Photography Gear News

35 mm is likely the most common focal length among Leica M shooters,and to many the focal length of choice if they had to get along with only a single lens.

Leica currently offers three 35mm lenses to choose from, with the Summilux 35/1.4 marking the premium end and offering the fastest speed, while the Summarit 35/2.5 on the other end comes in a very small package. Inbetween sits the Summicron 35/2 ASPH, probably the most popular Leica 35mm prime, if not the most popular Leica lens at all. It combines the best of both of its sister lenses: it's reasonably fast, but still very compact. However, as many Leica lenses, it doesn't come cheap, retailing at around 2500 EUR at the time of this review.

The current edition of the lens is the first to feature aspherical elements, after a history of 4 models without aspherical lens, dating back to 1958 (often referred to as Type I to Type IV, the current ASPH model being Type V).

In this review we'll have a look at how the lens performs on our test camera, the Leica M9.

"There was a time where fast lenses were scarce in Micro-Four-Thirds land but things have changed quite a bit during the last 2 years. Among the first high-speed lenses was the Panasonic Leica Summilux 25mm f/1.4 ASPH which filled the "standard lens" gap in the system. Its maximum aperture of f/1.4 is certainly fast with respect to light gathering, but in terms of depth-of-field you are effectively "loosing" about two f-stops in this respect compared to the classic full format but this is still sufficient for quite shallow depth-of-field images especially for documentary photography. You should be able to find one for around 500EUR so it is far from being a budget item considering the typical prices for standard prime lenses in the DSLR market."

When you start a system kind of from scratch you must make sure its potential users have several basic lenses available. We think here not only about an all-purpose kit lens but also about a fast, classic standard so the equivalent of 50 mm device. The moment the Olympus company decided to launch its 4/3 system they must have been aware that they would have to launch a lot of new lenses as well. Fortunately they didn’t have to produce everything on their own because the 4/3 system is supported also by Panasonic, in cooperation with Leica, and by independent producers such as Sigma. Due to that help the new system got a fast standard lens, offered by Leica. We think here of course about the Leica-D Summilux 25 mm f/1.4 lens, which has already been tested by us. It wasn’t exactly cheap (like practically any instrument boasting the Leica logo), but it offered really excellent optical properties. Hardly any f/1.4 lens is fully useful up from the maximum relative aperture and the Leica didn’t have the slightest problems with it.
When Olympus and Panasonic focused their efforts on constructing the Micro 4/3 system, the situation developed in a similar way. A fast 1.4/25 standard was planned as a result of Leica and Panasonic cooperation and, owing to that, in June 2011 a launch of a new lens was officially announced – the Panasonic-Leica DG SUMMILUX 25 mm f/1.4 ASPH.