Leica 35mm Summilux-M Steel Rim Reissue Review
It’s been about three years since completely switching from Canon to Leica, and every time I pick up the camera or go through photos from a wedding, I’m always reaffirmed that it was the right choice. The switch totally transformed my workflow and brought back a lot of the joy with taking photos that was missing before.
Something else I’ve realized in these three years is how addictive acquiring Leica gear can be. The number of lenses I can attach to the front of an SL2-S seems limitless. There are so many fascinating lenses from Leica’s past I’d love to own someday.
Leica recently re-released their venerated 35mm Summilux-M, colloquially known as the 35 Steel Rim Reissue, or the 35 SR. When they initially announced it, I had sort of written it off as not applicable for weddings. But then the more reviews I read, and the more I wanted to add a couple character lenses to the lineup, the more interesting it became.
I finally bought it this spring (March 2024) and have some thoughts about it. If you’re wondering if this lens might be for you, hopefully my perspective on it can help guide that decision. Don’t take my one opinion as gospel though. There are a couple really helpful reviews out there that, in total, helped shape my opinion of the lens before actually getting to test it out myself.
So here we go!
My motivation for buying it
My go-to wedding day kit is a lineup of APO Summicron-SL primes that I’m totally obsessed with. They’re everything I could ever ask for in a daily driver lens system. Tough, sharp, perfect optics. That being said, I’ve been feeling a lot of self-imposed pressure to include a bit more… character (is that the right word?) into my work. Maybe a little more film-ish.
I try my best to emulate Portra 400 in my digital photos, but I think there’s still an element of nostalgia I want to include in them to take the digital edge off. I add some film grain to help, but I was also looking for some of that nostalgic glow and 60s bokeh the 35 SR offered.
The other reason this particular lens caught my attention is it’s size. The compact nature of it is super appealing, and aesthetically, to me it’s a super beautiful lens to look at. Dense. Jewel-like.
And the price wasn’t bad. I ended up getting a pre-owned copy from B&H that was about $800 less expensive than brand new, but for all I could tell, it was completely untouched.
My thoughts on the lens
OK so spoiler – I ended up returning the lens, but not before giving it a thorough test during a wedding day and a couple shoots, as well as just toting it around as a daily carry for a couple weeks.
Sorry for the spoiler, it’s just easier for me to write the rest of this in the past tense.
So why did I return it?
I honestly tried so hard to love this lens. And don’t get me wrong, for the right person, this is fabulous and would be a worthy addition to a kit, but just not for me.
This is why – my main lens, the one that’s always on an SL2-S and probably used for like 80% of the photos I take during a wedding is the 35 APO SL. Autofocus, perfect optics, weather sealed, blah blah.
I got the 35 SR to be an added character lens for basically just that flare vibe and the bokeh.
Thing is, that flare-y look only exists at 1.4.
As soon as I stop it down to like 1.8, from 1.8 onward it’s just as sharp as any other Leica 35. No big deal, except sometimes 1.4 is just too soft and I want to stop it down, but then I lose the flare if I do that. If the flare and more of that wild bokeh existed at something like 2.0, I probably would’ve hung on to it.
It’s also very difficult to get the center sharp at 1.4 even when using the excellent EVF to pull focus on the SL2-S. That might be a feature to some, but I need to at least have this thing be sharp somewhere in what’s an otherwise blurry/glowy/bokeh-y photo.
So basically what it came down to is this – I have this lens that’s occupying a slot on an SL2-S, and is only useful at a very specific aperture. It was just too hyper niche to warrant holding onto. If it was my only 35 and I didn’t need AF, then I’d keep, because it’s basically two lenses in one: super vibey at 1.4 and then perfectly tack sharp at 1.8 and above.
And to get the flare vibes, it usually means using it midday or at least sunset, but then on a film M, for example, that might mean needing an ND filter since again, you only get the flare at 1.4, but then using a filter on top of that lens creates a heavy vignette and kind of kills the flaring since the filter is behaving sort of like a lens hood.
At least with it being attached to an SL, I can crank the shutter up to still get that flare in midday/afternoon light. For example, that photo of the couple kissing up above was 1/5000, which isn’t achievable on a film M.
The flare *is* beautiful though. I really love it. On paper and based on YT reviews it looked ideal, but took using it for an entire wedding day to understand it’s limits.
And that’s the other thing, it’s such a specific look, I didn’t quite feel comfortable locking that look down as a deliverable without also providing a cleaner photo of the same thing using my 35 SL, so now I’m using two 35s at the same time and it just got ridiculous.
Final thoughts
This lens would be really great for someone with a digital M or an SL2-S. If you’re looking to use with with a film lens, it’ll be a challenge getting that flare-y goodness in all but just the right circumstances. Which is ironic since it’s a lens from the film era of Leica.
So what would it have taken for me to keep this lens? One of these two things –
- Being able to get that dreamy/glowy/flare aesthetic at a wider aperture range, like 1.4-2.0 instead of just 1.4.
- It being sharper in the center at 1.4 so I didn’t feel the need to stop down to get literally anything in the photo sharp.
Alrighty, that’s all folks! Hope that helps!
If you’re interested in seeing more taken with the Leica SL2-S and Q2, follow along on Instagram @hellobrandonscott.
