As an amateur photographer, I have been up and down the list of focal lengths, in primes and zoomes, more times than I’d care to admit. I always seem to arrive back at 35mm though. I feel like I’m always searching for the next 35 though. When you’re a photography enthusiast it’s very easy to fall into reading about lenses, watching videos about lenses, and subsequently buying lenses. Especially in Leica M-mount, where the choices—especially in 35mm—are overwhelming and span the 70+ year lifetime of the system, you can easily cycle through buying and selling several different lenses of the same focal length.
It’s tempting to ask, in exasperation, which lens is the best? Because I’ll have that one. Unfortunately, it’s not an easy question to answer. You have to decide what’s important to you in a lens, what isn’t, what you can live with, and what you can’t. Because they’re all compromises. And unlike a Canon R-mount camera, where you have two choices, Leica Lens List lists over 90.
How do you know what’s important to you? I can’t tell you that, but I can tell you what I’ve arrived at for myself, as told through four 35mm lenses that I like very much. So this is a sort of review (of what I care about) of the Voigtlander 35mm f/2 APO-Lanthar, the Voigtlander 35mm f/2 Ultron, the Light Lens Lab 35mm f/1.4 Aspherical, and the Leica 35mm f/1.4 Summilux-M ASPH FLE II.
The best lens
As in most hobbies, any discussion of gear will find its way around to the word “best” anyway, without the question even being asked.
At its best, I believe this is a social exercise. Making an assertion like “the Sony G Master is the best modern 35mm lens” will provoke endless discussion, debate, conversation. It fills the conversational space and keeps us engaged with one another. At its worst, it’s an exercise in gatekeeping and gaslighting, in elitism where the thing one person has that someone else doesn’t is somehow objectively superior.
It is this expression that Light Lens Lab confounds with an interesting proposition: to remake lenses that are unobtainable by everyday photographers at obtainable prices, without (much) compromise. I find this interesting.
But I also find “best” to be highly reductive, and useless as a criteria for comparing lenses.
So how do we judge?
Drink up
We are spoiled for optical perfection in modern lenses, and we can chose the particular form that takes.
Lenses are a bit like wine.