A cinematic lens for the people: The Hektor from Leitz Cine
I got the HEKTOR a few hours after I had hit the 1-800-Hektor-Now button at the BH Photo website. So convinced I was we couldn’t live without each other that I paid extra to get it shipped overnight from New York
It had begun as one of those things: I heard about it when it was about to be released in September 2025, and I was intrigued, then managed to forget about it again. I mean, I had forgotten, but it still popped up in my mind from time to time.
Then months later, in Paris. We were a few friends browsing the Hermes, Dior, Leica and other stores in Paris, looking for something to make us happy. We noticed the HEKTOR, but then nothing more. It was just a lens in a display.
But it was too late. I had to have her, the 73mm Hektor. I called the store next morning from my hotel, what’s the price for this in Paris? If my transport to the airport hadn’t been tight that morning, we would have left Paris together, Hektor and I. But then there was Starlink internet on the airplane, and I managed to order the lens online in New York. I would arrive in Florida next morning, together with me, soon enough to make my life complete.
I feel it in my bones. I love cinema, and I love lenses, and I love light. I also love colors, and I love a dreamy sprinkling of bokeh all over my life. The Hektor is all that, and possibly more!
The Hektor series of lenses are made not by Leica, but by Leitz Cine GmbH, the company on the Leica campus in Wetzlar, Germany that specializes in cinema lenses. Some years ago, some filmmakers begged Leica to make cinema lenses again with the Leica look, having a past of working with Panavision on lenses for cinema.
Their first was the Summilux-C T1.4 series of lenses (2010). A suitcase with a set of 12 would cost $100,000, and as Leitz Cine worked their way through delivering to the waiting list (and won an Oscar for the lenses), they realized the lenses were so expensive to make that the right price had to be $300,000, and currently they are priced at $449,000 for a set of 12 lenses.
Then came the Summicron-C T2.0 (2013) which I have used for still photography (see later down the article).
So far, all the lenses were APS-C format, but moviemaking requested full-frame lenses, which led to Leitz Cine ELSIE T2.1 lenses (2010) that cover an image circle of 46.5mm (used in the Digger movie, filmed on VistaVision cameras which use a 25 x 38 mm film format). Later, Leitz Cine T1.8 (2020) full frame lenses were introduced.
Leitz Cine also made lenses based on Leica lenses, such as Thalia 65 T2.6 based on Leica S lenses (covers a 60mm image circle), the Leitz Cine M 0.8 full-frame lenses based on Leica M Summilux lenses, and the Leitz Cine Hugo T1.5 lenses with an image circle of 43mm, reworked into real cinema lens mounts, based on Leica M Summilux lenses, with the addition of a few not previously existing Summilux lenses (such as 66mm, 40mm and 18mm).
Long story short, in September 2025 Leitz Cine finally introduced HEKTOR, which is a series of compact cinematic lenses meant for video creators using Leica SL3, Nikon Z, Fujifilm, Canon R and such semi-pro video cameras that are widely used for video content and series these days. Shows with smaller budgets or documentary-style series frequently use mirrorless bodies like the Netflix-approved cameras like Panasonic Lumix S (L mount,) Sony FX3, Canon EOS R5 C, etc.
The Hektor lenses are compact, with a cinematic look, and at an affordable price of $8,000 per lens, low weight, whereas cinema lenses usually are $15,000 to $45,000 per lens and seldom weight less than a kilo.
Leitz Cine found a spot in the market not filled by anybody else, and they made the Hektor lenses for it.
One of the brilliant ideas in the Hektor series is that you can change the bayonet yourself, just as you can change the protective front glass, as well as the back glass yourself if it gets scratched. No need for space-consuming adapters.
The Hektor lenses can be fitted with L-mount for Leica SL3/ L-mount for Panasonic LUMIX, Sony E mount, Fujifilm G mount, Nikon Z mount, and Canon RF mount.
As such it makes sense that is it also a still camera lens. I had no intention of using the Hektor for video or moving images. Just for still, and the reason is that the cinematic look makes me enthusiastic.
My choice for using any lens or camera is that it makes me enthusiastic. I don’t subscribe to “the tool that will do the job,” and I definitely never bought anything based on value for money. I rather look for things that inspire me to innovate. Something that makes me happy and enthusiastic. It’s safe to say any book I read, any magazine I picked up, or any movie I ever watched, I did to get inspired. I pick up lenses the same way. Not because they can do the job, but when they speak to me. In life, I think one should first find a passion, and then make it a living. Not the other way around.
The 73mm Hektor T2.1 was my first Hektor because 73mm appealed to me the most. It is clearly a different focal length. God knows I have plenty of 50mm lenses, collapsible, strange ones, Russian ones, from f0.95 to f/2.8, all sorts of bayonets and adapters to fit them on one of my cameras.
I also touched on the 100mm, which together with the 73mm turns out to be the best-selling two lenses in the set of 18mm, 25mm, 35mm, 50mm, 73mm and 100mm available. I do find the 100mm exciting, but as it is also the only one bigger than the other Hektor lenses, I found it a bit of a chunk to work with. The Leica SL3 is already a kit for work, it’s not a lifestyle camera like the Leica M that you lounge around with all day. The Leica SL3 with a 100mm Hektor is the type of kit you walk from the car to the shoot to get the photographs done you planned, and when you’re done you put it back.
