The
Leica
Summicron-R
50mm f/2
II

Sections:

• Featured In ... 

• Specs.

• Intro.

• History.

  • My History + Preconceptions.

  • Leica: A Condensed History.

  • Lens History.

• Lens Mount.

  • Flange Distance.

• Focal Length.

  • Angle-of-View.

  • Elements + Groups.

• Aperture.

  • Aperture Range.

  • Aperture Blades.

  • Aperture Ring.

  • Filter Thread.

• Focus.

  • Focus Ring.

  • Focus Throw Angle.

  • Minimum Focus Distance.

• Build.

  • Size + Weight.

  • Materials.

  • Design.

  • Variants.

• Bokeh.

• Resolution.

• Aberrations. 

  • Ghosts.

  • Flares.

  • Fringing.

• Cost.

  • Value.

• Lasting Impressions.

Featured In …

SPECS:

• Mount: Leica R

• Focal length: 50mm (actual 52.5mm)

• 6 lens elements in 4 groups

• Aperture range: f/2 to f/16

• Aperture blades: 6

• Minimum focus distance: 0.5m (19.7in)

• Focus throw: ~270°

• Filter thread: 55mm

• Weight: ~290g (10.2oz)

• Length: ~41mm (1.6in)

• Production from 1976-2009

• Cost today: ~$600 (March 2022)

Intro.

In every field, there are names that rise above the others in orders of prestige, exclusivity, and excellence. In the automotive field, names like Porsche inspire the adornment of bedroom posters. In a similar fashion, Leica is amongst the names that occupy most photographers’ daydreams, eluding their reality except for a rare passing glance in the wild.

Nevertheless, spend enough time in pretty much any photography forum, and you’ll find a very loud segment of the community who insist (often vehemently) that people are simply paying for the ‘red dot’ - a part of Leica’s infamous branding - and are otherwise wasting their money.

Would people really pay several times the standard price for a brand name that offers little-to-nothing more?

Well … sure. People with enough money will seemingly pay anything for the perception of status or a dash of clout. But is that the case with Leica? Are Leica products really just expensive jewelry for attention-seeking photography elitists?

The Leica Summicron-R 50mm f/2 II is a great case study.

With its ubiquitous 50mm focal length and sensibly quick f/2 aperture, the Leitz Summicron-R 50mm f/2 II was the closest thing that Leica made to an everyman’s lens for their R mount SLR system. Even so, the Summicron-R is practically luxurious compared to almost anything that doesn’t feature the Leica name.

But is the experience just superficial? Let’s find out.

History.

My History + Preconceptions.

The Leica Summicron-R 50mm f/2 II was my first Leica lens.

Like most photographers, I was fully aware of the brand and the conflicting opinions regarding Leica on the internet, but I didn’t have the first-hand experience to truly form an opinion for myself.

Basically, I assumed Leica products were high quality, but ultimately over-hyped (and over-priced) because of the legacy behind the brand. Still, I wanted to use one of their products to have that experience and perspective for myself. I would talk myself out of it, though, due to the price barrier. On a middle class income, dipping into Leica waters can be fiscally irresponsible, if not outright dangerous. (Or so I thought.) Nevertheless, my curiosity as to the seemingly magical appeal of the brand would return over and over again like a tenacious, beautiful weed in my mind.

It was a couple years ago that I finally decided to find out for myself, knowing that, if I didn’t get along with the lens, I could just resell it and not really be out much money, if any. (One of the many benefits of buying vintage lenses.) And the Summicron-R’s relative affordability meant I needn’t worry about financial ruin if I were to keep it.

A Condensed History of Leica.

If you don’t know much or anything about Leica, first of all: no worries. We all start somewhere, sometime. Furthermore, it’s an honor to be your guide into the world of Leica.

Leica is a German camera and lens manufacturer, among other things, with a long and storied history.

The company was founded in 1849 as the ‘Optisches Institut’, conducting research and experiments with optical instruments before starting production as a maker of precision microscopes. In 1869, Ernst Leitz became the head of the company at the spry young age of 26. He renamed the company ‘Ernst Leitz Wetzlar’; the name including his own and the city where the company was based: Wetzlar, Germany.

