Leica 50mm f/2 APO-Summicron-M ASPH
My information is that five copies of the vaunted Leica 50mm f/2 APO-Summicron-M ASPH were delivered into the USA. As yet I have no idea when I’ll be able to get one for testing.
A reader from from Norway was lucky enough to get a copy of 50/2 AA, and he has shared some of his images with me. I can report that the image quality is spectacular and this surely looks like the best 50mm lens to have for peak quality on Leica M.
In fact, the Leica 50/2 AA might well be the best 50mm lens ever made for a production camera. Accordingly, the images suffer from intense moiré on the Leica M9 in some areas/textures, which is to be expected with ultra high performance lenses on a 18-megapixel camera lacking an anti-aliasing filter— Leica surely needs a 40+ megapixel “M” to minimize this issue, but that is a distant prospect at best.
See my previous writeup with MTF on the Leica 50mm f/2 APO-Summicron-M ASPH.
All that said, the Zeiss 55mm f/1.4 Distagon (due out late this year) is likely to set a new benchmark for fast lenses.