The Summaron 3.5cm f/3.5 is a compact 35mm lens from the 1950’s, with my particular copy being an 1954 M mount version. Conveniently compact, with a hefty brass build, it’s a lens that’s satisfying to operate. My copy came to me quite hazy from what seemed to be a condensation of old grease. It was easy enough to clean off but required disassembly. The focus was also extremely stiff, and after a good clean and re-grease, the operation became smooth again. Unfortunately, the focus ring has a bit of looseness when switching focus directions, so it’s not in perfect mechanical condition.

Servicing the lens was fairly easy. But its tiny optical assembly makes it quite fidgety and delicate. From a focusing perspective, it was easy to disassemble the entire lens and clean the focus helicoids. A simple re-grease did wonders to make the lens useable. The only odd thing is that this lens has been super fussy with the type of grease used, which has resulted in several attempts of disassembly, cleaning and reassembly. I’m now using the Polar Bear Camera Ultra Soft and Extra Soft Grease, which for this lens seems ideal. 

Optically, the lens is perfectly centred. This is something I’ve come to expect with lenses from this era, which so far have never disappointed with regard to both optical centricity and rangefinder calibration. Bear in mind, some lenses are not calibrated to their widest aperture due to focus shift, and often are focus calibrated at one stop closed down in order to mitigate the effects a little. Leica in these years were just building with better quality and quality control than today. I own five Leica lenses produced in the 50’s to 60’s, and all of them are perfect. I’ve tried other lenses from these eras, and they too were good. However, I’ve tried several new Leica lenses over the last three years, and have had nearly a 100% defect rate in some form or other. Their M cameras are not much better. I know I repeat myself often regarding modern Leica’s shoddy quality, but I just don’t understand how they can get away with this for so long…

The Summaron 3.5cm is surprisingly sharp at the centre but with an understandably lower contrast we expect from modern lenses. These older lenses lend themselves to modern Monochrom cameras extremely well, since the cameras often have a strong contrast curve. On the M11, I don’t need to use my custom camera profiles with flatter tone curves. The standard tone curve does quite well most of the time. Colours are reproduced nicely, with a nice gentle contrast and a medium saturation. The lens renders a cooler image tone towards the edges even on the M11’s BSI sensor, but it’s so minor that for most images it won’t be observed even without an in-camera lens profile. Probably the biggest annoyance is that this lens has a mid-zone dip in resolution. Probably due to what looks like an increase in astigmatism. At wider apertures (up until f/8) the centre is very sharp, the mid zone lags behind significantly, and the edges are fairly detailed again. This, together with strong moustache shaped field curvature, makes this lens difficult to use. It’s not a good landscape lens on digital. 

Below is a processed image of an asphalt road, shot at f/5.6, which shows the field curvature of the Summaron. As you can tell, the curvature is really strong. 

The depth of field in the central image circle grows tremendously when stopped down, so for me the typical application is focus much further than needed centrally, stop down to at least f/11 and hope the mid and edges of the frame are sufficiently focused on details at medium distances. Its typical that the centre can be focused on 20m, but the bottom of the frame or mid zone would have the focus plane at around 5m.

This lens offers little at its wider apertures of f/3.5 to f/8, besides some interesting rendering with centrally placed subjects. Stopped down past f/8, it doesn’t loose sharpness by diffraction quite as rapidly as some modern lenses, and is most useable at f/11 to f/22. If your sensor is clean and the light is sufficient, these apertures are great, and together with a wider radius sharpening in post processing and a B&W conversion, this lens lens can offer some very nice vintage rendering. For today’s photography this lens is a strong creative tool.

In Summary, the Summaron 3.5cm is a lens thats offers a refreshing challenge or change in pace and style compared to using modern lenses. It offers more engagement and is increasingly part of the process. This isn’t often desired, as I typically prefer a lens that doesn’t get in the way too much between me and the subject, but sometimes a change is nice. For Leica standards, it’s a cheap lens to be found on the used market. Based on my experience with it, I would probably not buy it and instead look at buying a Summaron 35mm f/2.8 which is said to be much tamer and better optically. But no less, it’s a good creative tool, challenges the user and is capable of great results even on today’s modern high resolution cameras. 

Below are some recent images taken with the leica M11 and Summaron-M 3.5cm f/3.5.