In the following decades, Leitz added binoculars to its repertoire, opened an office in New York, and instituted the then-progressive 8-hour workday as well as health insurance for its employees; standards which still aren’t standard more than 100 years later.

In 1911 and 1912, respectively, Oskar Barnack and Max Berek joined the company. Barnack is credited with pioneering the 35mm format as a portable, but quality alternative to the medium and large film formats of the day. Berek helped him with the mechanical design of the camera and lens prototypes.

Barnack’s goal in creating the smaller 35mm format was to create a camera that’s more convenient for hiking. How appropriate. These cameras could be used without a tripod, which was important to Barnack because he experienced rather severe asthma.

Barnack adapted 24mm x 18mm motion picture film to create the 35mm format by orienting the film horizontally and effectively utilizing twice the negative area, resulting in an imaging size of 36mm x 24mm.

Various prototypes were made over a decade or so before the Leica I formally entered production in 1924. The revolutionary portability of the camera meant that it could capture images that were practically impossible with larger formats, effectively birthing the ‘street photography’ genre.

In the 1930s, Leitz instituted what would later be called the “Leica Freedom Train,” an endeavor in which the company assigned Jewish and other at-risk employees to positions in France, Britain, Hong Kong, and the US; giving them official means of emigrating out of Nazi Germany. Most of those assigned positions didn’t actually exist, but the company provided their parting employees with a Leica and a stipend until they found a job in their new homeland. The company’s foresight and awareness of the boiling political tensions in Germany undoubtedly saved many, many lives.

The name ‘Leica’ came about as a way to brand the camera line. Leica is a portmanteau of ‘LEItz’ and ‘CAmera.’ The Leica brand became so strong that the Leitz company officially changed their name to Leica in 1986. You’ll still find the ‘Leitz’ name on older lenses, documentation, and here-or-there when reading about Leica. For example, the front of the Leica Summicron-R 50mm f/2 II reads ‘Leitz Canada,’ because, technically, the lens is a Leitz, not a Leica. I refer to it as a Leica because that’s what people are more familiar with.

Over the years, Leica have built an enviable reputation for producing sophisticated-yet-rugged photographic and optical gear at a healthy premium over the more mainstream alternatives, most of which were, and are, from Japan.

Ultimately, Leica is the preeminent brand in the realm of the 35mm format. This is still true today, despite the fact that they are a relatively small company compared to the modern photography giants, Sony and Canon. What Leica may lack in technological R&D, they more than make up for in the premium quality of their products and, by extension, the strength of their very loyal following.

Lens History.

The first Summicron-R 50mm f/2 was well received, and production of that lens ran from 1964 to 1976. A respectable run for any lens, no doubt.

Its successor, the Summicron-R 50mm f/2 II, was designed by Walter Mandler, Garry Edwards, and Erich Wagner in 1976. This lens was produced with the same optical formula until the whole system was discontinued in 2009.

33 years! Practically unfathomable by today’s standards.

In total, Leica produced almost 100,000 of the Summicron-R 50mm f/2 II, which is a huge number for Leica. And sure, that is a big number, but it averages out to only 3,000 copies per year.

While Leica is a German company that makes many of their products in Germany, they delegate the production of certain products to factories elsewhere, particularly Portugal and Canada. While the very notion of a prestigious Leica lens being produced anywhere other than Germany may seem blasphemous to some, there are no compromises made in their lenses produced elsewhere. They are all to the same, exceptional Leica quality.

For example, the Summicron-R 50mm f/2 II was made in Canada, hence the ‘Leitz Canada’ on the lens. This lens is undoubtedly made to the same quality as its German-made kin, however.

Lens Mount:
Leica R.

The Leica Summicron-R 50mm f/2 II was designed for Leica’s R mount, which was Leica’s 35mm film SLR system that ran from 1964 until formally being discontinued in 2009.

SLR stands for ‘Single Lens Reflex’. ‘Single Lens’ is in reference to the single lens, which is used for both viewing and taking the photograph. Compare that to a twin lens system, where one lens is for a top-down viewfinder and the other for taking the photo. (Those old-timey cameras that hipster influencers use are twin lens.) ‘Reflex’ is in reference to the mirror system that allows the user to look through the optical viewfinder and see through the lens.

