Dan Kerin

 Leica 50mm F1.4 Summilux ASPH

Designed by Peter Karbe in 2004, the Leica 50mm Summilux ASPH was Leica’s first aspherical 50mm Summilux lens, and lead from the success of Leica’s previous 35mm aspherical series of lenses. The lens was released in 2006 and was succeeded by the version II which came out in 2023 so had a fairly long production span. The lens primarily came in black anodised finish or chrome, but some special editions were made in a retro styling for the MP3 kits in 2015. The lens has eight elements in five groups; this is one more element than its predecessor and accounts for the aspherical lens element. There is also a floating lens group consisting of the last two elements. Floating lens groups help with sharpness when focusing at the minimum focus distance so this is a big improvement over the previous lens design that did not feature this. However, this lens only has a 9 aperture blades which is a downgrade from the 12 in the previous non ASPH Summilux, personally when testing I did not see a huge difference. Physically the lens is a little bit longer than its non ASPH predecessor and 80g heavier coming in at 355g for the black anodised, and 460g for the chrome brass lens. This weight could be attributed to the optical lens design itself Leica also added a focus tab to this lens which was not present on any previous 50mm Summilux lens.

It was only a few months ago I had the chance to review the previous generation Summilux and I was overall very happy with the performance and way the lens handled so I was very excited to see how this lens would compare. From a design point of view, they are very similar, the ASPH lens is a little longer but the main physical difference is the addition of the focus tab. I know some people who love these and others who hate them, personally I am somewhat in the middle.

When testing this lens in Japan I had a 35mm and a 90mm and always found myself coming back to the 50mm. Something about this focal length in Japan just made sense to me, this and I was mainly shooting Ektachrome 100 pushed two stops, so being able to capture as much light as possible was very important especially at night. While the Summilux lens is larger than the Summicron I believe it makes the perfect travel lens as it allows you to load your camera with a set film and be very flexible in the different lighting conditions you may find yourself in. This is especially important when photographing in new places where it could be a mix of inside, outside, day or night. On the camera it balanced very well and having the addition of the focus tab was very helpful in aiding precise focus. While the lens does have a built-in lens hood, I rarely used this and found the lens didn’t flair much at all even when shooting into direct light.

Wide open and stopped down this lens is extremally sharp and really opened my eyes to modern Leica lens design and just how great their newer lenses are. That being said I did not feel this lens really had any character to it. Yes, wide open the out of focus areas are lovely and smooth and these is nice fall off between the in focus and out of focus areas but nothing which made it really stand out. When comparing the images to the previous non ASPH Summilux there is little difference. I would maybe say that wide open the newer ASPH lens is a hair sharper. I think for anyone looking for a modern 50mm Summilux this should be on the radar as the newer Summilux’s with their 0.45 minimum focus distance and re designed housing have really pushed down the value of the version 1 ASPH to only a tad more than the version 3 in some cases. While I still love using vintage Leica glass I think it’s important to recognise great new glass where possible and I think this is a hidden gem especially given its secondhand price.