The Leica SL3 with a 73mm Hektor is a commitment, yes, but you wear it all day and night because you want to make something special. If you just want to have a camera with you, for all-round purposes, you’d pick a smaller camera that doesn’t weigh anything and doesn’t get noticed.
In hindsight, and having looked at sample videos and stills on the internet, the 50mm actually also looks fun. Not sure I will go there yet as I do feel I have the 50mm field covered quite well.
The focusing is soft as butter with the Hektor, and the focusing rotation is 1/3 of the barrel as most modern Leica M lenses (120 degree focus rotation). It means you can focus in one sweep. It’s easy, and it’s quite nice. Because the focusing ring on a cinema lens has the gears, it is usually referred to not as a focusing ring, but as a focusing gear (and the aperture ring is an iris gear, and if it’s a zoom lens,a lens also has a zoom gear).
To focus the Hektor on the Leica SL3, what I do is that I press the joystick on the back of the camera so the EVF zooms in 10x and I can focus precisely on whichever part of the frame I decided I want in focus; then I touch the shutter release briefly to get back to the full frame.
You have to focus the lens wide open at T2.1 (equivalent to f/2.0), then stop down. There is no coupling between the aperture mechanism and the camera, so the aperture iris is whatever it is set to. If you turned it to f/5.6, the image will have greater sharpness, less light of course. Focusing wide open allows you to nail the focus precisely.
Then you may stop down, and that will give you the sharpness of field you wanted while knowing the focus is on the most prominent area of the frame that you decided.
If in a hurry and you know you want to use the lens at f/8 or something for greater sharpness, you can focus the entire frame at f/8 and just know it probably will work fine. But then of course, if you now decide that it would also be fun to have the same frame with narrow depth of field wide open, then you have to go back to focusing it precisely.
What I experience with the 73mm Hektor is that my focus is not as 100% precise as it usually is with an M lens. The focusing gear is nice and soft, but it’s not so soft that it moved by itself. It stays where you put it. I’ve wondered about this, and I frankly don’t know exactly what happens. Maybe working with the iris gear after focusing causes me to slightly move the focus, or maybe focusing 10x on a Leica SL3 isn’t as super precise as I have allowed myself to think. I don’t know, but I decided it is what it is, and if I want 100% sharpness, I’ll stop down the aperture iris. This works really well, and I’ll tell more about stopping down in a moment.
Once I have focused, touched the shutter release for full frame (and maybe I stopped down as well after that), then I deal with exposure. On the Leica SL3 (as with any camera that has an EVF or preview on a screen), I simply use Auto ISO and use the thumb wheel or the top wheel to adjust the overall exposure until it looks right in the EVF.
That is the advantage of an exposure preview on a camera with an EVF or screen: You can see what it looks like. I have set up Auto ISO so the max ISO is 3200 and the slowest shutter speed is 1/250. The slowest shutter speed setting to 1/250 is the important setting so as to avoid motion blur with cameras that somehow adjust ISO and shutter speed so you end up with 1/60 in daylight. The minimum shutter speed of 1/250 forces the camera to increase the ISO instead of slowing down shutter speed.
The 73mm Hektor is 88.2mm long, and as it requires no adapter, that is the actual length of it, and that means that it’s fairly well-balanced on the Leica SL3. The weight of 720g also goes well with the Leica SL3. It’s not causing the camera to ‘hang down” as for example the Leica Vario-Elmarit-SL 24-90 f/2.8 which was the first zoom lens for the SL system (what a pain that was to use, but what a great glass).
The aperture iris on the Hektor is clickless, which is a pleasure to use. You turn the aperture ring and it just slides along while the aperture rings inside move effortlessly with your movement. The clicks of course wouldn’t work for cinema where it has to be seamless change of aperture during filming, but I will say that for still photography, I don’t miss the clicks a bit. There are markings on the lens for each stop from T22 to T2.1, so if you are using an external incident light meter, you don’t have a click to go by, but simply set the aperture gear so it matches the f-stop you decided on. I use f-stops in light metering and would translate the T-stops on the Hektor directly to F-stops. T22 is very close to being precisely the same as f/22, and T2.1 is the same as f/2.0, so using f-stop thinking is close enough.
F-stops on still cameras are an engineer thing of focal length divided by the f-stop, which equals the diameter of the aperture opening (‘hole through’). In cinema lenses, T measures the actual amount of light coming through, but is based on the F-stop thinking: F-stop divided by the light coming through = T-stop. The idea is that the amount of light coming through the lens is the same no matter which lens you use. So if you use a wide angle lens at T4, and then a zoom at T4 for the same scene later, the amount of light will be exactly the same. T-stops factor in any light lost in the optical elements, and is in that way not just a calculation of the size of the “hole through” but a measurement of the exact light intensity passing through.
One of the reasons the Hektor stayed on my mind, even when I tried to forget is was that a friend of mine kept wanting it for video interviews he travels the world doing. He even visited Leitz Cine, got free t-shirts and keyrings or something.