The 35mm SLR was the standard photography tool for the latter half of the 20th century.

Even so, Leica is better-known for their legendary M mount cameras and lenses, which is a rangefinder system. More on that another day.

Flange Distance.

The flange distance of the Leica R mount is 47mm, which is longer than all other mainstream SLR mounts.

A flange distance is the distance from the lens mount to the sensor or film.

Lenses are designed for a specific flange distance, so if you want to use a lens on a different mount than it was intended, the adapter needs to compensate for the difference in flange distance. It’s best if the adapted lens was made for a longer flange distance than the receiving camera since an adapter will inherently increase the effective flange distance.

Theoretically, it’s easier to adapt Leica R lenses to other mounts since the flange distance is longer. However, the differences in flange distances in SLR mounts is quite small, which makes adapting them to another SLR system a challenge in practical reality.

Basically, if you wanted to use a Leica R lens on, say, a Nikon SLR, your best bet would be to have the mount on the lens changed to the Nikon F mount since the difference in flange distance of the Leica R and Nikon F systems is only 0.5mm (47mm vs 46.5mm).

The rise of the mirrorless camera has made Leica R lenses accessible to a new generation of photographers, however, as they are easily adapted to work on practically any interchangeable-lens mirrorless camera with a lens mount adapter.

Mirrorless systems have much shorter flange distances than SLR systems. Mirrorless flange distances are only ~18mm, on average, compared to ~45mm for SLRs.

Mirrorless cameras have mostly supplanted DSLR (Digital SLR) cameras in the camera marketplace. Tech advancements in screens, sensors, and processors made this possible. Basically, mirrorless cameras remove the reflex/mirror system and replace the optical viewfinder with an EVF (electronic viewfinder), which is essentially a tiny screen. This is why mirrorless cameras have a much shorter flange distance, and are generally much smaller than their DSLR predecessors.

But even though Leica R lenses are easily adapted to mirrorless cameras, the photography population remains largely unaware of Leica R lenses, which has thus far kept the demand in check.

Lucky us.

Focal Length.

Not that it matters, but the true focal length of the Summicron-R is apparently 52.5mm.

I certainly couldn’t tell the difference between an exact 50mm and 52.5mm without a very precise, side-by-side test, and I’d be highly skeptical of anyone who says they could.

Focal length is an objective measurement related to how a lens is designed. Shorter (smaller) focal lengths produce wider images while longer (larger) focal lengths produce images that are narrower. (Not in aspect ratio, but in how much of the scene fits within the frame.)

Focal length is measured in millimeters, but some lenses - really old ones, usually - might display it in centimeters.

Focal length is just one piece of the puzzle, however. Format size also plays a big role in ultimately determining the angle-of-view of a lens.

Angle-of-View.

In short, angle-of-view is how much of the scene you can see through a lens.

Many people use the terms ‘angle-of-view’ and ‘field-of-view’ interchangeably. They are essentially the same thing, but I prefer angle-of-view because the term is expressed in angles, so I think it’s a bit more intuitive.

Angle-of-view is based on a circular field, so it’s measured in degrees out of 360°.

Imagine a circle. Put a dot in the center of the circle. Draw two straight lines away from that dot. You can measure the difference between those two lines as the angle in degrees.

You could also think of it like slices of pie. A narrow (small) angle-of-view is a small slice of pie. A wide (large) angle-of-view is a large slice.

Angle-of-view is really a more important consideration than the actual focal length because the same focal length produces different angles-of-view on different format sizes.

In other words, putting the same lens on different formats results in different angles-of-view.

The larger the format, the wider the resulting angle-of-view.
The smaller the format, the narrower the resulting angle-of-view.

As a user of both the 35mm format and APS-C, I consider the two horizontal angles-of-view that will result from any given lens.

It’s worth noting that many manufacturers and vendors will usually list only the diagonal angle-of-view of a lens, if any at all. The diagonal angle-of-view is useless, though. Horizontal angle-of-view is a much more practical measurement.

