Focusing Summicron-M 35mm f/2 on Leica CL (part 1)

Leica CL is a compact, and lightweight camera with APC-S sensor that you can mount interchangeable lenses. The camera produces 24 MP images. 

In this post I will share the result of focusing experiments I have recently run using a Summicron-M 35mm f/2 ASPH lens mounted on Leica CL. 

Camera configuration:

• Leica CL, 24MP with APS-C sensor 
• LEICA Summicron-M 35mm F/2 ASPH lens 
• Film Style: Monochrome or Monochrome HC
• Photo File Format: DNG
• Focus method: manual assisted by focus peaking
• Shooting:
• Light: overcast
• Distance: 15-20m 
• Shutter speed: 1/1000s
• ISO: 100
• Aperture: f/2
• Focus: Number plate of the white car
• Post-processing: 
• Color (no processing or no presets applied)
• Color (Adobe Lightroom Auto preset applied) 
• BW (no processing, or presets applied)
• Exported using Adobe Lightroom Export as:
• 24MP JPEG loss-less output, 300dpi, sharpened for matte print paper

Because the CL has a crop sensor the effective focal length becomes 50 mm. This was the focal length used by legendary Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Shooting notes:

• I chose Monochrome HC film style that comes with the CL. Note, the term Film Style is just a name referring to Leica CL emulating film photography. The CL is a digital camera.
• 💡Using one of Monochrome film styles I can easily see focus peaking red dots while manually zooming. 
• The HC film style works really well under mid-day overcast lighting conditions. I could choose Natural Monochrome style (without HC) in the case of darker overcast lighting, such as late-evening.
• Thanks to M-ADAPTER L, when the lens is mounted on the CL camera, it automatically reads lens metadata and configures the right wheel to zoom on the image for focus assist. The zoom is crucial for precision focusing using focus peaking.
• While I zoomed in the number plate of the white car, I maximised number of red dots on that plate by adjusting the focus ring back and forth. This way the resultant focus was spot on the white car.

Download the following images to inspect. 

Simply click the image. That will enlarge it in on your browser. Then right-click and select Save Image As from the context menu to download the high resolution image on your device or computer.

Inspect them using your favourite editing/preview tool. 

Zoom to enlarge the number plate of the white car which I focused on during shooting.

24MP Images (free to download): 

• Color (no processing)

• Color (auto processing)

• BW (no processing)