LTM 35mm lenses

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What's considered to be the best of the Leica LTM 35mm lenses (excluding the limited edition asph issue) ?

[wizard]

Well, my first Leica lens ever - more than 30 years ago (no, I am not that old today, I was pretty young then ) - was the first Summicron 35mm, the 8-element version, and that lens started the addiction to Leica lenses, which says something about its qualities. In my view, it still is a very good lens today, certainly if stopped down to f4 and further. BTW, my lens wasn't the LTM version, but the goggled one for the M3. Optically, however, there is no difference. Sadly, if you want to have that lens in LTM today, you have to be a) lucky to find one, and willing to pay collector prices, as only few were made in LTM.

 

As an alternative, and almost as good as the first Summicron, I may suggest the Summaron 2.8/35mm. It is much cheaper than the latter, even in LTM version. The earlier 3.5/35mm Summaron is ok, but not stellar, i.e. visibly less good than the two former lenses.

 

I have no first hand experience with the CV 35mm LTM lenses, but believe they will be good user lenses, too, judging by my experience with other CV lenses (15, 21 and 25mm).

 

Cheers,

 

Andy