarit leaves nothing to be desired, the lens is beautifully built, is absolutely tiny, and has a square opening lens hood, which the round (metal) lens cap goes over with a snug fit. Or if the hood is not in use, the same lens cap fits directly over the lens. Very ingenious! And it weighs less than 200 grams, or less than a fifth of the Sigma! It has been my most-used lens by a good margin since I bought it. Now that's the kind of lens engineering I am willing to pay for (and use)."

It's probably been 25+ years since I wrote an article called "The Best Lens for a Leica," and I was talking about film M's, but back then I chose the 35mm Summicron as the best natural mate for an M. At that time it would have been the v. IV "pre-ASPH."  The tradition at the time was that a 50mm lens was the mainstay lens for a Leica M, but a poll on CompuServe showed more photographers using 35's than 50's as their main normal. Optically, the Summicron IV was very good. Although it had what would now be considered excessive falloff, this improved more pictures than it spoiled. B&W printmakers at the time were used to "burning in" the edges and corners of an image to make it more coherent, so having the lens do essentially the same thing for you didn't hurt. More importantly, it was tiny and unobtrusive, hence easily portable. And it had a "tab" on the focusing helical—a little scalloped handle. With a little practice, good shooters could learn to set the manual focus by feel at distances between about five feet and infinity (closer in it was more difficult).

The equivalent today is perhaps not the fastidiously corrected aspherical Summicron (a perfectly nice lens, but which costs $1,300 more—almost one entire Sigma!), but rather the Summarit Peter is talking about. The 2/3rd-stop difference in maximum aperture is immaterial now that ISO speeds for digital are so much higher than they ever were for film, and of course a wider maximum aperture is not needed for focusing or viewing on a rangefinder camera. The Summarit is not cheap for a lens, but it's inexpensive for a Leica lens. Peter rightly says that it's tiny. (Unfortunately camerasize.com only lists the older, spherical ƒ/2.5 Summarit 35mm lens. I put that one up next to the Sigma, though, and the visual will make you chuckle.) The Summicron is small; the Summarit ASPH. is even smaller. And it has the focusing tab.

It's what I'd choose if I were shooting an M10. Not for me the BHEF (big-heavy-expensive-fast) behemoths! In a lens, I covet small, light, and nimble.

Mike

*"Festivus is a secular holiday celebrated on December 23 as an alternative to the pressures and commercialism of the Christmas season. Originally created by author Daniel O'Keefe, Festivus entered popular culture after it was made the focus of the 1997 Seinfeld episode 'The Strike,' which O'Keefe's son, Dan O'Keefe, co-wrote" (Wikipedia). Now you can buy cards, celebration kits, miniature Festivus poles, mugs, and Christmas tree ornaments, but how can I link to those when the holiday is supposed to be anti-commercial? One of the likeable things about Festivus is that if you take it too seriously, you're kinda missing part of the point....

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Stan B.: "Chuckle? More like...."

Bob Curtis: "If you have the itch better scratch before January 1. Price of 35mm ƒ/2.4 Summarit goes up $200 that day. Mainly tariff related."

Voigtländer Ultron 35mm ƒ/2 Vintage Line lens

Lynn: "For those who find the Summarit beyond reach, I can recommend the Voigtländer Ultron 35mm ƒ/2 Aspherical Vintage Line lens. Tiny, outstanding performance, and a fraction of the price. It has a focusing stick rather than a tab."

Jeff: "Many on the Leica User Forum swear by the 35mm Summarit (and its sibling 75mm Summarit). Erwin Puts also has written favorably about the lens, which has less tendency to flare or to exhibit focus shift than the 35mm Summicron ASPH. I’ve owned the latter for decades, but if I were starting today, or recommending a Leica 35mm lens to others, I wouldn’t hesitate choosing the Summarit. Others dismiss the Summarit line as a cheaper, lower quality construction Leica option, but I think they’ve underestimated the performance and value."

Dan Khong: "The word 'Perfect' seems too high standard and superlative. 'Near Perfect' sounds more plausible."

Editor replies: Fixed.

Geoff Wittig: "I've finally come to recognize the virtues of the 35mm focal length. Visiting family for the holidays I've found Sigma's 35mm ƒ/1.4 Art lens ideal for indoor candids and portraits. Crazy sharp with just enough vignetting, beautiful rendering, and perfectly balanced on Canon's full frame D-SLRs. A no-apologies-lens, without the ludicrous size and weight of Sigma's latest Art lenses.

