Introduction
There have been many different versions of the Leica 35mm 2.0 Summicron-M over the years, but version “IV” – the last version without aspherical elements – seems to be especially popular, also because of its appealing form factor. Let’s have a closer look!
This lens will be reviewed on the 24mp Leica M10.
Sample Images
Most of the sample images in this review can be found in full resolution here.
Specifications
There are several different Leica 35mm 2.0 M-mount lenses. This is the one known as Version “IV” that has been made from 1979 to 1996. It has the following specifications:
- Diameter: 53 mm
- Field of view: 64° (diagonally)
- Length: 27 mm
- Weight: 155g (no hood, no caps)
- Filter Diameter: E39
- Number of Aperture Blades: 10 (inwardly curved)
- Elements/Groups: 7/5
- Close Focusing Distance: 0.7 m
- Maximum Magnification: 1:17.1 (measured)
- Released: 1979
- Mount: Leica-M
buy from ebay.com | ebay.de (advertisement/affiliate links) for about $2000
Disclosure
The Leica 35mm 2.0 Summicron-M IV was kindly provided free of charge for a few weeks by my friend Vincent from Kamerakraft. As he has used this lens for many years, he was also so kind to send me some analogue sample pictures taken with this lens which I have added to this review.
Handling / Build Quality
Generally the materials used for these Leica M lenses feel nice, but there are also some questionable design choices that always leave me wondering.
The focus ring has a pleasant resistance and turns 120° from the minimum focus distance of 0.7 m to infinity. The focus ring is also equipped with a focus tab at the bottom.
The aperture ring has equidistantly spaced half-stop click-stops, but as is the case for many Leica M lenses also here it can be moved a bit past the f/2.0 mark and here even the diaphragm opens slightly more when doing that. This is something that feels really cheap to me and doesn’t fit the premium price tag at all.
The lens brings up the correct 35/135mm frameline set and because it is so small there is hardly any rangefinder blockage when using the lens without a hood.
You can find several different hoods for this lens. Most of them clamp to a small rim at the front, which is a means of attachment I am not a big fan of: the hoods sit wobbly and the spring loaded teeth can easily scratch the lens.
You can find various similarly sized 35mm M-mount lenses. The Mandler 35mm 2.0 7e looks exactly the same from the outside, the Mr. Ding 35mm 1.8 Pactcron and the Thypoch 35mm 2.0 Ksana are also similarly sized but feature slightly different casing designs.
When using Sony E or Nikon Z mount cameras you can pair this lens with w.g. the TTArtisan 6-bit adapter to get EXIF data or with the Techart LM-EA9/TZM-02 adapter to even get autofocus.
Vignetting
light falloff
| f/2.0 | 3.8 EV |
| f/2.8 | 2.9 EV |
| f/4.0 | 2.1 EV |
| f/5.6 | 1.7 EV |
| f/8.0 - f/16 | 1.4 EV |
The Leica 35mm 1.4 Summilux-M FLE was so record breaking bad in this category, Leica even secretly reduces the amount of vignetting in the raw files. Also the Light Lens Lab recreations of older Leica 35mm lenses show very high vignetting figures, so it should not come as a surprise, that also this 35mm 2.0 IV shows almost 4 EV vignetting at f/2.0. On film the vignetting will be less though and that is ultimately what this lens has been designed for.
It is recommended to have a look at this article first to get an idea how this brightness graph works.
optical vignetting
In the following comparison we move from the center (left) to the extreme corner (right) and see how the shape of the light circle changes.
This Leica 35mm 2.0 IV shows a lot of optical vignetting, but then many of the other compact 35mm M-mount lenses show a similarly high amount. I already expect this won’t be good news for the bokeh rendering and the same is true for the outlining off center.
There are more things we can see here: already at f/2.0 the aperture blades are slightly closed and stopped down to f/2.8 and further it creates the Leica typical, unnatural ninja star out of focus highlights.
If you are looking for a compact 35mm 2.0 M-mount lens with a more reasonable amount of optical vignetting, be sure to check out the Thypoch 35mm 2.0 Ksana.
Sharpness
Focus shift
Leica M10 | Leica 35mm 2.0 IV | 100% crops
Many of the compact 35mm M-mount lenses have some issues with focus shift (e.g. Light Lens Lab 35mm 2.0 8e or the Mr. Ding 35mm 1.8 Pactcron) and this Leica 35mm 2.0 IV is no exception. Especially at f/4.0 you should be careful when using the rangefinder to focus.
If you are looking for a compact 35mm 2.0 M-mount lens with little to no focus shift have a look at the Thypoch 35mm 2.0 Ksana or the Mandler 35mm 2.0 7e.
infinity (24mp Leica M10)
At f/2.0 the whole image is a bit softer due to spherical aberration (or “Leica glow”, as some people like to put it). From f/2.8 the center looks really good while the midframe needs f/4.0 for that and the corners look best at f/8.0 to f/11. There is no pronounced midzone dip which I always find very welcome.
