Leica M Lens List & Guide – A Complete List For 2025

Welcome to the ultimate Leica M lens list for 2025! Whether you’re a street photographer, portrait artist, or Leica collector, this guide covers every Leica M lens, from wide-angle 16mm to telephoto 135mm. Explore detailed specs, focal lengths, and prices to find the perfect lens for your M camera. As a passionate photographer, I’ve curated this list to help you make informed choices, with tips on performance and compatibility.

Leica M-Mount Lenses

Official Leica M Lenses

If you want a Leica lens and are on a budget, the 35mm Summilux or Summicron is pretty amazing. Leica lenses often hold their value over the years or even increase. Some say silver lenses have a slightly higher resale value than black ones.

In the past, there was a difference between the back and silver lenses, and often, silver lenses had a higher resale value. Often, the silver lenses used a brass base, whereas the black were aluminum and the black lenses were lighter. Today, black and silver lenses are the same weight, meaning both black and silver lenses likely use an aluminum base with brass helicoids.

Leitz Cine Lenses

Leitz cine lenses are high-quality, professional-grade lenses designed for film and video industry use. They are manufactured by Leitz, a Leica company with a long history of producing precision optics. These cine lenses are known for their exceptional image quality and color accuracy, making them popular among cinematographers and directors. They feature smooth focus and aperture adjustments, which are essential for capturing precise and smooth camera movements. Leitz cine lenses come in a wide range of focal lengths and are available for various mount types. They are built to withstand the rigors of professional use and are known for their durability and reliability on set.

This particular set is designed for full-frame sensors for the Leica M mount.

Third-Party Leica M Lenses

While Leica lenses are great in that they often hold their value or even increase in value over the years, third-party lenses are sometimes a nice option for those looking for daily drivers or those who want to maybe test a specific focal length and aperture before investing in the Leica equivalent.

Some third-party lenses have even been seen to have increased their value over the years.

I recommend only buying third-party lenses if you also have a Leica M digital body to check the focus coupling. Buying something for a film camera might cost you a few rolls of film before you realize the focus is off.

Many of these third-party lenses also use classic builds with exposed helicoids. Keep an eye on these and clean them of grease buildup or clumps that could break away and find their way onto your shutter or sensor.

Voigtlander / Cosina M-Mount Lenses

Voigtlander is a brand of camera lenses and photographic equipment known for its high-quality manual focus lenses. It is owned by the Japanese company Cosina, which has a long history of producing precision optics. I don’t personally think they are very high quality, as I get a lot of bad lenses from Cosina/Voigtlander, but I like their designs and do my own QC. Maybe 30% of the lenses I get from them must be returned. But they are inexpensive enough to justify this annoyance.

Voigtlander makes some more interesting designs, and they now have a few different lens styles and builds. They have high-quality, more traditional builds found in some of the Ultrons or APO lenses, and now they are doing more classic and vintage lenses made with brass using more classic or traditional builds.

I’ve collected all their vintage lenses; many have this sticky focus issue. I see many people sending lenses back because of this sticky focus. This is a design flaw, but not entirely, and it’s easy to fix.

What happens is that the helicoids are greased, and as these lenses sit in factories or shipping crates, the grease moves and can get displaced, leaving some part of the helicoid with less grease than the other. The best way to fix it fast is to extend the lens and set it face down overnight. Do this for a few days while working on the focus and using the lens. This issue will be resolved in a couple of days.

Be careful to check the lenses regularly. With these exposed helicoids and grease, there is always a risk that a glob of grease could end up on your sensor or your shutter. Keep the internals of the lens clean. I’ve had it happen before, and it’s not fun.

To understand what all the different Voigtlander names mean, I’ve built this little guide.

Any Voigtlander lens should be able to last you a lifetime if you take care of it.

Here are some thoughts on a few of the Voigtlander Lenses I’ve reviewed.

Voigtlander Heliar 15mm f4.5 III Review: This is a great compact ultra-wide lens with great sunstars. I’ve used it for years as a small and lightweight landscape or cityscape lens.
Voigtlander Ultron 35mm f1.7 Review: This is one of my all-time favorite 35mm lenses due to its amazing focus, falloff, and character. It has its flaws, but it is an excellent lens if you can find one used.
Voigtlander Ultron 35mm f2 Review: A very popular Voigtladner lens. It’s one of the best compact 35mm lenses you could buy, in my opinion. This lens lives on my Leica MP film camera.
Voigtlander Nokton 50mm f1.5 II Review: I consider this a good character lens, great for portrait photography but not my favorite for a do-it-all 50mm. I would prefer a slower lens with a simpler optical design for that.
Voigtlander Nokton 75mm f1.5 Review: An excellent lens, absolutely a must-have for portrait photography.

ZEISS M-Mount Lenses

The Zeiss manual lenses are a lot of fun, and these M lenses have a very signature Zeiss look: deeper shadows with high contrast.

The build quality is excellent but not on the same level as Leica’s.

Today, both Zeiss and Voigtlander are owned by Cosina, so you’ll get similar precision and build quality between these two brands. Both are primarily made in Japan, although some lenses, like the Zeiss 15mm, are still made in Germany.

If you are traveling to Japan, Zeiss lenses can often be found at a significant discount compared to their price in the West.