Here’s what that excitement is about: The hope for the Hektor to make both amazing video portraits, and of course just as amazing still photo portraits, is obvious. The essence of cinematic lenses, one could say, is to make faces look great, by having an organic look. A Leica look of “detailed but not sharp” as I’ll talk more about in a minute.
Some of the initial shots with the Hektor, you know, from the dining table out in the garden, the texture of the trees were amazing at T2.1, in a way that reminded me of the Leica 50mm APO-Summicron (“the world’s best 50mm”) and Leica 35mm APO-Summicron. I first concluded that the size of the glass made it possible to design a lens that would capture true details with a natural ease. Making small compact lenses that capture every texture detail is another art form.
I presumed this then would be the case for any distance and any aperture iris for the Hektor. But after some use, I noticed that the Hektor does really well, by which I mean detailed and with clarity, on shorter distances. A still photo of a scene at T2.1 where the focus is put between, let’s say 10 meters and infinity, the details are not pronounced. At that farther distance, the lens’ performance looks what it is: An uncoded or lightly coated lens that can’t grasp details the same way as a modern design with optimized coatings.
What I did with this, after discovering it, was that I simply stopped down to T/5.6 or thereabout for most “full scene” photos where I wanted to show architecture, a street or something. While I am accustomed to photographing most of my lenses wide open almost no matter what, stopping the Hektor down makes it sing.
For portraits and atmosphere, I want narrow depth of field and want to use a lens like this at T2.1, but for full scenes, I don’t mind stopping down. It make sense, in a cinematic fashion, if you get what I mean. The feel of a cinematic lens is “to be there,” whereas a still photo can be a tree in focus, and the rest of the garden floating away in a dreamy bokeh.
When I printed a number of the Hektor photos, it all came together. I just made 8.5 x 11 prints and looked at them.
When you look at a still on a screen, you tend to zoom in and check how detailed the focus is. And as I said, some of the photos weren’t as detailed and sharp as I would have hoped or expected.
But once you look at a print, it’s not the sharpness of details you look at; it’s the clarity of the details. In this medium, the Hektor comes to glory, and I think viewing my 8.5 x 11 Hektor prints is pretty close to the sense you would get looking at moving pictures and video on a screen.
I could name lots of still photos that never live anywhere else than on an editing screen and ends up on small screens, and they work well throughout that entire process. But once you print a picture, it’s a different dynamic. Some photos that “didn’t work on the screen” suddenly become pure gold in a print. And similarly, some photographs I thought I had made to perfection, once printed I see the balance is off or they’re just outright boring and lacking soul. In the same breath, let me tell that I looked at Instagram posts of photographs by others that have a lot of likes and really pop online. Then I buy the book and look at them, and in some cases visit a gallery and look at the print of them, and I realize they are soulless, or outright edited for small screens with too much sharpening applied to work in a print. What I learned from that, looking at my own photographs in print, is I have a lot of hope, future and soul overall. As such, some photos are great for stamp-sized posts and pop, others are useless in social media context, but beautiful to see as a print - and remain beautiful also long after the first impression.
A sidenote: Yes, one should apply sharpness for the medium, never in the original file. For small screens, apply a sharpening tool to optimize for that medium. For newspaper print, apply a sharpness process optimizing for that paper and printing technique. For gallery prints, apply sharpness for that medium, which usually means leave the original unsharpened.
All that to say that the Hektor really comes to life and sparkles in print, or viewed on a large screen viewed at a distance. It has the look!
Cinematic means a couple of things for me. First off, cinema lenses are generally organic lenses vs clinical. The lens design technology goes towards perfection, helped by algorithms and AI, and frankly it can be hard to tell a perfect Leica from a perfect Sony or a perfect Hasselblad lens. They’re all optimized to capture every single detail in scrutinizing sharpness, and they sort of all do.
So for me, what sets a great lens apart from a perfect lens, is one that has an organic look. A natural look. Whether it has all the details is secondary, I’d rather lose some definition of details and edge sharpness for some soul.
The tool to achieve perfection has been precision grinding of lenses, precision assembling, special glass types, and then coated optical surfaces to correct for colors and suppress reflections.
Add digital and you can optimize the image further in camera and in editing or grading. You can make it flawless.
Here is where my standard for optics becomes relevant, at least for me: The human eye.
You don’t have to subscribe to it, but for me it is true. Go back to painting in the renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci and all the masters developed techniques to match dimension, colors, paint strokes and preservation of their paintings so that it looked like reality.
What is reality? It’s what we see and experience with our eyes, and so in short, the ideal for any optical instrument, as well as the reproduction of an image, is that it looks in print or on screen as it did to the eye in the real world. If it looks more perfect, digital, crisp or sharper in a created image than in the real world, it’s something else.
In cinema, the idea is the organic look. It has to feel like being in the room, and it’s you who are looking at the scenery and the people vs a digital and artificial or clinical experience of superior sharpness.