"It does have a weird interaction with Canon's 5D mk IV; you have to turn off in-camera lens correction or you get a bizarre artifact pattern. But it's no loss; the slight edge falloff improves almost all images."

Rob L: "I really love the Sigma 35mm ƒ/1.4—but it was one of the things that led to me switching to Fuji. Just too big, it was wonderful when I was being intentional, but I'd not bring the camera along when I was just wandering and that's where all the pictures are!"

Ilkka: "One with limited means, or at least less than unlimited, and looking for M lenses should also take a close look at the Zeiss series. Originally built for the film Ikon and thus native M's with rangefinder focusing. Great lenses all of them."

terence morrissey: "Lloyd Chambers at diglloyd.com thinks the Zeiss ZM 35mm ƒ/1.4 is the best 35mm M lens.

Mike replies: Thanks Terry. A strong recommendation, as Lloyd knows lenses. But it's good to remember that we all have our idiosyncratic definitions of "good." As I've mentioned, more resolution is not necessarily "good" to me, because almost all lenses have enough. The newer Voigtländer 50mm ƒ/1.5 Nokton Aspherical is also very good...by my definitions! It's $1,247 less than the Zeiss. If value factors in, that's one I'd investigate.

Comments

[Guy Toner]

I’ve recently switched from a bulky Nikon SLR to the Sony A7R IV. I don’t wish to waste the potential resolution of my new camera but I yearn for small light prime lenses that will make my new kit more easily portable. I generally shoot at f4 - f8 so the lens reviews comparing charts and edge sharpness at maximum aperture are of little use to me. It would be helpful to compare lenses at a standard aperture such as f5.6.

[Steve]

WOW. I just clicked on the size comparison link. That's some serious compensation going on with the Sigma. I won't even use the 23 1.4 or 16 1.4 on my X Pro 3 because it they seem way out of proportion to the camera. The Sigma on the Sony takes that to a whole new level of absurdity. If I could afford the Leica that lens looks absolutely beautiful on the camera. No doubt it's a great lens.

[Doug C]

35 Summicron the best lens for Leica M? Balderdash or,?

It is certainly what I have chosen for the last 40+ years, but was I right? Not sure. The couple of 35 Summiluxes I owned or used were certainly pretty marginal wide open, just like any Japanese 50mm 1.4, but unlike a 50mm Summilux, but I didn't know that or care, I was not a 50mm user back then.

Back when I sent back the 35 Summilux and bought the $15 cheaper Summicron I thought I had done the smart thing. $215 for the Summicron and $240 for the Summilux. Both prices brand new in 1977.

These days I have the "wrong" 35 Summicron, The Asph but in Chrome, a bit heavier and I never warmed up to using it, though the images are really quite beautiful. Or more than that, really. Shocking but in the most subtle way.

However, the current digital M cameras are things I don't like, chubby, expensive and failing to offer the advantages they held in the film era.

For me, and the way I work, rangefinders are OK, SLRs are OK, but being able to view the actual image in an EV? Simply better. I have been viewing the image at full size on the ground glass, and using a loupe for long enough that I am not willing to let that go. And EVs do that and the others do not.

And I find the camera and lens at the top of this post rather unattractive, my film era bias, no doubt. But f2.4, why?

Anyway, the Summicron has always been the right lens, or close enough.

[Jim Arthur]

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Mike.

FESTIVUS YES!
-------------
BAGELS NO!

[Stephen Scharf]

Small, light and nimble is fine for the most part, but won't cut it for motor racing.

That Fujinon 200mm f/2.0 sure can, though. My goodness. The finest and sharpest lens I have ever shot with, and that includes the legendary Canon 200mm f/1.8.

Wonder if Roger Cicala has ever tested it; it has an MTF chart that beggars belief.

[HR]

Just get a Panasonic 20mm f1.7 and slap it on one of the great m4/3 bodies from Panasonic and Olympus. Wonderful lens and wonderful cameras. Put it on a PEN-F or GX7III, GX7II, or GX8 for the rangefinder form factor. I didn't check the price of that Leica lens, but I expect it is super expensive. For that price get a whole, big m4/3 kit. :-)

[David Dyer-Bennet]

Being old is bad for my perceptions of money. I bought my Leitz Summicron 35mm f/2 for $240 new, as I remember it, at a local camera store that's no longer extant (Finn's Cameras in St. Paul), and that seemed pretty reasonable. My Summicron 90mm f/2 was $360 new from B&H I think (both around 1974).

