By Ked · May 2026
May 2026
If you ask ten Leica M photographers which focal length they shoot most, you'll get answers from one of three numbers: 28mm, 35mm, or 50mm. These are the lengths Leica has refined over seventy years of M-mount production, the lengths the system was effectively designed around, and the lengths that anchor almost every M shooter's working kit. If you can only own one lens for your M, one of these three is greate place to start.
The choice between them is more consequential than people who haven't shot with them assume. A focal length doesn't just frame more or less of a scene; it changes what kind of pictures you take and how you interact with the subject and scene. The 50mm photographer and the 28mm photographer working the same scene come back with photographs that look very different.
My personal history with this choice has been a voyage. I naturally lean towards 28mm. I like to work close and I like to use the properties of the 28 to my advantage. It requires a careful understanding though, particularly when very close to the subject, as it can exagerate features. A nose in the center part of the frame can appear to loom forward, objects near the edges can (depending on exactly which 28 you are using) can show varying degrees of barrel distortion making faces and people look unnatural. Used carefully and deliberately these distortions can be used to your advantage or to your ire.
I own five 28mm m-mount lenses. From Leica and Canon (LTM). The choice for me is the rendering. From low contrast unsharp (by pixel-peeping standards) to visually accute, with every little fiber rendered faithfully in the frame.
Recently I have gravitated towards 35mm. I have found that it is an easy working length with fewer worries about edge of the frame distortion yet including enough context to show what is going on around the subject. Not quite as wide as the 28 less often do I review photos and ask myself "what is the subject of this photo?". That can happen easily with 28mm photos; 28 can leave the viewer with too much in the frame and questions about exactly what it is this photo is supposed to represent.
I own five 35mm lenses Leica, Zeiss, and Canon. It is my grab and go lens, good enough for any situation that I shoot. The choice again is rendering and size from the tiny Canon LTM Serenar (deeply flawed to digital pixel peepers) to the large Summilux ASPH to my budget APO (actually not an APO lens but VERY good and very small) Zeiss Biogon f/2.8. Of course the Summilux 35 vII is probably my most frequent choice, combining speed, interesting rendering that becomes very acute. f/8 and compact size into a package that does not punish you for carrying it.
The last of the trinity, the 50 is my least owned lens. I use the 50 when I want a little more stand-off between me and the subject. Again this is an easy focal length to use and an easy choice for a grab and go lens. The diffence in working distance is material to almost any subject and many photographers uncomfortable with the the proximity to the subject with a 28 will find a home in the 50.
I own 2 50mm lenses: one a Safari Summicron and the other a Summicron Collapsable LTM which lives on my iiig. For many years I was reluctant to use the 50 as I operated in a 28-35 world. Over the last three months I added it into my rotation because my M3 (which is always shot with a 35 Summicron vI and goggles) is away for a tune-up. By the way an occasional tune-up on a 60+ year old camera seems quite reasonable, no? Anyway the iiig has replaced the M3 as a go to for times that I am "photographing" and 50mm is native to that camera.
50mm is the focal length the original Leica was designed around. The first Leica, designed by Oskar Barnack and introduced commercially in 1925 with Max Berek's 50mm Anastigmat lens, established 50mm as the standard focal length on the platform. Leica has continued making 50mm lenses without interruption ever since. There is a Summicron 50mm, a Summilux 50mm, a Summarit 50mm, an APO-Summicron 50mm, a Noctilux 50mm. The Summicron 50mm family has been in continuous production since 1953, over seventy years. The 50mm is the spine of the M system.
50mm is the tightest of the trinity. The frame includes a person or a small group. The focal length is "normal" in the sense that perspective looks roughly the way you might view a scence when you are looking and paying attention to things; a person or something that is happening in which you wish to capture something in particular.
Even more importantly, it changes the relationship between the subject and the photographer. Allowing a little more distance between you and the subject whether it is a person or a scene.
50mm is the focal length for:
50mm M-mount lenses are also the most abundant and (in aggregate) the most affordable of the trinity. As of May 2026 we track 584 active Summicron-M 50mm listings on UsedLensTracker typically asking around $1,515, the lowest price of the three Summicron focal lengths and the deepest used market in the M system.
If 50mm is the tightest of the three, 35mm is the natural middle. The angle of view shows the subject plus a comfortable amount of context: a person and the room they're in, two people interacting, a street with figures arranged in it. This is the focal length that defined Leica documentary photography from the 1950s onward, and the focal length most working press photographers picked when they only had time to shoot one lens.
The reason is simple: 35mm gives you the subject and the situation in the same frame. Magnum photographers shot 35mm because their photographs were stories, and stories need the subject and the context to share the frame. A 50mm forces a choice: subject or context.
A 35mm requires you to compose the relationship between the subject and environment. New photographers who jump to 35mm often produce flat, unstructured photographs because they haven't yet learned how to organize a scene that contains both a subject and its surroundings. Mastering 35mm gives you the ability to produce a body of work that is versatile. I feel that it is the most flexible of any single focal length.
35mm is the focal length for:
As of May 2026 we track 388 active Summicron-M 35mm listings on UsedLensTracker typically asking around $2,880, almost twice the typical price of the 50mm Summicron, despite a smaller market. The 35mm asks more because more people specifically want a 35mm; demand exceeds the relatively limited supply.
28mm is wider than what most people consider "normal." It includes the subject and a substantial amount of context, more than a 35mm. The perspective starts to look mildly exaggerated at close working distances, with foreground subjects appearing slightly larger relative to background than the eye sees. Used well, this is a tool: pulling the viewer into a scene by emphasizing what's near. Used poorly, it produces photographs where everything is in the frame and nothing is the subject.
In simple terms, the 28mm is the focal length for the photographer who values scene over subject. Architecture, landscape, environmental portrait where the setting carries equal weight to the person, interiors. Street photography at 28mm is a specific kind of street photography, closer to environmental documentary than the figure-in-context work that 35mm rewards. Remember every time you mount a 28 that there are millions of photos taken with cell phones that approximate that focal length; and most are terrible when viewed as photographic objects. Yet they often serve the purpose of capturing a moment in time with friends and family quite well.
Crucially, 28mm requires you to get close. The wide angle pulls in so much frame that subjects shot from a normal 35mm/50mm working distance appear small and isolated. To make a 28mm portrait work, the subject has to fill the foreground, which means the lens, and the photographer, are right there. This is intimate work and it scares some photographers and subjects.
28mm is the focal length for:
As of May 2026 we track 57 active Summicron-M 28mm listings on UsedLensTracker typically asking around $4,699, by far the most expensive of the three Summicron focal lengths despite the smallest used market. The 28mm asks more partly because demand is steady, partly because Leica makes far fewer of them than the 35 and 50, and partly because Leica's 28mm ASPH design is genuinely one of the optical high points of the modern M lineup.
The honest decision is about how you want to photograph, not about technical specs.
Many M shooters end up with two of the three over time, most commonly 35 and 50, or 28 and 50. The 35-and-50 combination gives you the documentary working length and the tight portrait length. The 28-and-50 combination gives you the wide environmental and the tight portrait. The 28-and-35 combination is less common because the two focal lengths are often though to overlap too much in working role.
Almost nobody who shoots M-mount seriously ends up with only one focal length for life. But starting with one, and shooting it exclusively for at least a few months, teaches you what that focal length is good for and what it isn't. After that, you'll know whether the next lens should be wider or longer.
Browse current 28mm, 35mm, and 50mm M-mount listings on UsedLensTracker by lens family and focal length to compare prices and conditions across the full market.