Sometimes, these lenses can loosen up over the years, and I’ve seen people complain about this as a problem with the build quality. This is not the fault of Zeiss. This is just what time does to things held together by tiny little screws. Leica lenses have similar issues, and there are online guides on how to get into the lens and tighten things up again. You can also always send them to a professional for tuning.

For this M line of lenses, Zeiss is sticking with more classic rendering and builds with designs that have remained unchanged for years. Most of these lenses were designed in the early 2000s and have seen a few updates to improve build quality. I personally like Zeiss lenses a lot.

I’ve only reviewed a few of the Zeiss M lenses, and here are my thoughts.

Zeiss Biogon 28mm f2.8 Review: I love this lens. It’s my favorite 28mm lens right now. I also tried the Voigtlander 28mm f2 and own a few others from other brands. The Zeiss 28mm is a little big and only has a nub instead of a full grip for the focus throw, so many street photographers prefer the Voigtlander 28mm to this. My problem with the compact Voigtlander 28mm lenses is that they have too much vignetting wide open. I also like the Zeiss T* coatings for the deeper shadows and high contrast.
Zeiss Planar 50mm f2 Review: While the Voigtlander Nokton 50mm f1.5 II was impressive for low light or shallow depth of field, I think the Zeiss 50mm f2 is a much better lens for general photography. It has so much pop, with great contrast and clarity. This is my preferred daily driver for the Leica M system.

I also had the 35mm f2.8 for a while. I really liked it, but the mount was defective, so I never reviewed it. The contrast was amazing, but maybe too much contrast for some people.

Zenit / Lomography Leica M Lenses

Zenit in Russia makes Lomography lenses. They’ve been making Leica M-type cameras, lenses, and accessories for decades and have extensive experience.

Meyer-Optik Gorlitz M-Mount Lenses

Meyer-Optik Gorlitz M lenses are not rangefinder coupled. Live view only.

One of the unique characteristics of these Meyer-Optik Gorlitz lenses is their extremely low element count. These will produce some very good micro-contrast with a classic rendering and distinctive character, but they won’t match the technical performance of some of the higher-element alternatives.

Sadayasu Miyazaki / MS Optical Leica M-Mount Lenses

These lenses are hand-made in Mr. Miyazaki’s (Miyazaki-san) basement. They are very limited. Usually, only about 100 are pressed.

Chinese Third-Party Leica Lenses

7Artisans M-Mount Lenses

7Artisans makes some fun, inexpensive lenses. They’re usually not great, especially compared to Voigtlander or Zeiss, but they can be fun. You might even get better performance with some of these lenses on the Leica M bodies compared to some of the other brands since Leica uses such thin cover glass on the M bodies.

Astra Labs M Lenses

Astra Labs makes a wide range of lenses for various camera mounts, including the Leica M mount.

You’ll have to confirm if these have the M range finder coupling; I couldn’t find this information. Some of these third-party lenses do not have that, so you would have to shoot them off the screen or a visoflex.

AstrHori Leica M lenses

Funleader M Lenses

Funleader is a small company based in Hong Kong. They make a few pancake lenses with fixed apertures.

Kipon IBERIT M-Mount Lenses

Kipon Lenses is a German-Chinese joint venture. German designers designed their lenses, which are now built in Shanghai.

These lenses are made with high-quality anodized aluminum, brass, and stainless steel. Kipon has a factory in Shanghai and Japan with all-new Hasegawa machinery for very high precision. They are known for their Kipon mounts and Cine adapters.

I’ve been sent some of their latest lenses, and it’s safe to say the quality reflects their new price. They are very high quality and have great precision, and I would put them up there with what Cosina is doing. Maybe better, as I’ve gotten more bad copies of Voigtlander lenses than Kipon lenses.

Kipon has decided to stick with the classic approach of not using any aspherical elements and keeping the element count low for that high micro-contrast punchier look.

With these lenses, you will get some CA, flaring, and less-than-perfect corners, as Kipon uses classic optical formulas. They are not too sharp for digital cameras and photographers looking for calmer portraits, but they are also sharp enough for film.

The 75mm is a gem, and I also really like the 35mm for its rendering. The 50mm also has excellent rendering but more vignetting issues than the other lenses.

Light Lens Lab Lenses

Mitakon Zhongyi

Thypoch M Lenses

Thypoch is a brand known for its high-quality manual lenses, particularly for the Leica M system. They offer a range of M-mount lenses and are praised for their wide apertures, which allow for beautiful bokeh and sharp subject isolation.

TTArtisan Leica M-Mount Lenses

TTArtisan makes some of my favorite cheap APS-C lenses. They have cool designs, are built with nice precision, and have acceptable optical performance. I’ve yet to try their Leica M versions, but they have some nice options.

Venus Optics M-Mount Lenses

I don’t think the Laowa zoom lens is rangefinder-coupled. Only some of the prime lenses are rangefinder-coupled, but they are limited to producing accurate focus to a minimum of around 2.3′. Check the lens specs before ordering.

Xuan Focus Free

Xuan is a Chinese company that I don’t know much about.

The Ultimate List Of Leica M Lenses | Conclusions

Voigtlander, Zeiss, and Leica offer many great options at reasonable prices. I may miss a few, as new lenses are always coming out, and I’m only one man. This list includes almost every lens I could find for Leica M cameras. If I’m missing anything, let me know.