The tool has been to find lenses that can reproduce reality as reality, with some features added. A lot of vintage optics, redesigning uncoated lenses, rehousing classic still lenses, and more. And as an extra layer to make the tactile feeling of the real world even more realistic, grain could be added in post-production, but in the end the search for being able to feel the real world through cinema, some have gone back to film. Digger (2026) went with VistaVision (close to full-frame), and Odyssey went with 70mm Imax for realism and “being there.”
The second thing I love about cinematic lenses, is their ability to flare. It’s fundamentally an error, because it’s reflections of light that goes back and forth between the optical elements inside the lens, and sometimes even inside one optical glass itself.
Countless engineering hours, computer power and a lot of monetary resources have gone into removing these reflections so that we can have a clean and perfect image.
Just to see that top movie makers invested in computer systems that could add flare to their movies in editing. As part of the editing and color grading, flare also became part of the look.
It has opened up a parallel world for expensive and rare older lenses that are being recycled in movies, and then of course newly designed lenses without the technical improvements of the coatings that would remove flare.
Overflow of light is beautiful in moving pictures where you recognize it for what it is. In a still photo, overflow of light (Veiling Glare) can look like a wrong setting or a light leak, unless it has a distinct color (Rainbow or Spectral Flare) or at least some directional flare rays (Radial Flare). A washed-out still is not a flare look, it’s just a still with light hitting the lenses and reflecting internally. No melody in it.
In a moving picture the light would hit the lens for a moment, and as the camera pans or somebody walks in front, the image returns to the right one with proper contrast and definition.
I had hoped for a lot of flare in the 73mm Hektor, but when I was able to provoke it, it didn’t produce the effect I wanted. Comet-like flare and flare rays were almost not happening and is the most meaningful in a still photograph. I could provoke some ghost flare of strong lamps that would repeat as a ghost somewhere in the frame, but I found I almost had to aim the lens at an angle straight into a lamp to get it, and that didn’t make much sense in any of what I did.
This for me turns the Hektor into a lens I can use for beautiful organically reproduced textures, and it does have beautiful colors, classic looking clarity and a beautiful way of painting the details of faces and surfaces.
Apart from organic look and flare, there are also lenses that have a special look. Most of the Leica M lenses have a special look, some would call it personality, because they were aiming for perfect optical design, but had to fit it inside a tiny lens body. So the lens designers had to make some choices, and they did with their eyes and heart.
In recent years, the precision of optical design and assembling, and I guess the ideals of lens designers as well, has reached a level so that you can get a Leica Q3 43 with a compact lens, yet with perfection closely matching medium format systems.
Without being an expert on this, size is not everything. Large lenses like the Leica S, with space enough for perfection, also have a distinct soul to them.
In any case, there are lenses that have a special look. The 50mm Noctilux f0.95 (2008) is one worth mentioning, which I have, and still do use a lot. The Carl Zeiss 180mm f/2.8 Sonnar (1936) is another. Whether the reason is that the lens designer spilled coffee on his notes, or just couldn’t figure out a way to do it differently. And then there are lenses designed for special purposes, that turns out to be special looking in other contexts, the Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm f/0.7 (1966) lense used by Stanley Kubrick, but originally developed for NASA to photograph the dark side of the moon. In the cheap end of special look lenses, there is also the 7Artisan 50mm f/1.1 (2017) which I have had a lot of fun with. Sparkling light and bokeh for portraits, and absolutely useless for full scenes. And then there are antique Petzval lenses, never went there myself.
The 73mm can produce mainly Edge Flare and Veiling Glare
The range of 18mm, 25mm, 35mm, 50mm, 73mm and 100mm produce different types of effects but share the same organic and relaxed look of the image field. The wider ones are the wildest if you want flare.
The 73mm Hektor tends to produce edge flare when a light source is outside the frame, or just about the edge of the frame.
If you imagine a moving picture, this overflow of light across part of the frame comes and goes and adds to the motion.
In a still photograph, this overflow of light across part of the frame risks looking disturbing, more like a light leak than a flare effect. With some luck, you may make it directional, a more narrow funnel into the image from the side, and then it explains itself visually as strong light entering the scene.
The 100mm has a little more power on the Edge Flare than the 73mm
Compared, the Leitz Cine 100mm Hektor has quite visible and great looking Ghosting occasionally when you find the right spot.
The 50mm has little edge flare
At 35mm, not so much happening
The 35mm has a small, yet prominent Ghosting in the frame, and very brief Edge Flare.
This may make it good for still photography, a few sparkles here and there. Then again, in the 35mm range, there's so many exciting still photography Leica M lenses (35mm APO-Summicron, 35 FLE, 35 Noctilux, 35 AA, etc.).
The wide angle lenses, 18mm and 25mm, produce real Ghosting Flare
A number of repeated reflections across the frame, which looks cool in a still, and even more cool as they move in and out and across the frame in moving pictures. A space ship or helicopter seem to land in every frame, and that is what it is all about.
Wide angle lenses for Ghosting Flare: Yes!
Overall, for still photography effects, the wider would be the most exiting as they will show prominent Ghosting Flare.