For reference, humans can generally see as wide as 170°, but our vision in the extremes is only good for sensing light and movement. We can only process symbols (understand what we’re seeing) within a 60° angle-of-view. On the other end, we’re able to focus our attention as narrowly as 30°.

In short, human vision has a variable angle-of-view from 60° to 30°, with an average of 45°.

On the 35mm format, a 52.5mm focal length produces a horizontal angle-of-view of ~37.8°. Relative to human vision, this is pretty much right in-between our average angle-of-view of 45° and our focused angle-of-view of 30°. Since it falls within the human range of vision, the Summicron-R is a ‘standard’ lens on 35mm format.

On APS-C, 52.5mm results in a horizontal angle of view of ~25.8°. This is a little tighter than our focused angle of view of 30°, making this focal length a (short) telephoto lens on APS-C. With the crop factor, the Summicron-R creates images equivalent to a 78.75mm lens on 35mm format.

There’s a common myth that the 50mm lens is equivalent to the human eye. This is only true in the sense that it falls within our standard range of vision on the 35mm format. Otherwise, it’s not special as far as the angle-of-view.

Nevertheless, 50mm is a focal length that feels quite comfortable on both 35mm and APS-C. Like most people, a 50mm was my first prime lens, which probably plays a large part in the focal length feeling so natural.

Elements + Groups.

The Summicron-R 50mm f/2 II has 6 lens elements in 4 groups.

Contrary to the oftentimes contradictory generalizations that people make, you can’t extract much of anything about a lens simply from the number of elements or groups. It’s essentially trivia.

The caliber of the glass and the lens design matter much more than the number of elements or groups in determining the ‘quality’ of a lens.

Aperture.

Aperture Range.

The maximum aperture of this lens is f/2, which I find on a 50mm to be the perfect aperture for close-to-midrange subjects, as far as having a nice, shallow depth-of-field while also being deep enough to actually get your subject in focus somewhat consistently.

Past that, an f/2 aperture is just mathematically satisfying since the maximum aperture diameter is about half that of the focal length.

The aperture - meaning ‘opening’ - is the ratio of the focal length to the size of the opening in the aperture blades. Simply divide the focal length by the aperture ratio to figure out the actual diameter of the aperture.

For example:
52.5mm / 2 = 26.25mm

Knowing the actual diameter of the aperture isn’t really all that practical, honestly, but it’s one more thing that you can know about your lens.

The f/2 maximum aperture is what makes this lens a ‘Summicron’ in Leica nomenclature. For relative comparison, any lens with an f/2.5 aperture is called a ‘Summarit’ and any with an f/1.4 aperture a ‘Summilux’.

The aperture values adjust in half-stop increments, down to f/16.

Aperture Blades.

The aperture mechanism has 6 blades, which means bokeh elements and ghosts shape into lovely little hexagons when the aperture is closed by 2+ stops.

Aperture Ring.

Like the rest of the body, the aperture ring is anodized aluminum. It features machined ribbing on both sides of the aperture scale which ensures a confident grip on the ring.

The aperture ring feels rather industrial in use, which is actually quite nice. It turns in satisfyingly firm clicks in half-stop increments. Practically, this means you never have to worry about accidentally changing the aperture value, which is a luxury.

As mentioned, it’s common to see ‘cine-modded’ versions of this lens, which have de-clicked aperture rings. Truly a travesty.

Lenses aren’t universal in the direction that the aperture ring turns. When using the Summicron-R 50mm f/2 II - meaning you’re behind the camera - turning the aperture ring clockwise opens the aperture. Conversely, turning it counter-clockwise will stop the aperture down.

Filter Thread.

The Summicron-R 50mm f/2 II features a 55mm filter thread, referred to by Leica as E55.

Some online sources will lead you to believe that Leica’s filter threads are somehow different or unique, and won’t take normal filters. This simply isn’t true. The Summicron will take any standard 55mm filter or ring.

It’s also worth noting that the front of the lens does NOT rotate with the focus ring, so feel free to use a graduated neutral-density filter or whatever.

