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’m now including minimum focus distance as that’s go

Leica M Prime Lenses

If you want a Leica lens and you’re on a budget, the 35mm Summilux or Summicron is 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 lighter. Today black and silver lenses are the same weight, which means both black and silver are likely using an aluminum base with brass helicoids.

Leitz Cine

Leitz cine lenses are high-quality, professional-grade lenses that are designed for use in the film and video industry. 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 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.

A lot of these third-party lenses also use classic builds with exposed helicoids. Keep an eye on these and keep them clean of any grease build-up 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 that is 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.

Voigtlander makes some more interesting designs and they now have a few different styles of lenses with totally different builds. They have their 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.

Warning For Their Vintage Line: I’ve collected all their Vintage lenses and a lot of them have this sticky focus issue and I see a lot of people sending lenses back because of this sticky focus. This is sort of a design flaw but not entirely and it’s easy to fix. What happens is the helicoids are greased and as these lenses sit in factories or in 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 fully extend the lens and set it face down overnight. Do this for a few days while also working on the focus and of course using the lens, and this issue will resolve in a couple of days.

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

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

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 a lot of fun and these M lenses have a very signature Zeiss look.

Build quality is great but not on the same level as Leica as some people say.

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

Sometimes over the years, these lenses can loosen up and I’ve seen people complain about this as a problem with the build quality. This is not a 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 guides online on how you can get into the lens and tighten things up again, or you can always send them to a professional for tuning.

For this M line of lenses, Zeiss is holding onto the more classic rendering and classic build with designs that haven’t really changed in years. Voigtlander is doing more of the flashy stuff with more advanced lens formulas and optics with some gimmicks sprinkled on top.

Zenit / Lomography Leica M Lenses

Lomography and Atoll lenses are made by Zenit in Russia. They’ve made Leica M-type cameras, lenses, and accessories for decades and have a lot of 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 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.

AstrHori Leica M lenses

Kipon IBERIT M-Mount Lenses

Kipon lenses are a German-Chinese joint venture. Designed by German designers and now build in Shanghai.

These lenses are made with high-quality anodized aluminum, brass, and stainless steel. Kipon just recently built a new factory in Shanghai with all new Hasegawa machinery for very high precision. They are known for their Kipon mounts and continue to improve their builds. Try to get a new lens if you can.

I’ve been sent some of their latest lenses and it’s safe to say the quality reflects their new price. Very high quality, very good 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.

You will get some CA, flaring, and less-than-perfect corners with these lenses, as Kipon is going for the very classic look. Not too sharp for digital cameras for photographers looking for calmer portraits, but also sharp enough for film.

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

Light Lens Lab Lenses

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.

Venus Optics Lowa Leica M-Mount Lenses

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

Xuan Focus Free

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.