Very handy in the field.

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The Leica part number is 14838. Look around on eBay and they can be found for under $10.

Shown with the 75mm Voigtländer Ultron and the LLL 50mm Summicron clone at right.

When street snapping I typically go with something short on the camera and another lens a little longer in my pocket for picking out details. To protect the rear element of the latter I use this Leica lens coupling ring which allows two lenses to be attached back-to-back. The secret is to use it with only one lens at a time so, when it comes time to swap lenses, I extract this from my pocket, remove the lens from the camera, attach it to the other side of the ring then simply pop the other optic off for attachment to the Leica M body. If you use it with two lenses attached and a third on the camera you risk engaging in a dangerous juggling act as you try to replace one lens with the one just removed from the camera, risking dropping one or more lenses. Not a prescription for success.

The red line (there are two, 180 degrees apart) provides a handy index for insertion of lenses.

The ring is sufficiently deep to allow all but the earliest ultra-wides to be fitted without the risk of interference from deeply protruding rear elements (21mm Super Angulons would be an example) while affording good protection for the rear element. By the way, these old ultra-wides are a poor match with digital sensors owing to the very oblique angle at which peripheral rays strike the sensor, often resulting in ‘rainbow’ aberrations on the image periphery in color images. Modern ultra-wides adopt a retrofocus optical design which avoids the deeply protruding rear elements.

The Schneider designed 21mm f/3.4 Super Angulon, showing the deeply
protruding rear element. Made 1963-1980. An optic which has
very much not improved with time.

Puzzling.

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Leica just announced the availability of a firmware update for the M10, #3.25.50.34. My M10 was on #3.22.23.38 so I went ahead and downloaded the firmware and instructions, which state:

Firmware instructions.

My first attempt at moving the firmware to a newly formatted SD card failed. Nothing showed on the card. The firmware file is named LEICA_M10_3.25.50.34.FW. A second attempt had the file show up on the SD card and I followed the above instructions.

Here are snaps of the LCD screen during this process which, takes some 5 minutes. A nervous time as you wonder if the camera will be bricked. There’s a two minute wait for ‘decompression’ of the file before the first image below:

After decompression, towards the end, completion.

At conclusion the LCD went blank, but a touch on the Menu button showed all was well, and the firmware version in ‘Camera Information’ was confirmed as #3.25.50.34. There was no indication that the camera was being restarted.

Leica makes no mention of what is being changed, but apparently the prime change is the addition of the newly announced 35mm f/1.2 Noctilux. What is strange is that the lens does not appear in the menu of lenses which can be dialed in manually. Maybe the camera recognizes the new lens when it is inserted, as I assume it’s 6-bit coded. Anyway, I will not be spending $9,650 to find out.

The other odd thing is the mention in the instructions that the date and time have to be reset. I found no need to do this as both were correct.

Go figure.

I also checked to see if the (largely worthless) Leica Fotos app on the iPhone would connect faster, at best an iffy and very slow process with the previous firmware version. Nope. It still fails to connect most of the time and when it does the process takes some 3 minutes. So Fotos remains useless. By all accounts the app works better and faster with the M11, and stores GPS data in the app without the need to use the clunky Visoflex electronic viewfinder – required with the M10 – but, again, I’m not about to spend $10,000 to find out.

So unless you are buying the new Noctilux it seems pointless to do this firmware update. And if you do get the Noctilux it’s unclear whether it will be correctly recognized.

Costlier than ever.

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From the UK 1967 Leitz catalog:

The 1967 catalog.

Listing for the 50mm Summicron, v2.

Adjusted for inflation using the CPI and converting from sterling to dollars, that 1967 price computes to $2,240 today.

Compare with today’s price for a new copy of the latest version:

Listing for the 2026 50mm Summicron.

The Light Lens Lab clone performs identically at a fraction of the price, with build quality comparable to the original:

With 39mm UV filter in place.
The label reminds me to turn on my iPhone for GPS recording.

Plus, with the LLL clone, you can choose from Cooke Speed-Panchro II or Leitz Summicron clone optics.

Some early results.

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Here is a handful of test snaps from the LLL f/2 8 element Summicron clone.

These were taken in poor light, all at f/2, to see what the lens is capable of. In each case clicking the image and clicking the result will display a very large picture to permit critical evaluation. The gentle, unfussy rendering of out-of-focus areas is well shown in these snaps.

Focus was on the ‘Don Fulano’ bottles.
Click the image for a larger version.

Fellow diner, clandestine snap.
This is a crop of the lefthand most half of the file.
Click the image for a larger version.

In the next image I accidentally underexposed by no fewer than 4.5 stops. Duh! Though only at ISO500 the result has considerable digital noise and the Denoise algorithm in LR Classic 15.1 did a fine job of removing the noise without robbing definition. Center resolution is exceptional with little loss in the corners, despite the lens being at full aperture.

At f/2.
Click the image for a larger version.

In this final image focus was on the serrated decoration immediately below the lower glass globe. The ‘Leica glow’ is on full display here. Note the rendering of out-of-focus areas:

At f/2.
Click the image for a larger version.

In conclusion, this is a lens which successfully emulates the 70 year old Leitz original design with the addition of modern multicoating, fresh parts and new grease, and all at a fraction of the cost of that Leitz collectible. Corner definition is high at full aperture with the corners holding up well. There is no distortion. If you want glow use f/2. For glow-free high definition f/2.8 and smaller does the trick. Highly recommended as an all round, diminutive street snapper with a fast maximum aperture. Not cheap, but built to historical Leitz, Wetzlar standards. And that means this lens defines excellence in mechanical and optical design.

All images on the Leica M10.