Thankfully, several other Leica R lenses have 55mm filter threads. Additionally, the Leica R system was co-developed with Minolta, and many Minolta SR (better known as MD) lenses have a 55mm filter thread, too.

Focus.

Focus Ring.

This is the headliner. The main event. I’ve never used a lens with such a fantastic manual focus experience. Seriously.

‘Smooth as butter’ is a tired simile often used to describe focus rings that are like gravel compared to the Summicron-R.

The focus ring has the perfect amount of resistance. It’s a little heavier than average, so you have to put a dollop of thumb muscle into it. That little bit of weight makes it easy to be very precise in focusing.

Even with a modest f/2 aperture, depth-of-field is pretty shallow at close-to-midrange distances, so the weight and precision of the focus ring is greatly appreciated.

Like most lenses, the lens barrel telescopes as you focus. It’s about one centimeter longer at minimum focus distance than it is at infinity. As a result, there is some focus breathing, but I don’t consider this a real issue unless you’re using this lens for focus stacking.

This is a great lens for video, as evidenced by the number of copies that have been tragically cine-modded.

Focus Throw Angle.

Another huge positive of the focusing experience is the massive ~270° focus throw.

This means it’s that much easier to be precise in your focusing. This also means you’ll be turning the focus ring a lot, which is an absolute pleasure with the Summicron-R.

There’s not much more to say about this, but having such a long focus throw is a blessing, more often than not.

Minimum Focus Distance.

The Summicron-R 50mm f/2 II can focus as close as 0.5 meters, or 19.7 inches.

In other words: not very close. To me, this is the Summicron-R’s Achilles heel.

There’s probably a good reason why Leica didn’t allow the lens to focus any closer, but I really wish it could.

For reference, a lot of other ~50mm lenses are capable of focusing to 0.45 meters. While that might not sound like much of a difference, those extra couple inches at minimum focus distance make for a fairly substantial difference in magnification and separation.

On the 35mm format, I find myself working at or near the minimum focus distance a lot of the time. I can usually get results I like, but sometimes a couple inches closer would make all the difference in getting the shot I’d really want.

This isn’t as much of an issue on APS-C, though, as the crop factor results in higher magnification of the image, so I can usually get as close as I’d like.

Build.

Size + Weight.

With a mounted length of 41mm (1.61 inches), diameter of 66mm (2.6 inches), and weight of 290 grams (10.23 ounces), the Summicron-R 50mm f/2 II is a compact and lightweight lens, especially considering its quality.

That said, there’s no getting around the fact that it’s a little bigger and heavier than most other 50mm lenses with similar aperture ranges. It’s closer in size to most vintage 50mm f/1.4 lenses than other f/2’s.

Pick it up, and you can tell that it’s made of high quality materials. It’s a fairly dense little thing.

By no stretch of the imagination is it a big or heavy lens, however. Especially when compared to its noticeably heavier sibling, the Summilux-R 50mm f/1.4 II, or its mirrorless descendant, the APO-Summicron-SL 50mm f/2. It’s all relative.

The Leica Summicron-R 50mm f/2 II is in that Goldilocks zone where it feels just right on about any camera.

Materials.

The body is made of metal. Anodized aluminum, to be precise. This is where the material is exposed to an electrolytic bath, creating an oxide layer on the exterior of the metal. There are a lot of advantages to this material. It’s lightweight (for a metal), durable, corrosion-resistant, abrasion-resistant, scratch-resistant, and aesthetically attractive.

Overall, the Leica’s body looks and feels to be of much higher quality than most other lenses of any period, but especially the plastic lenses that were the norm from the ‘70’s to pretty much today.

My copies are both from 1978, and have weathered the last 40+ years with grace.

Design.

The design of the lens is what you should expect from Leica in that it’s tastefully minimal.

Type on the lens is an easy-to-read sans serif font that you could easily characterize as modern, maybe even futuristic. The type is a mix of white and yellow.

There’s a depth-of-field scale on the lens, which is nice, although the focus scale is inaccurate on my copies, for one reason or another. I’m sure a visit to a skilled technician could get the focus scale back in line, or at least closer to it, but it doesn’t bother me at all since I shoot through an EVF with focus peaking.

