Dan Kerin

 Leica 35mm F/2 Summicron ASPH

As Leica moved into the 21st century, and Peter Karbe took over Leica’s optical design team a new 35mm was on the horizon. Produced from 1996 until 2015 the Leica 35mm Summicron APSH has been a very popular lens to say the least. 35mm has always been a favoured focal length for photographers and many would say their one ‘go to’ focal length would be 35mm. For this reason, this lens was very important to Leica as it would go on to be paired with a number of special edition camera sets as well as be sold as the ‘kit’ lens for Leica M cameras. The lens has a relatively simple design of 7 elements in 5 groups and 8 aperture blades with half stop clicks. The lens only weighs 340g and has a 39mm filter thread. It was amazing that Peter Karbe was able to squeeze all of this into such a small lens housing making it a perfect fit and balance on any Leica M camera.

I had an upcoming holiday to Thailand and Singapore and wanted one lens which I could keep on my Leica M4 for the duration of the trip. Even when paired with an older camera such as the M4 this lens didn’t look out of place, and it was well balanced. Being a relatively new Leica M lens (and a very clean example at that) the focus felt smooth and dampened, while not being too tight. And the aperture clicks felt crip and clicked into place without and additional movement. The one design element I was not impressed by was the lens hood. This has been mentioned over and over again on many articles about this lens, but you can’t use a filter with the lens hood attached! I don’t know what was going through the minds of the design team but it was defiantly an oversight. In addition to this, for the money I would have expected a metal lens hood instead of the plastic 12526 hood. Fortunately there have been many reproduction hoods, the best being from Squarehood who have made a metal version of the 12526 which also works with 39mm filters.

For someone who usually has a two-camera setup with a 28mm and 50mm, having one camera with a 35mm took some getting used to but I can see why so many people lean towards the 35mm focal length. Being an f2 lens meant I was able to shoot in relatively low light with a 400-speed film and being so compact, meant it was a joy to carry around all day. Once I developed all the film it was time to start scanning. Even when viewing the film on a lightbox I could tell this was a very sharp lens. It should come to no surprise that this lens performs very similarly to the Leica 50mm Summicron version 5 I tested last year. Sharpness across the frame is great, even wide open at f2. Colours render very well and the lens is full of contrast. Even when shooting in challenging conditions towards the light there was no flaring or loss of contrast that I have become accustom to when using older lenses. For a one lens setup I can’t fault this lens and it would be a great all-round lens for use on film or digital.

As mentioned in the beginning of this article this lens had a long production run and was made in a number of variations. The version I was using was an early 1998 model and is the most common. There was also a chromed brass version as well as more limited models such as m39 thread mount, LHSA, Titan, Grey and the crown jewel Black Paint Millennium edition. This lens was succeeded by the ASPH II in 2016 which addressed the hood problem, opting for a metal lens hood and adding an extra aperture blade to improve the quality of the out of focus areas. The lens also grew a few centimetres in length making it slightly longer than the first ASPH. New, the ASPH II is £2650 and used it can be had for £2,100 while the first ASPH can be had used for £1600. In my opinion if you are shooting film and want an extremely sharp 35mm save your money and go for the first ASPH version. I guess if you are shooting digital as well as film or plan to print very large in the darkroom, or from an Imacon scanner then the ASPH II might be worth the extra money.