In comparison, the Leica 21mm Summilux-M ASPH f/1.4 have a versy supressed Ghosting Flare, limitiing it to usually a bip in the edge (see examples further below). The older Leica 19mm Leica Elmarait-R f/2.8 does have beautiful Ghosting Flare and would be an alternative, though not at all as well-defined in texture details as the Hektor (see examples further below). The newer wide angle Leica L lenses have no Ghosting Flare, they are all made to be excellent and perfect still photography lenses, coated-left-right-and-center.
Change the bayonet yourself on a Leitz Cine HEKTOR lens
When you buy a HEKTOR lens, it comes with a bayonet, and you can change it to another bayonet yourself. I found that mine came default with Sony E mount, and the L mount was enclosed as a do-it-yourself update. The upside is that I have both Sony E mount bayonet and Leica/Panasonic L mount bayonet. The downside is that I had to get a screwdriver to do-it-yourself. The tool was not enclosed, and I ordered mine from Amazon, an $8.00 Torx T4 screwdriver to be able to perform the update before I could use the lenses.
Leitz Cine HEKTOR bayonets include: L mount for Leica SL3, L-mount for Panasonic LUMIX and L-mount Blackmagic, Sony E mount, Fujifilm G mount, Nikon Z mount, and Canon RF mount. There is no ARRI PL-Mount available (Arri Positive Lock developed by Arri in 1980 for 35mm motion picture cameras).
There is no mount or adapter for Leica M mount available (the distance from the lens to the sensor in a Leica SL is 20mm, and in a Leica M is 27.8mm - which means that a HEKTOR lens would have to sit 7.8mm inside the Leica M body. Not possible, not even if an M-mount bayonet existed. The lens would simply sit too far away from the sensor).
Here's a comparison of the HEKTOR to the excellent Leica 90mm APO-Summicron and the excellent Leitz Cine Summicron-C lenses. Only the 100mm HEKTOR is larger; all the other focal lengths have the same lens barrel dimensions. And the focus and iris gear on all HEKTOR lenses sits in the same place.
Apart from price and a quite delicious looking design, the HEKTOR fits straight onto a handful of camera mount systems. Hard to beat, isn't it?
Also notice that before you get the Summicron-C or APO-Summicron-M onto a Leica SL camera, you have to add the size and price of an adapter.
The parts of the Leitz Cine HEKTOR lens illustrated and explained by Thorsten Overgaard
Bayonet
Leitz Cine HEKTOR bayonets can be easily changed and these mounts are available:
L mount for Leica SL3,
L mount for Panasonic LUMIX,
L-mount for Blackmagic Cinema Camera 6K
Sony E mount,
Fujifilm G mount,
Nikon Z mount,
Canon RF mount.
There is no Leica M mount available.
ARRI adapter
The P+S Technik HEXAMO Mount is from P+S and allow for mount on ARRI Alexa.
The conversion is carried out on both the camera and the lens.
The original Alexa mount block is replaced with a specially developed low-profile mount from P+S Technik.
Lens mount alignment mark
On the edge of the L mount is a small red dot which is the lens mount alignment mark. You use this to match where to place the lens before you turn it so it locks.
Not easy to spot, but you'll get the hang of it.
Focus gear and iris gear
0.8 MOD focus gear ring and iris gear ring (aperture) on the HEKTOR can be turned with the hands s (slides like butter) but are intented to fit the standard gear pitch used on professional cinema cameras so follow-focus units are compatible.
The focus and iris gear is in the exact same place on all lenses, also the 100mm that is the only in the series that is larger than the others.
Focusing is internally, meaning the lens does not extrude but stays the same length at all times.
Focus Puller
Here you can see how the focus gear and iris gear is set up for remote control on a Leica SL3.
It can be set up as follow focus where the operator works the focus, or it can be set up as remote control where a focus puller (another person) make sure the lens is in focus for the scene. It can also have zoom control as a third control, when the lens used is a zoom lens.
Focal length and logo
The focal length is engraved on both sides of the lens barrer, making it fairly easy to make sure you grabbed the right one. It is not on the front of the lens, the lens cap or bayonet cap.
Leitz is the logo for Leitz Cine, and is the logo that was used on Leica cameas up until 1986.
It was then re-launched and adapted for Leitz Cine when they changed name from CW Sonderoptics to Ernst Leitz Cine Wetzlar in 2018.
Hektor was a dog
When the original Hektor lenses were designed in the 1930's by lens designer Professor Max Berek, he named them after his favorite dog, Hektor. It also referred to the maximum lens aperture - usually f2.5 (which at the time of development in the 1930's was considered very light-strong lenses).
The first 50mm Hektor f/2.5 was designed by Max Berek in 1931 for the Leica I Model A, and the 73mm Hektor f/1.9 was designed in 1930-1931 in preparation of the modular Leica system.
77mm filter thread
The HEKTOR lenses has 77mm filter thread.
Focus barrel
The 8 lying down means infinity distance; and the center of the 8 is usually the actual infinity measurement in any lens.
Closest focus distance of the 73mm is 75 cm / 29.5 inches / 2 ft 6 in.
(Closest forcus is 22 cm for the 18mm, 30 cm for the 25mm, 35cm for the 35mm, 50cm for the 50mm, and 85cm for the 100mm HEKTOR).
