Leica APO Summicron 35mm Review
If you’ve been around the block long enough, you’ve probably heard whispers about the Leica APO-Summicron-M 35 f/2 ASPH. It’s part of Leica’s absurdly sharp, absurdly expensive APO line, designed to make even the most clinically precise engineer shed a single tear of optical joy. At roughly the price of a decent used car, this lens is a precision instrument disguised as a piece of old-school glass. But is it worth mortgaging your other hobbies? Let’s dive in.
Build Quality
In true Leica fashion, the APO-Summicron-M 35 f/2 ASPH feels like it was machined by engineers with OCD levels of tolerance control, and I mean that as the highest compliment. The housing is anodized aluminum, and the lens feels dense, compact, and perfectly weighted.
There are no plastic compromises here—every ring, click, and component is engineered to tolerances that make aerospace hardware jealous. Leica’s red dot gleams proudly, the engravings are deep and precise, and the aperture ring clicks into place with the satisfying authority of a finely crafted mechanical watch.
Manual Focus and Handling
The focus throw is around 90°, making it snappy for street photography but still precise enough for those razor-thin depth-of-field shots. On an M-body, it balances beautifully, turning the camera into a stealthy, pocketable powerhouse. You’ll find yourself nailing critical focus without even realizing it.
The focus tab is one of those understated design choices that Leica enthusiasts – and engineers with a fondness for precision – can obsess over endlessly. It’s a small, wing-shaped protrusion at the bottom of the focus ring, but its presence transforms manual focusing into something tactile and instinctive. With just your fingertip, you can glide the lens through its focus range, and after a bit of practice, your hand develops an almost subconscious awareness of distance based purely on the tab’s position. For street photographers and fast shooters, this means quicker focus adjustments without lifting your eye from the viewfinder, all while appreciating the smooth, perfectly damped resistance that Leica engineers fine-tuned with the same care they probably apply to building medical equipment or space optics.
Where this lens really breaks tradition, though, is with its close-focusing capability, an engineering flex that subtly defies the mechanical constraints of the Leica M system. Normally, M lenses stop focusing at 0.7 meters, a limit set by the rangefinder’s mechanical linkage. But the 35mm APO takes things further, focusing down to an impressive 0.3 meters. Below that 0.7-meter mark, the lens decouples from the rangefinder entirely, nudging you to switch to live view or an EVF to nail your focus. It’s a clever hybrid approach that lets Leica keep the classic mechanical feel while giving photographers modern close-up versatility.
This close-focusing feature plays beautifully with the APO design’s signature optical perfection. Up close, those aspherical elements and apochromatic corrections continue delivering stunning sharpness, controlled aberrations, and that elusive Leica micro-contrast that gives images an almost three-dimensional pop. From a mechanical engineering perspective, extending the helicoid that far without introducing play or instability is no small feat, but true to Leica’s reputation, it feels rock-solid. The result is a lens that performs just as precisely at 30 centimeters as it does at infinity, all while your fingers dance along that beautifully sculpted focus tab.
Optical Performance
Ah yes, the juicy part. Leica didn’t slap the APO label on this lens for marketing bravado—this thing performs. In fact, the optical performance might make you question the physical limits of glass, light, and reason itself.
Sharpness? Off the charts. Wide open at f/2, center sharpness is surgical, and by f/2.8, it’s clinically perfect across the frame. Edge-to-edge sharpness this good almost feels like cheating. Engineers will appreciate this—there’s minimal field curvature, barely any chromatic aberration (thanks to apochromatic correction), and virtually no distortion.
Bokeh? Smooth, creamy, and surprisingly aesthetic for a 35mm f/2. Sure, it’s not your go-to portrait bokeh monster, but subject separation is delicious, especially up close.
Color Rendering? Leica’s signature and rich color tonality are present and accounted for. It’s the kind of rendering that makes even mundane scenes pop with depth and realism, like the world got a firmware update.
Flare Control? Excellent. ASPH elements and coatings keep flare in check, though shoot directly into the sun and you’ll still get that cinematic Leica glow—intentional or not.
The Leica APO-Summicron-M 35 f/2 ASPH is engineered with an eye toward the future of high-resolution sensors, and it shows. This lens is one of those rare optical tools that fully resolves a 60-megapixel sensor without breaking a sweat, which, for context, is no small engineering feat in the compact M-mount world. Most lenses, even good ones, start to show their limitations when pushed to that level of pixel density. Edges soften, contrast falls apart, chromatic aberrations creep in—but not here.
Leica’s use of apochromatic correction (hence the APO in the name) means color fringing and chromatic aberration are virtually eliminated, even wide open at f/2. That means razor-sharp details and clean, punchy files from corner to corner, perfect for exploiting every single one of those 60 million pixels. The aspherical element further controls distortion and keeps sharpness consistent across the frame, so your high-resolution files don’t just look sharp in the center, they’re tack sharp from edge to edge.
In real-world terms, what does that mean? You can crop aggressively, print huge, or pixel-peep your files like an over-caffeinated engineer examining circuit board traces, and the lens keeps delivering. It future-proofs your kit because even as sensor technology advances—and let’s face it, we’re probably heading toward 80 or even 100MP M bodies eventually—the 35mm APO is already playing at that level.
If you’re the type who enjoys pushing your gear to technical extremes, pairing this lens with a 60MP sensor turns your setup into an absurdly sharp, distortion-free, micro-contrast-rich image-making machine.
Conclusion
The Leica APO-Summicron-M 35 f/2 ASPH is like a Formula 1 car: precision, speed, and performance packed into an elegant, minimalist frame. If you’re the kind of engineer who appreciates schematics for their beauty, or a photographer who nerds out over MTF charts, this lens is dangerously tempting. It’s unapologetically expensive, meticulously engineered, and optically superb. It’s not a quirky, vintage, flare-prone lens that adds “character”, this is modern performance distilled into mechanical art. Perfect for pixel peepers, street shooters, or anyone who wants to future-proof their kit.
If you had to commit to only one lens for life this would be the one. Paired with a 60-megapixel sensor, the APO 35mm can do just about everything: landscapes, portraits, details, documentary work, all with jaw-dropping sharpness and colors that almost makes your images breathe. One lens to rule them all. Your wallet, spouse, or conscience might stage an intervention, but your camera bag will never feel more complete.
Strengths
- Utterly mind-blowing sharpness, even wide open
- APO correction means near-zero chromatic aberrations
- Compact, beautifully built, “heirloom-quality” engineering
- Silky, satisfying manual focus up to 30cm
- Excellent contrast, color, and rendering
- Perfect for just about everything (street, landscape, portrait, travel and even macro)
Weaknesses
- Price: Your wallet will need therapy
- Not the most “character-driven” lens; this is clean, modern rendering
Samples
Here are some recent photos I captured using my Leica APO-Summicron-M 35 f/2 ASPH lens. These sample shots highlight the lens’s performance across different conditions, settings, and subjects. To view the complete collection of my photos taken with this lens, the link.
