Leica Mount (LSM and M) Lenses - Standard (40-60mm)

Leica Screw Mount Lenses (M39)    Wide-Standard-Tele

Standard Lenses (40~60mm)

by Karen Nakamura

I currently own over seven "standard" focal length 50mm lenses in the Leica mount (M39 screw and M-bayonet). I have descriptions of them below and there's more information and photographs taken with them in my gallery.

Of the lenses, my current favorites are the Leitz Summicron DR 50mm f/2 and Leica Summicron 50mm f/2 (recent edition). They excel in sharpness and resolution. A close third place is the Cosina-Voigtlander Nokton 50mm f/1.5, although I have to admit that since getting the Leica lenses, I haven't used it as often.

Standard lenses are used very widely in photoethnography. I find them a bit too narrow for indoor work unless I want to isolate someone for a portrait; but they are excellent outdoors.

Normal Lenses for Leica Screw Mount

Leitz Summicron-C 40mm f/2: The Summicron-C 40mm f/2 is the standard lens on the Leica CL. It is an extremely compact, extremly sharp 6-element double-Gauss design lens. Unfortunately, only the Leica CL and CLE have framelines for 40mm. Leica also spread a rumor that the 40mm could not be used on M cameras because of the cam angle, but many of us shooters don't believe this to be true. Whatever the case, the 40mm Summicron is a fantastic lens for the CL series. The one caveat is that while the 40mm Summicron-C uses a 39mm filter thread, it's 39mm x 0.75mm. Standard Leica filters use a 39mm x 0.5mm. It's unclear why Leica chose to use a non-standard thread on this lens. Using the text or images on this website without permission on an ebay auction or any other site is a violation of federal law.

Serenar 50mm f/1.8 (Mk I): At a local auction, I bought a Canon IVsb rangefinder with a Canon Serenar 50mm f1/.8 lens. This lens is all chrome and unlike the SLR styling of the Canon 50mm f/1.8, is very much styled like a rangefinder lens, right down to the focusing lever and infinity lock. Very cool. I haven't had a chance to try this lens out yet. I'm not sure if there was any optical reformulation between the Serenar Mk I and the Canon leses that followed it.

Canon 50mm f/1.8: My first Canon P came with a 50mm f/1.8 which is styled like a SLR lens. I eventually ended up selling the Canon P with the lens. The most annoying thing about the Canon 50 f/1.8 is that it has a 40mm* filter thread which is almost impossible to get filters or screw-in hoods outside of Japan. In Japan, a couple of companies sell new hoods (Hansa, Kindai) for this size; but in the U.S. I've only seen used Canon hoods in that size.

Canon 50mm f/1.4: I bought a Canon 7 rangefinder which came with Canon 50mm f1/.4 lens, which is considerably bigger and brighter than the 50mm f/1.8. The SLR styling compliments the more futuristic design of the Canon 7. They looks nice on Canon Ps as well. They use standard 48mm hoods. I sold the Canon 7 but kept the lens and use it on my Canon P. Using the text or images on this website without permission on an ebay auction or any other site is a violation of federal law.

Leitz Summitar 50mm f/2: My M7 was feeling lonely for Leica lenses, so I bought a collapsible Summitar 50mm for it. Although my Summitar is in good condition (I even got the "bardoor shade for it), it suffers from low contrast. I'm selling it with the barndoor shades. See my Leica CL page for photos of the lens. Asking price is $250 w/ barndoor and case.

Leitz Summicron DR 50mm f/2: After a while, I ended up buying a "Dual-Range" Summicron. It mounts on my M7 but there's a change in the cam size or angle and it won't switch into the near-focus range (it jams on the cam). Which is fine since I didn't buy one with the "eyes" for near focus anyway. I'm very happy with the Summicron DR. This is of course the M-bayonet mount and not screw mount. I've taken some stellar photos in my gallery with this lens. If you use it on a digital camera with a lens adapter, you can accurately focus it down to 50 cm (20 inches). This is a stellar shooter on my Ricoh GXR, for example, where it becomes a 75mm f/2.Using the text or images on this website without permission on an ebay auction or any other site is a violation of federal law.

Leica Summicron 50mm f/2: A friend is going through a divorce so I agreed to buy his Leica Summicron 50mm (recent; black). This is a recent edition, built in 1997 or so, according to the serial number. It's smaller and lighter than the DR Summicron, has higher contrast, but loses some of the old world feel. This is also the M-bayonet mount and not screw mount. However, the optics and haptics are absolutely superb. It's now my standard lens.