The focus barrel has meter and feet markings.
Iris / Aperture blades
The T stop on the Leitz Cine HEKTOR 73mm goes clickless from T2.1 to T2.8 · T4 · T5.6 · T8 · T11 · T16 to T22, equivalent to f/2.0 to f/22 in still photography. The T stops are the same on all HEKTOR lenses from 18mm to 100mm. There is no depth of field scale on the Hektor lenses.
The aperture iris mechanism has 9 blades.
T stands for Transmission and is measurement of light gtransmitted, whereas F is a geometric ration of the focal lengt (and stands for Focal length).
Serial number
The serial number is engraved prominently on the lens barrel.
T4 screws for byonet
Five screws holds the bayonet, and those are the ones you unscrew to change to another bayonet.
Leitz Cine HEKTOR bayonets can be easily changed and these mounts are available:
L mount for Leica SL3,
L mount for Panasonic LUMIX,
Sony E mount,
Fujifilm G mount,
Nikon Z mount,
Canon RF mount.
Titanium distance rings
Between the bayonet and the lens are two titanium rings. These are only relevant to change for the Fujifilm G mount. For other mounts, they remain in place.
Pins for placement of bayonet
When you change the bayonet, there are two pins to match so that you are sure to mount the bayonet correctly.
Not a Drink coaster!
It's a lens cap made of soft rubber.
I was having a social media team over at my house filming for a friend using my grand piano.
One of the staff asked, "This is a coaster, right?" as she was about to park her Starbuck cup on the lens cap on the table.
The HEKTOR has protective filter built in, back and front
The fornt element on a HEKTOR lens is a protective filter you can replace if it gets damaged.
The front glass on a Leitz Cine HEKTOR can be replaced by yourself, should it be damaged.
You can replace the front protective filter yourself using a front screw ring tool (a $ 18.00 spanner wrench from Amazon). The filter you would have to get from Leitz Cine. I haven't seen it in stock in any stores.
Video guide on how to change the front element on a Leitz Cine Hektor lens:
I was excited to use the Hektor as a lens that can flare, and how do you best provoke flare? By having strong light behind the subject, and occasionally a strong lamp or a low sun on the edge of the frame.
However, it did not behave as I expected in those conditions. When photographing cowboys at the rodeo, my natural position was to have them in front of the sunset and their faces in shade. Any Leica lens can normally handle this. But not the Hektor.
The Hektor doesn’t do well with strong backlight where the light simply overflows the entire image and reduce the contrast greatly in any subject. This of course is because of the very limited coating. With strong backlight I do not mean how much luminence there is, but the difference between backlight and front in shade.
This costs contrast and details in highlights, as well as details in shadow areas. First the shadow areas are washed out, and when you try to pick the blackness up by adding Black or Contrast in editing, there are no shadow details.
Where other modern lenses like the Leitz Cine Summicron-C does very well and holds the contrast and details excellently despite backlight (Leica 50mm Noctilux does the same, and most modern Leica still image lenses do the same).
A Leica 50mm Summilux-M ASPH or 35mm Summilux-M ASPH distinguish themselves by being able to maintain the details of hair, lamp poles, leaves on trees and all, despite strong backlight. It’s very well-defined where the strong light is, and where the shade and shape is. As such, you can take a photograph of a face with strong sun behind, and every hair will be present in the photo and there will be no overflow of light across the face. The light is clearly behind the subject, not flowing in on the front of the subject (which would happen due to internal reflections in the lens).
The Hektor does not work this way. The light from behind the subject will reflect around inside the lens and milk out the overall image. Some of this you can normally remedy by increasing Black and Contrast in editing, but not in this case.
The conclusion would be to keep strong light sources on the side, or simply go the tourist way: Keep the light coming from behind you. If you want flare, then play with having the strong light on the edge of the frame, but never point the camera directly towards the light unless you (as in moving images) do want that washed-out effect.
Cinema lenses are traditionally $30,000 and up for each lens. When a movie is being made, the director of photography may spend weeks at for example Panavision in Los Angeles or London, testing and finally selecting the lenses to be used for a movie or television series. Most cinema lenses are bought as sets by rental houses as filmmaking traditionally is assembling a team of people for the specific project, and renting all equipment used for it. So a set of cinema lenses is not bought for a movie project; they're rented for the movie and returned after.
I once called Panavision in LA to ask if I could rent an adapter for ARRI PL to Leica M. That's when I learned that they fundamentally offer an area to collect the equipment, then when you have decided, it is driven out on trucks and used soem weeks or months for the project.
Nobody ever rented just an adapter.
Welcome to kindergarden: There are 14 individual prep stations at Panavision in Los Angeles where you can spend days or weeks testing and selecting the equipment for a project.
What makes a lens great for cine use?
What cinematographers look for, is usually a special look for the movie they are about to make. That is why so many new and old lenses are in play in moviemaking. But also "perfect" lenses are relevant, if the project calls for it. For Odyssey (2026), the main lenses were cutom-modified 50mm and 80mm for Imax as the strategy was to move the camera and always give the audience a sense of "being there."