For a compact lens designed for analogue film and released in 1979 this is a very solid performance, but you can of course find modern lenses that perform better at wider apertures.
portrait distance 1.1 m (24mp Leica M10)
For portraiture it isn’t so important how flat the field is, it is more interesting to see what the sharpness is like when focused at different parts of the frame to take field curvature out of the equation.
We will be looking at 100% crops from the 24mp Leica M10.
f/2.0 <—> f/2.8
At portrait distances the performance is very good in the center of the frame from f/2.0 but steadily gets worse towards the corners. Stopping down to f/2.8 increases the contrast significantly, but the outer midframe still doesn’t look great.
Personally, I prefer lenses that perform a bit better here and once more the Thypoch 35mm 2.0 Ksana shows the improvements of a modern yet still very compact design.
close (0.70 m, 1:18, 24mp Leica M10)
The minimum focus distance of 0.7 m is typical for an M-mount lens that has first been released in 1979. At f/2.0 the image is a bit softer, from f/2.8 it looks very good though.
Some modern designs like the Thypoch 35mm 2.0 Ksana and the Voigtländer VM 35mm 2.0 Apo-Lanthar offer a minimum focus distance of 0.5 m in case you are using a camera with liveview and find the 0.7 m limiting.
Flare resistance
Generally you can make almost any lens look bad here if you try long enough, but then even the modern Leica lenses rarely convinced me here, so let’s find out how this vintage design performs.
As I already expected we see all kinds of artefacts: huge ghosts of various shapes, rainbow artefacts and massive veiling flare that has a huge impact on contrast and colors.
Stopped down the situation is even worse, as the artefacts are more obvious here.
This result is actually what I would have expected from an almost 50 years old design. If you like to shoot in backlit scenarios a lot and you are not someone to embrace these kind of artefacts I definitely recommend to have a look at some of the modern 35mm M-mount lenses e.g. from Voigtländer or Thypoch.
Coma
Leica M10 | Leica 35mm 2.0 IV | 100% crops from extreme corner
A rather typical (not good) performance for an old wide angle lens without aspherical elements: huge artefacts at f/2.0, still big artefacts at f/2.8 and mostly clean corners by f/5.6.
If you are looking for a better performance in this category, have a look at 35mm lenses with aspherical elements like the Thypoch 35mm 2.0 Ksana or the Voigtländer VM 35mm 2.0 Apo-Lanthar.
Distortion
This Leica 35mm 2.0 hardly shows any distortion – considering it dates back to the film era that isn’t surprising, as correcting distortion in post was hardly possible for analogue pictures.
Bokeh
To save you some time: this Leica 35mm 2.0 IV creates a bokeh very typical for compact Leica M-mount wide angle lenses: thanks to field curvature and optical vignetting the blur is significantly stronger in the center of the frame compared to the corner regions.
At close distances this effect isn’t really noticeably yet, but already here the backgrounds – especially those with a lot of details – are rendered in a very busy and distracting way.
Also on film (as can be seen in the first image above) we can see strong outlining and double edged structures in out of focus areas.
At longer focus distances you can see field curvature and optical vignetting in full effect: while the area behind the mint scooter is visibly out of focus, everything on the left side is not, even though it is much farther away from the scooter and should therefore be more out of focus.
Personally, I am not a fan of this. I find it rather distracting when there is only a small area behind the subject out of focus and then the edges and corners aren’t. To make it easier for you to decide what you like, we will compare this Leica lens to two other M-mount lenses with the same focal length and maximum aperture and very similar size and weight.
Compared to: Leica 35mm 2.0 Summicron-M IV and Thypoch 35mm 2.0 Ksana
Leica is the widest of these three lenses and its pictures have been cropped slightly to match the field of view of the two other lenses to make the pictures easier to compare.
Scene 1: Forest 0.9 m
Scene 2: Forest 1.1 m
Scene 3: Forest 1.4 m
Scene 4: Forest 1.9 m
Scene 5: Forest 2.0 m
Observations
The Thypoch – due to being a modern design with aspherical element – creates the cleanest and least distracting out of focus areas.
The Leica has – like many of Leica’s M-mount wide angle lenses – some problems with the combination of optical vignetting and field curvature. At longer focus distances the corners are pulled into the focal plane even though they should not be. The bokeh is also generally very nervous and has a lot of potential to distract from the actual subject. The Leica also has more issues with loss of contrast in backlit scenarios.
The Mandler is not really an f/2.0 lens, more like f/2.5. It creates smaller out of focus highlights in the center of the frame and it also needs slower shutter speeds to match the exposure of the others. Off center it is a little less funky than the Leica though.
If you are looking for a lens that creates a smooth out of focus rendering the Thypoch is your lens. If you are looking for busy vintage bokeh the Leica might be what you are looking for (mind you: a lot of cheaper options that do the same thing are readily available) and the Mandler sits somewhere inbetween.
Sunstars
With its ten aperture blades this Leica 35mm 2.0 creates distinct sunstars from f/5.6 to f/11. Because the aperture blades are already slightly closed at f/2.0, it also creates faint sunstars at its maximum aperture.
If you want to know more about sunstar rendering of different lenses have a look at this article.