There’s a hard stop at infinity, which might be nice for astro-photographers if their copy had an accurate focus scale.

There’s the infamous Leica red dot, of course, which is actually a semi-sphere. The location of the dot corresponds to the red dot on the bayonet mount. An attractive, and somewhat practical, touch.

Variants.

The lens body comes in two variants: standard and safari.

Standard is black in color, and as such is readily available to buy secondhand on eBay.

The ‘safari’ variant, in a beautiful olive green, is rarer, having launched with the special safari Leica R3, so expect to pay a premium.

The Summicron-R 50mm f/2 II is gorgeous in either color, although I admit to preferring the design of the safari variant.

I just happen to have one of each color. The black version is in beautiful condition with few signs of use. The safari green is also in good condition, although there is some flaking of the green paint on the body as well as some dust in the lens.

Oddly enough, the variants have different lens coatings. The standard lens has somewhat of a magenta coating, while the safari version has an orange coating. Even stranger, I didn’t see a difference in image color after a quick test, although I suspect the safari’s orange coating is slightly more welcoming to warm colors.

Bokeh.

Bokeh is an extremely subjective thing, and it’s somewhat pointless to even try to describe it, but here we go.

The Summicron-R 50mm f/2 II’s bokeh is nothing short of fantastic. The transition areas have an incredible subtlety about them as the details of the focal plane melt away. Even without a diffusion filter, there’s a certain ethereal nature to the out-of-focus elements. (I still use a diffusion filter, though, for that extra glow around highlights.)

Bokeh balls (specular highlights) have a distinct, but subtle outline, which I find quite pleasing. This makes them much more noticeable in the image, though, so keep that in mind.

Interestingly, the Summicron-R has a unique ability to create bokeh balls out of the most minuscule and mundane points of light. Almost no effort needs to be made to produce bokeh balls in the image.

Bokeh also swirls as it approaches the edge of the lens, and the bokeh balls become more eye-shaped. This effect is commonly called ‘cat’s eye’ bokeh (or Petzval effect, if you’re fancy).

Ironically, cat’s eye bokeh is considered a negative by many sites, seeing it as a technical flaw of a lens.

Personally, I couldn’t disagree more.

I find the characteristic swirl of cat’s eye bokeh to be far more aesthetically pleasing than the alternative, which is a more uniform (and boring) Gaussian-type bokeh.

So, to consider cat’s eye bokeh as a negative is to practically say that any lens with uniform bokeh is inherently better, aesthetically. That’s pretty ridiculous, in my opinion, but to each their own.

If Leica is the Porsche of the camera world, shouldn’t they be more of the authority on what’s desirable for a photographic lens?

Resolution.

Leica’s own literature on the lens reads that it exhibits “outstanding imaging quality at medium and close distances.” Indeed. The focal plane is plenty detailed at all distances, but especially in the 3-6 feet (1-2 meter) range.

Practically speaking, it’s just as detailed wide open as almost anything you’ll find on the market today, even without all the proprietary techno-wizardry that modern lenses cast into their profiles.

At f/5.6, I suspect the Summicron-R could resolve enough detail for even the highest megapixel 35mm format cameras of today, although I don’t own one to see for myself, so take that with a grain of salt.

Aberrations.

Ghosts.

If you point your lens toward the unobscured sun with the aperture wide open, you can create a rather interesting and dynamic ghost. It looks like a cross between a spinning top with a halo and a black hole, complete with accretion disk and quasars.

Stopped down, the primary ghost turns into an oblong hexagon with a smaller UFO-shaped ghost closer to the center of frame.

Either way, I quite like the Summicron-R’s ghosting nature.

If you have an aversion to ghosts, your best bet is to avoid points of light in the frame altogether with any lens, vintage or modern.

Flares.

For its age, the Summicron-R handles flares quite well. The image will flare if there’s a strong point of light in or just outside the frame, but the image never fully washes out like many vintage lenses do.

Basically, flaring with the Summicron-R is just a manageable reduction of contrast when the sun, or another strong point of light, is in or very near the frame.

Fringing.