Long focus throw for more precision.
Focus gear that makes it possible to remotely change focus and settings. Usually there is a gear for focus, one for aperture, and if a zoom lens, also a zoom gear. A focus puller standing away from the camera controls the focus, aperture, and zoom.
At Panavision, a couple of custom-developed Leitz Cine Summicron-C Classics, which they call "Classicrons," featuring matched glass and modern machining as well as color flares and added 'warmth' to soften digital imagery.
I have had my moments with cinema lenses. I went out with MASTERBUILD in Los Angeles and used some of their lenses on the Leica M10, and also took some of their lenses to a 5-day project in London for magazine portraits.
Thorsten Overgaard with Leica M10-P and Cinoflex MASTERBUILT 105mm f/1.4 via PL to M adapter, in Downtown Los Angeles. Photo by Tim Arasheben.
The kit of Director of photography Eric Smidt, a Masterbuilt 26-70mm on a Leica M10.: "I’ve searched high & low for a perfect large format viewfinder for years now and this one is as good as it gets. My Leica M10 with a Kipon PL-M adapter coupled with a Masterbuilt 27-60mm Zoom (the lightest weight full-frame zoom out there). Being able to take stills on a sensor that closely matches my ARRI Mini LF sensor size with the same glass that I'll film the days work on is invaluable. 4 1/2 pounds total, great tool."
Leitz Cine Summicron-C is quite fun
I also went out with the Leitz Cine 18mm Summicron-C ($16,000) and Leitz Cine 100mm Summicron-C ($15,300) for different projects, courtesy of Leitz Cine. Those are Arri PL mount, so one uses an adapter for Leica M, or Arri PL to Leica L mount. The Leitz Cine 100mm Summilux-C T1.4 ($40,300) is the optimum, so to say.
The Leitz Cine Summicron-C series (2013-2026) is discountinued as of 2026, but still available as new from BH Photo and others, but more interstingly pop up as second-hand lenses now and then ($6,000 second-hand for a Summicron-C lens, vs. new price $15,300). The 100mm Summicron-C and the 75mm Summicron-C covers 36mm, which means they basically cover a full-frame sensor (the rest of the lenses are Super 35 format, 25x18mm).
The Summilux-C (2011) remains in production and is offered as the crown jewel of Leitz Cine. Occasionally seen second-hand for $20,000 per lens.
The Leitz Cine 100mm Summicron-C can flare if you want it to, but it can also hold the details in shadow areas even faced with strong backlight (below). Skin texture is beautiful detailed and organic.
The Leitz Cine ELSIE lenses T2.1 (2021) are full-frame ARRI LPL mount lenses ($25,800 a piece) that cover and image circle of 46.5mm and is known for a "typical Leica look of warm, classic colors" and perhaps a glow. They're 2 kg (4.4 lb) per lens, and twice the length of HEKTOR lenses, so the use on a still camera requires some decication - and a LPL to L adapter. Probably only topped in excitement and extremity by the Leitz Cine Prime set of 13 lenses T1.8 ($42,500 a piece), likewise with an 46.5mm image circle.
The love of lenses that can flare
Fidnding still camera lenses that can flare and present interesting light is possible. One has to go back in the catalog before ASPH and lens coatings became popular to hold the contrast, colors and suppress internal reflections, usually 1960s or earlier.
A good one is the Leica 50mm Summicron-M f/2.0 II Rigid (1956 - 1968) is a compact and excellent lens, usually available between $600 and $2,000 and has Leica M mount.
The Leica 50mm Summicron-M f/2.0 "Rigid"
The first Leica 50mm lenses were collapsible, and this was the first that didn't collapse, so it was named "Rigid" (stiff) for this reason.
It's a compact lens, low contrast, extremely well-defined details of texture (such as skin, hair and eyes), weak (particularly in colors) when strong light is allowed to circulate inside the lens between the elements. But if can flare and play with light if you use it right. Very compact, light-weight, and usually available from $600 to $2,000).
The Leica 19mm Elmarit-R f/2.8 Version I (1975-1990) is a $1,500 lens secondhand and can really flare and has a beautiful character. Designed by Werner Mandler. It is Leica R mount and can be connected to Leica M or Leica SL3 via adapter. Many of the R lenses have been either rehoused for cinema use, or fitted with Canon or other bayonet mounts for cinema use.
The Leica 50mm Summilux-M ASPH f/1.4 (2004) is a compact workhorse that has high clarity of colors, sharpness (high contrast), holds the light/shadow well, but can produce flare when provoked to do so. It's an unusual lens in that it is both so perfect, and yet so playful. The Leica 50mm APO can't do this, the 50mm Noctilux f/0.95 can as well, but doesn't posess the same precision of texture and detail as this 50mm f/1.4.
It’s strange that humanity tries to optimize things, and then some more. This is how washing machines, iPhones and images become more and more complex in an attempt to achieve perfection.
When you think about that, and what you like the most in life, it becomes unexplainable why – despite technical advancements and AI – the most pleasure often is from simple things. Fewer details, less features, less of everything. Just the essentials will do, and when it comes to humans, if you give a human a fraction of an idea, he or she will add the rest and this way make it their own. The ideal for any photograph, when viewed, is that the viewer makes it their own. It means so much to them they want to take it to heart and step into it.
