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Had to do a few quick & dirty street tests with both lenses side by side- the "regular" Summilux 50 ASPH (my version is 11892) and the "Black Chrome" special-edition-becoming-regular-edition Summilux 50 ASPH (11688). Rumor out there in several forums has it, the latter (Black Chrome rehoused) lens is somehow sharper, although even Leica themselves claim both have exactly the same glass. All comparisons were done WIDE OPEN, where the true resolving character of the lens is nested to show differences. All tests done on M10-P Reporter. TL;DR: The lenses are EXACTLY the same, identical sharpness, identical chromatic aberration, identical flares etc. Anyone claiming otherwise must have had a bad copy of his original lux 50 ASPH when comparing the two against each other.

I just got my black chrome 50mm Summilux ASPH (11688). As a number of people who have received their lens have pointed out in this thread http://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/242441-new-35-cron-and-50-lux-available-in-black-chrome/, the hood won't fit over numerous E43 filters people have tried. I tried with my Carl Zeiss E43 UVa filter, which attaches to the lens just fine, and in this case the hood also won't fit. I thought I would illustrate the problem for two reasons: 1. As a warning, should this affect any purchase decisions. It would seem a normal E43 filter and the supplied hood cannot be used at the same time. But also... 2. to solicit advice from people less mechanically-challenged than me! Perhaps I'm just not doing this right, and there is actually a solution. Please help! Okay, here are the pictures to illustrate this problem - Note the female groove at the top of the lens barrel. The hood has squeeze tabs to pull these grips flush with the lens. The hood has a male groove that stops the hood being lowered any further than this groove. Releasing the tabs moves the grips back out and they clamp onto the female groove on the lens. Attaching this filter (and I presume many others) does not cause a problem with the overall circumference to clear. This one is perfectly flush with the lens barrel. Here is the hood affixed without the filter. Note the height. Here is the hood affixed with the filter. The extra height created by the filter prevents the grips from reaching the female groove on the lens barrel. It has no grip at all really and would come off at the slightest bump. The issue then is one of height. I'm not sure if any filter will be thin enough to avoid this problem. Thoughts...? What am I missing here?