In very high contrast scenes, you might notice a little purple fringing along bright edges.

This is really no big deal, though, as Capture One and Lightroom can remove it with a click and a slide. Even if they couldn’t, who cares. No great photo was ever ruined by purple fringing.

Every lens I’ve ever seen has purple fringing in certain circumstances, it’s just that modern lenses remove it in-camera before you ever see it. That said, the Summicron-R has a lot less fringing than most lenses, vintage or modern, but it is there.

Cost.

For a Leica, the Summicron-R 50mm f/2 II is a bargain, costing ~$600 as of March 2022.

Admittedly, the price of Leica products seems to fluctuate more than most other brands. In recent years, the Summicron-R has varied between $500 and $700, on average.

Of course, you can get one cheaper if it’s in rough condition, adapted to another mount, or ‘cine-modded’; the latter of which usually means the aperture has been de-clicked and the focus ring has a set of teeth on it for a follow focus mechanism, essentially negating all the best parts of the lens.

I bought my first copy a couple years ago for about $400, which I’m very happy about because it’s in beautiful condition. I got another - the safari variant - in a bundle with a safari Leica R3.

In short, the Summicron-R 50mm f/2 II is about as cheap as Leica lenses come (with few unremarkable exceptions).

Value.

Here’s the tricky part. Is the Leica Summicron-R 50mm f/2 II a good value? Well, it really depends on how you look at it.

As far as Leica lenses go, yes, it’s a great value. I’d go so far as to say all Leica R lenses are a good-to-great value. They are oftentimes optically identical to their M mount counterparts. Having been designed by the same people and produced in the same plants, that’s only logical. Yet, R lenses are usually only 50-70% of the price of their M kin of the same era. And considering how the Leica Summicron-R 50mm f/2 II is only about 20% of the cost of a new Summicron-M, I think that only strengthens its case as a great value Leica.

Compared to other new lenses, the Summicron-R still offers a good value. There’s not a whole lot of competition around $600 that offers the level of build and optical quality of the Summicron-R. I’d say Voigtlander lenses are probably the Summicron-R’s biggest competitor in that price range - sharing a rugged build quality and optical excellence - although the Voigtlanders are a bit more expensive. Granted, the closest Voigtlander is an f/1.5 (and, you know, new) so that might make the extra money worth it to you.

It’s once you start comparing the Summicron-R to other vintage lenses that it no longer seems like a good value. It’s easy to find a 50mm f/2-ish lens from a Japanese brand for <$50; most of which are perfectly capable of delivering beautiful results. As much as I really, really like the Summicron-R, I don’t think the results are that much better than a Minolta, for example. This is less an offense to the Leica and more a compliment to Minolta, who made outstanding lenses whose prices on the used market don’t reflect their quality. Further, the Minoltas are smaller and lighter, too. The Summicron-R still maintains many advantages, however, especially as it pertains to build quality, handling, and, let’s be honest, prestige.

Lasting Impressions.

Due to its portability, superb build quality, beautiful rendering, and luxurious in-the-hand feeling, the Leica Summicron-R 50mm f/2 II delivers an exceptional photographic experience at every stage of the process.

The only notable performance drawback to this lens is its minimum focus distance, which isn’t as close as I would like, but this is no deal breaker.

All things considered, the Leica Summicron-R 50mm f/2 II is my favorite lens I’ve used (so far).

Does Leica offer the best value on the market? No. But that was never really the point, though, was it? Yet, I think this is where people are coming from when they disparage Leica online. That, and the weird kind of jealousy we can all get about things that we can’t have - be it denial, delusion, or whatever - even though the Summicron-R is perfectly within reach for most photographers.

Sure, you could probably find something cheaper that delivers results that you might like just as much, depending on what you’re looking for in a lens. I’m doubtful, though, that you’d find anything cheaper that feels as incredible to use as the Summicron-R 50mm f/2 II, with the possible exception of some newer Voigtlander or Zeiss (Contax) lenses.

Photography is just as much about the experience of shooting as it is the results. In my experience, the Leica Summicron-R 50mm f/2 II is thus far unmatched.

Thank you for reading.