Chromatic aberration
lateral
This Leica lens shows only minor lateral CA, nothing to worry about.
longitudinal
We see a low amount of green/magenta outlining in the out of focus areas at f/2.0, but this is also masked a bit by spherical aberration. Still, not really something to worry about.
Purple fringing is also not really to be found, but again the spherical aberration helps a bit here.
Conclusion
Honestly, I think people who are willing to spend two grand on this lens don’t care too much about its optical qualities or its price/performance ratio compared to other lenses. I also think they don’t care much about reviews and they should probably stop reading now, because they won’t like what comes next.
People are only willing to pay that much for this lens because of the Leica branding and because it is a bit of a collector’s item. And that is totally fine with me.
But there are no rational reasons to spend $2000 on a 45 years old Leica 35mm 2.0 Summicron-M IV that probably already has issues with haze. There is nothing about its performance or rendering that would justify that. You can buy many lenses that will yield pictures indistinguishable from the ones taken with this lens and some of those lenses are actually better made and of course they cost a lot less.
For one of the bokeh comparisons I did a blind test among our Discord community, asking which lens’ rendering our readers prefer. 81% picked the Thypoch 35mm 2.0 Ksana, 19% picked the Mandler 35mm 2.0 7e and zero people picked this Leica lens.
Don’t fall for that wrongly-taken-out-of-context “King of Bokeh” quote surrounding this lens, this is total bullshit. This is definitely not a “King of Bokeh”.
buy from ebay.com | ebay.de (advertisement/affiliate links) for about $2000
Alternatives
There are countless 35mm options for M-mount available and I already reviewed a lot of them. You can find all my reviews of 35mm M-mount lenses here.
Generally we can separate them in two groups: lenses with vintage rendering (usually no aspherical elements) and lenses with modern rendering (usually with aspherical elements).
Vintage Rendering
Light Lens Lab 35mm 2.0 8e
I found the LLL lens to perform very similar, so I would rather buy that one new for one grand the 45 years old Leica lens being reviewed here for two grand .
buy from the official homepage or ebay.com (advertisement/affiliate links) starting at $1049
Mandler 35mm 2.0 7e
The Mandler 35mm 2.0 7e is a bit of a modern Chinese interpretation of the lens being reviewed here. It is said to also be an all spherical design, but Coma is corrected much better. Sadly it has a pronounced midzone dip and it is actually only an f/2.5 lens, so I don’t really want to recommend it.
buy from ebay.com | ebay.de (advertisement/affiliate links) for $700
Mr. Ding 35mm 1.8 Pactcron
Slightly faster, way less vignetting at wider apertures. A bit higher contrast at wider apertures (less glow). If you embrace that vintage reindering this is an interesting option.
buy from the official homepage (advertisement/affiliate link) for $699
Voigtländer VM 40mm 1.4 Nokton MC
If you want a lens with a bit of a vintage rendering but you don’t want to spend crazy amounts of money this lens might be for you. I found it to be a bit better behaved than the fast 35mm 1.4 vintage lenses but it is similarly small and noticeably cheaper.
buy from amazon.com | ebay.com | ebay.de | B&H (advertisement/affiliate links) starting at $300
Modern Rendering
Thypoch 35mm 2.0 Ksana
If you are looking for a compact 35mm 2.0 M-mount lens with modern rendering this is actually my recommendation at the moment. It is a well behaved lens without any fatal flaws that won’t get in the way of your shooting.
buy from manufacturer’s shop (use code PRNET for 5% discount) | ebay.com | ebay.de | B&H (advertisement/affiliate links) for $599
Most of the current Voigtländer lenses also offer a modern rendering, the Voigtländer VM 35mm 1.2 Nokton III/IV, the Voigtländer VM 35mm 1.5 Nokton and the discontinued Voigtländer VM 35mm 1.7 Ultron are all lenses I can recommend. These are not as small as the aforementioned lenses, but the 35mm 1.5 is still very small for its specifications and not much bigger than the lens being reviewed here.
If you don’t care so much about bokeh or pleasing rendering, the Voigtländer VM 35mm 2.0 Apo-Lanthar offers very high contrast and resolution from its maximum aperture everywhere in the frame.
Sample Images
Most of the sample images in this review can be found in full resolution here.
Further Reading
- M-mount lens reviews
- Review: Leica 35mm 1.4 Summilux-M FLE Asph MK II
- Review: Leica 50mm 1.4 Summilux-M Asph
- Review: Leica 90mm 2.0 Summicron-M pre Asph
- Analogue Adventures
Support Us
Did you find this article useful or just liked reading it? Treat us to a coffee!
via Paypal
This site contains advertisement/affiliate links. If you make a purchase using any of the links marked as advertisement/affiliate links, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. This helps support the creation of future content.
Latest posts by BastianK (see all)
- Review: Leica 35mm 2.0 Summicron-M IV - November 7, 2026
- Guest Post: Projector Lenses – A Drug of Choice - November 4, 2026
- Review: Viltrox AF 35mm 1.4 Pro FE - October 29, 2026