Leica Summarit 40mm f/2.4

Leica built the Summarit 40mm in 1995 to be the only lens a Minilux owner would ever touch. The Minilux was Leica's answer to the premium-compact arms race of the mid-1990s, when Contax had the T2 and Nikon had the 35Ti, and every one of those cameras lived or died on its fixed lens. Leica's bet was a 40mm f/2.4, a focal length that sits just wide of normal and frames a touch more generously than the 35mm everyone else reached for. The same lens stayed in production through the Minilux's run into 2003, and the design later carried forward into the Leica CM.

What it renders is the reason people still chase scuffed Miniluxes on auction sites. Reviewers consistently describe it as sharp wide open at f/2.4 across most of the frame, with the corners catching up as you stop down. It holds the high microcontrast Leica is known for, the kind that keeps edge detail crisp without crushing the midtones. Color comes back saturated without going garish, and flare is well controlled for a compact, though pointing it straight into a low sun will lift the shadows a little.

Subject separation is not what you buy this for. At 40mm and f/2.4 you do not get much unless you are close, and the out-of-focus areas read tidy rather than creamy. This is a documentary and street lens at heart, the thing you keep in a coat pocket and shoot at f/4 to f/8 on the move. People who want shallow portraits buy a different camera. People who want a Leica-rendered frame from something that weighs almost nothing keep this one.

The honest weakness is not the lens, it is the body it is welded to. The Minilux is known for the dreaded E02 fault that kills the electronics, and when the camera dies the Summarit dies with it, because the lens does not come off and will not mount on anything else. A great optic stuck in a fragile shell, and you price that risk in every time you buy one.

One metering note. The shutter is a leaf unit sitting inside the lens, so it syncs flash at every speed. That is the real advantage of this design. You can drop in fill at 1/400 in bright sun with none of the sync-speed ceiling that hobbles focal-plane cameras. Meter the ambient daylight in Zone Light Meter, set your fill a stop or two under, and the leaf shutter handles the rest. Cross-shopped against the Contax T2 and its 38mm Sonnar, the Leica wins on contrast and bite and loses on autofocus reliability, which is the trade every buyer in this little class still argues about.