A Complete List Of Leica M Lenses

This is a list of all available Leica M lenses that I’ve been able to find. There are many more Leica lenses but most of them are no longer in production so I’m trying to make this a list of lenses you can still easily buy.

*Super quick note when buying expensive gear. If you’re in the USA and use a B&H Payboo card, B&H photo will eat the tax fee from orders on their site. This could save you a lot of money when buying these lenses. Just pay it off right away because it’s 30% interest. Adorama has a similar Edge Credit card that gives you 5% off purchases.

Leica M-Mount Lenses

This Leica M-Mount Lens list includes just about everything I could find. 

I’ve listed the average prices of each of these lenses, you can of course find them cheaper used on Ebay.

Leica M Prime Lenses

If you want a Leica lens and you’re on a budget, the 35mm Summilux or Summicron are pretty amazing. Leica lenses often hold their value over the years or even go up in value. Some people are saying silver lenses have a slightly higher resale value than black lenses.

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 were using a brass base whereas the black was aluminum and the black lenses were lighting. Today black and silver lenses are the same weight, which means both black and silver are likely using an aluminum base with brass helicoids.

Leica M Zoom Lens

Leica has one zoom lens that has a range from 16-18-21mm. It’s technically not a zoom lens, rather a lens that has three focal lengths built into it that you can switch between. 

Leitz Cine

Part of Leicas Cine line of lenses designed to be adapted to various cine cameras.

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 for those who want to maybe test a certain focal length and aperture before investing in the Leica equivalent.

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

I do recommend you only buy third-party lenses if you also have a Leica M digital body so you can check the focus coupling. If you buy something for film, it might cost you a few rolls of film before realizing the focus is off.

Voigtlander / Cosina M-Mount Lenses

The list of Voigtlander M lenses is looking really nice and continues to grow.

Voigtlander also makes some of these specifically for the Sony E-Mount, but I’m not sure if they are tuned for the Sony sensor stack or not. Typically Sony full-frame cameras give the worst performance when adapting M lenses, so buying the E-Mount version might be a better option.

In terms of quality, they are up there with Zeiss but don’t quite have the quality control of Leica. I have gotten a bad lens before which I had to send back.

I like collecting Voigtlander lenses because of their unique designs. The Chrome 35mm f1.7, Black Paint 32mm f2 and 28mm f2, Nickle 50mm f1.5, and the various lenses under the Vintage Line. This gives you a little more than just a cheaper Leica or Zeiss alternative.

Some of the Voigtlander lenses come with the option of a single coating or multicoating. Typically photographers shooting digital and color choose the multi-coating designs. Black and white and sometimes film photographers sometimes choose a single coating design which in some conditions produces less contrast.

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

ZEISS M-Mount Lenses

The Zeiss manual lenses are the cream of the crop. Zeiss has a lot of consumer lenses out there for Sony now and their badge is all over other brands’ lenses and phones. But they still are legendary and the Leica M lenses by ZEISS are top of the line, some even comparable to the Leica alternatives.

Meyer-Optik Gorlitz M-Mount Lenses

One of the unique characteristics of these Meyer-Optik Gorlitz lenses is the extremely low element count that they have. These will produce some very good micro-contrast with a classic rendering and unique 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 Photoelectric M-Mount Lenses

7Artisans makes some fun cheap 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 use such thin cover glass on the M bodies.

Kipon IBERIT M-Mount Lenses

Kipon lenses are a German-Chinese joint venture. Designed with German precision, build in China. These lenses have been silently upgraded a few times where a lot of the issues have been worked out.

These lenses are made with high-quality anodized aluminum, brass, and stainless steel. I personally like these lenses, they are lightweight manual lenses with very good optics that are just about perfect for street photography. Although if you’re willing to spend a little extra cash, some of the latest Voigtlander alternatives are giving better performance.

I like the way the 35mm f2.4 renders, even though the Voigtlander 35mm f2 has better sharpness. The 75mm is still very nice.

Light Lens Lab

Mitakon Zhongyi 

Rockstar Lenses

This company called Rockstar is selling some lenses. I’ll list them soon.

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 will soon in the future.

Venus Optics Lowa Leica M-Mount Lenses

Pinhole Lenses

The Ultimate List Of Leica M Lenses | Conclusions

There are a lot of really great options by Voigtlander, Zeiss and Leica at a lot of reasonable prices. I may be missing a few lenses as new lenses are always coming out and I’m only one man. This lens list does include just about every lens I could find for Leica M cameras. If I’m missing anything let me know.