The Hektor has beautiful soft rendering, yet detailed, and it comes across in both color and black and white photographs.
It's a monetary commitment, as well in weight and size to carry.
It's a fun lens.
It makes me realize how great the Leica 50mm Summilux-M ASPH f/1.4 is, and you are right to wonder how that camera about: I realized how compact the 50mm is, how well it makes dreamy (and sometimes pearly smokey) bokeh, detailed yet mild focus, and it can be used all-round both for detailed reportage, as well as dreamy narrow depth of focus images. And surprise, it can flare dramatically when you provoke it to.
Also, I didn't talk much about the Leica 90mm APO-Summicron-M ASPH f/2.0, other than include it in the graphics where I compare sizes of the cinema lenes. But the 90mm APO is in fact a quite remarkable lens, and as described in my book, "Inside the Mind of Peter Karbe," a current favorite of lens designer Peter Karbe. It has many qualities in common with the cinema look. It's only fault is that one easily forgets to take it out.
The Hektor has a wow factor that make you want to use it, and that is not a bad quality.
Thorsten Overgaard is an independent writer and photographer who writes, teaches workshops and publishes user reports and books about the equipment he uses. There is no affiliation with Leica Camera AG or any camera dealers, no free gifts, no sponsorship, no kickback and no paid content. All you see is real and based on the life of an eccentric and hard-working photographer who makes his own money, buys his own equipment and forms his own independent opinions - and shares with you. Enjoy the ride.
The visit to Bozeman MT was delibate a testing ground for the Hektor. I expected great light and a different mood than my usual workshops around the world, which are usually in big cities.
During my research I had spotted an outdoor store in Livingston, 20 minutes from Bozeman. I expected I would be able to find some cool hats there. I had also seen that the entire Main St of Livingston could be an interesting location by sunrise or sunset.
Originally I had though of renting a big SUV to go to nearby Yellowstone, Livingston, Belgrade and other places. But I realized Yellowstone would be a 90 minutes drive each way, and as such it wouldn't work outside the schedule of the workshop. And also, Yellowstone is not a place you come in, take some photos for 30 minutes and head home, thinking, "Been there, done that." It's big, and it's landscape. Not even sure I would like all that open space.
So, in any case, Celso who have done several workshops, was in Bozeman early, like I, and we decided to take an Uber to nearby Livingston for sunset. The outdoor store was done in 5 minutes, they didn't have what I was hoping for. But the little city of Livingston certainly had light, spirit and inspiring scenes.
So we spent a couple of hours therre. Some of it trying to convince Celso to get a black hat that looked really good. Didn't do it. It took four days, then he ordered a Stetson Bozeman Outdoor Hat online. Finally!
In any case, Celso made a website recently, and in it is the Journal that tell the story of our Livingston visit, and with his perspective and a 50mm f/1.4 vintage lens. Worth a comparision to my Hektor 73mm photos.
The Long way back refer to the impossible project of getting an Uber from Livingston. We sat on a bench with each our phone, waiting for Uber to find a driver. Just didn't happen. Then you look aroiund you and you realize everybody have a truck or at least some sort of car. Aha!
Photographer and Leica Evangelist: Thorsten Overgaard is a Danish photographer, author, and educator specializing in Leica cameras. He's written hundreds of in-depth reviews, eBooks, and hosts workshops worldwide. His website, overgaard.dk, is basically a Leica bible; part tutorial, part shrine, part wizard’s grimoire. If you want a title, fans call him the "Leica Whisperer" or "Thorsten the Unflappable" for his calm, guru-like vibe in masterclasses. No spells involved, but his Noctilux tutorials do feel a bit enchanted.
Leica Digital Camera Reviews by Thorsten Overgaard
Thorsten Overgaard in Livingston, Montana, by Celso Barriga.
Thorsten von Overgaard is a Danish-American multiple award-winning photographer, known for his writings about photography and Leica cameras. He travels to more than 25 countries a year, photographing and teaching workshops to photographers. Some photos are available as signed editions via galleries or online. For specific photography needs, contact Thorsten Overgaard via email.
You can follow Thorsten Overgaard at his television channel magicoflight.tv.
Leitz is the logo for Leitz Cine and is the logo that was used on Leica cameas up until 1986 (when it was replaced with a Leica logo). The Leitz logo was then re-launched for Leitz Cine when they changed name from CW Sonderoptics to Ernst Leitz Cine Wetzlar in 2018. The Leitz Cine factory is next to the Leica Camera factory and was founded in 2008 when they introduced the first Leitz cinema lenses, the Summilux and Summicron series designed by optical designer Iain Neil and opti-mechanical designer André de Winter for which they won an Oscar. Read more in my article, "Leitz Cine Lenses."
Night in Bozeman, Montana. 
At Panavision, a couple of custom-developed Leitz Cine Summicron-C Classics, which they call "Classicrons," featuring matched glass and modern machining as well as color flares and added 'warmth' to soften digital imagery.