I considered f/2 slower than ideal, but it's what I could get at the time for the M3. Brighter viewfinder and less shake helped compensate for the slow 35mm. (The 90mm did seem fast to me.)

[Hans Muus]

As Leica discussions unfortunately (pun intended) are so often about money, please note that used Leica lenses are very often of real mint quality - the previous owner usually has been handling their gear very carefully, and the lenses are technically uncomplicated (no auto-focusing electrickery). I bought (of necessity, but quite happily) my summarits second hand. The summarits are excellent, the older ones (f 2.5) as well as the newer ones (f2.4). And as rumours have it, the older 35mm was already ASPH without Leica mentioning it. The summarits being so small has the added advantage of not blocking the viewfinder at all (without hood), or only a wee bit.

[Wolfgang Lonien]

Yep - I'm totally with HR on this one. That Panasonic Lumix 20mm f/1.7 of my wife was for me the reason to change from Four Thirds to Micro Four Thirds. Still don't have that lens (I have the 25mm/1.4 Leica branded one), but I still dearly love her 20mm. Would definitely be my go to lens if I'd have an OCOLOY challenge for myself...

[Patrick J Dodds]

"...aperture is immaterial now that ISO speeds for digital are so much higher than they ever were for film"

Erm, not so much. Shoot a wedding in December in the UK and you'll soon find that there are limitations to higher ISOs when it comes to getting finished pictures - files tend to fall apart fairly quickly if there is much to be done to them and they are at 2000 ISO or above. In fact, I think that for much of the world today's high ISO cameras are pretty near perfect but in the UK, with our innumerable grey days, there is a long way to go before aperture no longer matters.

Have a lovely Christmas Mike and thanks for all you do for us, your loyal readers.

[Yes, but we're talking about a 2/3-stop difference between the maximum apertures of the Summicron and Summarit. An art-photographer friend of mine who shot color neg film with a Pentax 67 made the momentous change from ASA 100-speed films to ASA 400-speed films only in the early 1990s. ISO 2000 is TWO AND A THIRD stops faster than ISO 400. So a Summarit on a digital camera is effectively much more practical than a Summicron on a film camera, which was my point. --Mike]

[Maggie Osterberg]

For me, the perfect lens for a Leica is the Zeiss 35/2.5 C-Biogon. It's got that Zeiss "3-D" thing going on and renders color in a most pleasing way. It was my only lens during my Peter Turnley Cuba workshop, and it was flawless.

I've come to love the integrated metal focusing tab- I reset the focus to infinity after each shot and slide that tab in one direction until I lock focus. Easy peasy!

[s.wolters]

The other shock to me is that fat Leica body in the picture. Like somebody you haven’t seen for years who turned obese.
It is clear that shooting with that Sigma wide open you can produce pictures that you won’t get with a 35mm f/2.4 lens. It’s not better, but different. Will mainly be used for environmental portraits with so much blur in the environment that the models look like cut outs. Looks a bit surrealistic to me. Staged, but if it’s done well it can be very effective for commercial photography.
See the f/1.2 results of its Flickr dedicated group:
https://www.flickr.com/groups/sigma-35mm-1-2-dg-dn-art/pool/

[James]

Zeiss makes a f2 planar for M that draws beautifully. Still my favorite lens of all time. Whenever you write about Leica, I think back to that lens, and think about getting a full frame mirrorless to mount one on.

This was with Ilford HP5, during my Leica year.

https://500px.com/photo/285254153/o-by-James-Liu?ctx_page=7&from=user&user_id=46064805

[Bob Blakley]

You read my mind, Mike. Over the last week I've found myself wishing that Leica would come out with a 35/50/90 Summarit set of autofocus SL lenses and make them MUCH smaller than the current Summicron-SL and Summilux-SL behemoths.

The Summarit is an almost perfect balance of size, speed, cost, and performance.

[Aalok]

Not M mount, but the Voigtlander Apo-Lanthar 50mm f/2.0 for Sony FE mount is amazing. Small, reasonable weight, incredibly sharp, and just pleasant to use. The Zeiss Batis 40 mm f/2.0 is nice for a an autofocus option (same weight as the Voigtlander, but a lot bigger).