Dan Kerin

 Leica 28mm F/2 Summicron ASPH

With lens technology advancing and people wanting faster and faster optics in 2000 Leica released the 28mm f/2 Summicron ASPH. This was Leica’s first f/2 28mm Lens and would supersede the f2.8 series of Elmarit’s which pre dated it. For a long time Leica had 35mm and 50mm Summicron lenses and these were always very popular but up until this point if you wanted to shoot 28mm you were stuck at f2.8. The lens has 9 elements in 6 groups (one of these elements being aspherical) and a 10 bladed aperture with half stop clicks which allows for precise exposure. Due to the lens being a stop faster than the Elmarit, it is slightly bigger measuring 53 x 40mm and weighs around 270g. This lens uses a 46mm filter thread so finding filters can be a little difficult but always worth doing especially for black and white photography. The only aspect of this lens which lets it down is the lens hood. Leica supplied this lens with the 12451 plastic lens hood which in my opinion is unnecessarily large. In 2016 Leica released a revised version of this lens, making small some optical and cosmetic changes, one of which being a smaller more compact metal hood.

When mounted on the camera the lens feels very similar to most other M amount lenses and well balanced. When you add the hood it does become larger however as it is a plastic hood in reality it doesn’t change much. There is a nice viewfinder cutout also which does make framing easier. I took this lens with me on un upcoming trip to Thailand and Vietnam where I would use it to complete my series ‘The Mechanics of Talat Noi’ and be on my second body while in Hanoi. I am a big fan of the 28mm so I knew the drill however this would be the newest Leica 28mm I have reviewed at the time of writing so I was eager to see how well it would perform. I was only in Vietnam for a few days and while I did mainly shoot on a 50mm having the 28mm on my second body was helpful in certain situations. I think the colour photographs shown in this review really do more justice to this lens. The photos were developed by my good friends at Fotoclub BKK in Bangkok. I personally am very happy with my black and white results however this ‘look’ isn’t for everyone.

I was very happy with the performance of this lens and it performed very similarly to the Leica 35mm Summicron ASPH I tested last year. Wide open I found there to be little vignetting and sharpness was good across the frame. Stopped down its very sharp and shows no signs of distortion which is to be expected from a modern 28mm lens. Nothing really stood out to me characteristic wise but I think as this is a newer Leica lens that is to be expected when compared to the older glass I am used to using. All of the images are taken using an ISO 400 speed film so I do think if I had used a slower speed film I could have achieved a more preservable sharper image but this was real world testing. Looking back there was nothing really outstanding about this lens but more importantly there was nothing bad either. I think if I was a hybrid shooter, shooting film and digital this would be a great lens as I do believe on a digital sensor the newer Leica lenses really do perform their best. If like me you only shoot film then I personally would recommend going for an older 28mm Summicron or even an Elmarit if you don’t need the speed. And if you can swallow the pill and jump ship to Voigtlander their 28mm f1.5 Nokton is also another amazing option.