Leitz Elmar 50mm f/3.5 The Leitz Elmar 50mm f/3.5 is a standard lens that was introduced around the time of the first Barnack-design Leica. Although most are uncoated and thus suffer from flare, the Elmar still holds its own in terms of its dreamy sharpness. I'll try to post some photographs to show what I'm talking about. The Elmar here is mounted on a Leica IIIf. Because the Elmar is collapsible, you can literally put the Leica in your pocket. This was a favorite combination of the late Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Voigtlander 50mm f/1.5: I bought a 50mm f/1.5 Nokton from a friend on the Cosina-Voigtlander mailing list. Overall impressions of this lens are VERY STRONG. The build construction is simply superb and the lens is extremely sharp. Look at my PAW for the photos with this lens. I use this lens in low-light situations, for which it excels.

Minolta 45mm f/2.8 Super Rokkor (Type ?): This came attached to my Minolta 35 Model II rangefinder, a Leica clone made by Minolta in the 1950s. The first type had a little cut-out for the aperture mark on the lens barrel, as well as a focusing lever. The second revision has neither. My own has a focusing lever but no cut out for the aperture mark... It has a 34mm filter thread.

Former Soviet Union 50mm Lenses

My 50mm f/2 Jupiter-8 arrived one cold February (2003) morning. It took about 2 weeks by airmail from Kiev, Ukraine. The sellers even included a post card of Kiev. Very cute. The overall condition of the lens was good (for a 45 year old specimen) but I was very alarmed that the lens mounting flange was obviously out of alignment! It looked like a screw came loose and allowed it to float 0.5mm out of parallel. About 2 minutes with a screwdriver and all was back in alignment. The lens on the Jupiter appears to be very clean with a nice coating. It's a Zeiss Sonnar clone, so I have high hopes about its performance, assuming that the Soviet manufacturing tolerances weren't horrendous on that day in 1957.

I have to say that I'm very happy with the Jupiter. The contrast and color rendition is quite good. The focus seems accurate. There's really nothing to complain about it (except that the aperture ring doesn't have click-stops).

In an article on Russian/FSU LSM lens incompatibilities, Dante Stella hypothesizes that Soviet LSM camera/lenses have a different registration distance from the Leica standard which is 27.8mm . A Russian Rangefinder fan site gives a registration distance of 28.8mm ± 0.02mm. In optical terms, 1mm is an awful lot, it sounds like too much. I ran my own simple experiment to see where the field plane of my Jupiter 8 was with my Canon P. At 1 meter wide open, it originally looked like the Jupiter focused about 3cm (1.5") to the rear, but it looked like this was due to focusing parallax error. I made new test targets and tried again. On my second test, there was no difference between my Canon 50/1.8 and the Jupiter-8 in terms of focusing accuracy at 1m targets, aperture wide open.

The nice thing about the silver Jupiter-8 is that it has a 40.5mm filter thread, which means I can attach my Series-6 hood with a 40.5mm adaptor (pictured above). Both the Canon and the Jupiter-8 suffers from severe flare, so having a hood helps tremendously. In comparison, the hoods for the Canon 50 f/1.8 are harder to find. The Jupiter was my standard lens on my P. I'm find I love the pictures it takes, so maybe it's a keeper.

Since the silver Jupiter, I also bought a black Jupiter-8 (left) with my Zorki 4K camerass. The black lens is redesigned externally with a nice contemporary look. Very nice. The only problem is that the numbers are painted on rather than etched on. It looked like the lens wasn't calibrated/shimmed properly, so I've sent it to Oleg Khalyavin to be readjusted. After readjustment it was stellar!

My FED 3 came with the standard Industar-61 52mm f/2.8 lens. While the later Lanthanum "rare earth" version is quite aclaimed, the earlier one is nothing to write home about. The two are the same optical design, but the Lanthanum allows for some tweaking which gives higher performance. The Industar-61 seems to suffer from some bad flare / contrast reduction without a hood. This is fairly typical of FSU lenses. I ended up selling this lens.

For my Canon IVf, I bought a KMZ Industar-22 52mm f/3.5. This is a clone of the Leica Elmar 50mm and they are almost indistinguishable from each other. Internally, the Elmar and I-22 have their apertures at slightly different locations. The I-22 is reportedly sharper than the Elmar. I don't know since I've never used the Elmar, but I can say the I-22 is very sharp and the collapsible design is very nice, very classic looking. The main problem is that you can't use a hood with the I-22 because of the design.