Updated January 2025

Introduction

Like many of the 50mm lenses available in Leica M mount, the Summicron doesn’t really have any significant flaws. It’s sharp, compact, well-built, and makes beautiful photos.

About this lens

The Summicron is a simple double-Gauss design and is almost identical in design to the Zeiss 50mm f/2 Planar. Leica has used this design since 1979, but updated the mechanical design in 1994. There are no aspherical surfaces or floating groups, but this lens doesn’t need them to perform excellently.

Build quality

Fantastic. All metal construction. Both the focus and aperture rings feel really, really good. The built-in hood feels solid and works well.

Size and feel

Perfection. I absolutely love how this lens looks on an M camera, and it feels delightful to use. There is no focus tab, but gripping the focus ring directly feels very natural.

This lens looked particularly elegant and stealthy on my M 262.

Image quality

Distortion: None.

Vignetting: Minimal.

Chromatic aberration: Minimal/none.

Bokeh: The Summicron has very smooth and pleasant background blur. An f/1.4 lens will give you more bokeh, but personally I think a 50mm f/2 lens already has plenty.

Sharpness: The Summicron is tack-sharp through almost the entire frame at f/2. There is some smearing/haze in the edges and corners, which quickly sharpens up by f/2.8-f/4. Here are two samples at f/2 which give an overview of corner-to-corner performance:

When shooting high-contrast subjects wide-open, it’s possible to get some purple fringing. It’s not enough to bother me but it’s worth mentioning:

Image quality stays good even at minimum focus distance. Here’s a sample shot wide-open at 0.7m:

In summary, the Summicron isn’t 100% perfect but will deliver razor-sharp images in almost all real-world circumstances.

Focus shift: I remember seeing some focus shift when I tested for it at 0.7m, but I never noticed significant focus shift in my photos.

Summary and recommendations

The 50mm Summicron is a fantastic standard lens. It offers great image quality, great build quality, and ideal handling. Based on this glowing review, it would be reasonable to assume that I would recommend buying one. But the Summicron faces two big problems. The first is that it retails for $2995, and rarely goes below $1500 on the used market. The second is that better alternatives have come to market.

The Voigtlander 50/2.2 (review) is sharper, smaller, and focuses closer than the 50 Summicron for literally 1/5th the price. The only trade-offs are the 1/3rd slower aperture and more vignetting. It’s currently my favorite 50mm lens and it would be hard to recommend spending multitudes more to get the 50 Summicron. And even for those who demand a true f/2 lens, there are more compelling options than the 50 Summicron. The Voigtlander 50/2 APO-lanthar (review), for example, offers truly perfect performance without sacrificing much in size, weight or cost.

I’ll always have a soft spot for the 50 Summicron, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone trying to get the best lens for the money.

Good
Image quality
Build quality
Size and feel
Built-in hood

Bad
More expensive than Zeiss/Voigtlander alternatives

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Other alternatives

Recommended:
Leica 50 Summilux ASPH (review)
This lens is bigger, less ergonomic, and vastly more expensive than my favorite 50/2 lenses, but it offers significantly shallower depth of field while maintaining superb central image quality. For those who want f/1.4 and can afford it, this is my top recommendation.

Voigtlander 50/1.5 II (review)
I found this lens did not render as beautifully as the 50 Summilux ASPH, but its combination of speed, sharpness, and compactness make it a very compelling lens for the money.

Not recommended:
Zeiss 50/2 Planar (review)
I previously described this as a perfect model 50mm lens. It’s certainly a good lens, but it’s become harder to recommend given that it costs more than the Voigtlander 50/2.2.

Leica 50mm f/2 APO-Summicron ASPH
This lens offers similar performance to the Voigtlander APO and is a bit better in terms of size and ergonomics. But that’s not enough to overcome its price tag of over $8000.

Voigtlander 50mm f/3.5 Heliar
This lens offers optical perfection with a fairly limited f/3.5 aperture in a tiny but odd-looking package. For a similar price you can just get the Voigtlander 50/2.2, so I’m not sure who this lens is for.

Zeiss 50mm f/1.5 Sonnar
Voigtlander 50mm f/1.5 Heliar
These lenses use vintage optical designs and should only be used by those who intentionally want soft, dreamy images with lots of aberrations. They also have very strong focus shift, which makes them a pain to use on rangefinders.