Leica 50mm Summilux-SL ASPH f/1.4

By: Thorsten Overgaard, June 25, 2026.

Available late 2026/early 2027 but intropduced June 25, 2026 together with the Leica SL3-P:

The first Leica 50mm Summilux f/1.4 for the Leica SL system was released in 2016. An excellent lens, and quite a chunk (1,065g). Ten years later, Leica have re-developed the 50mm Summilux for the SL system, making it the most compact 50mm f/1.4 of any and all fullframe lenses on the market, and only 584g.

Leica SL3-P with Leica 50mm Summilux-SL ASPH f/1.4

In 2023, Leica Camera AG introduced two "low price" Summicron lenses for the Leica SL2 camera system: A 35mm Summicron-SL ASPH f/2.0 and a 50mm Summicron-SL ASPH f/2.0. The 50mm Summilux-SL f/1.4 ASPH is designed in their spirit (smaller, lighter and faster auto focus) and is newly developed lens from Leica. It is made to be the most compact 50mm f/1.4 full frame autofocus lens on the market.

It will be available end of 2026/early 2027.

All you need to know. New Leica 50mm Summilux-SL f/1.4 ASPH. © Thorsten Overgaard.

Leica SL2 with Leica 50mm Summicron-SL ASPH f/2.0. © Thorsten Overgaard.

The cheap 50mm Summilux alternative ...

The Leica 35mm Summilux-TL f/1.4 acts as a cropped lens (1.5x) on the Leica SL3-P and other full-frame L-cameras. The entire TL lens series was made for the Leica T series and Leica CL and are in fact closely related to the lens designs of the Leitz Cine lenses ($40,000 lenses) that were designed at that time. The 35mm/1.4 is available second-hand only, usually from $1,000 to $1,500, in silver or black. On a 45MP Leica SL3-P the crop will result in a 20MP 50mm file.

Leica 50mm Summicron-SL ASPH f/2.0 Video Review

While we wait for the new Summilux, here is my review of the 50mm Summicron-SL f/2.0 that was released 2023:

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More to come

Bon voyage with it all. Sign up for the newsletter to stay in the know. As always, feel free to email me with suggestions, questions and ideas. And hope to see you in a workshop one day soon. 

/Thorsten Overgaard

Leica 50mm Definitions

ASPH
… stands for "aspheric design". Most lenses have a spherical design - that is, the radius of curvature is constant. These are easy to manufacture by grinding while "spinning" the glass. This design however restricts the number of optical corrections that can be made to the design to render the most realistic image possible. ASPH lenses, however, involve usually 1 element that does *not* have a constant radius of curvature. These elements can be made by 1) expensive manual grinding, 2) molded plastic, 3) Leica's patented "press" process, where the element is pressed into an aspherical ("non-spherical") shape. This design allows the manufacturer to introduce corrections into compact lens designs that weren't possible before. Practically, the lens performs "better" (up to interpretation) due to increased correction of the image, in a package not significantly bigger than the spherical version.

ASPH is a method where the glass is pressed, and if you think about it for a little while, it means that you can make shapes that you can't possibly grind: With grinding you can make a curved shape. With pressing (ASPH) you can make the shape of circles in the water if that is what is required.

Normal speric lens (grinded)		ASPH (note the shape of the glass as result of pressing reather than grinding)

There is another Aspherical lens manufacture technique: an uneven coating layer is applied to a spherical lens. The coating is thicker on the edges (or on the center, depending). Canon "Lens Work II" calls these "simulated" aspherical lenses. Simulated and Glass-Molded (GMo) asphericals show up in non-L Canon lenses, while the L lenses have actual ground aspheric elements.

Bokeh
the visual quality of the out-of-focus areas of a photographic image, especially as rendered by a particular lens : It's a matter of taste and usually photographers discuss a 'nice' or 'pleasant' bokeh (the out-of-focus area is always unsharp why the quality discussed is if one likes the way it renders or not by a particular lens).
ORIGIN from Japanese 'bo-ke' which mean 'fuzziness' or 'blur.'

Summilux = Refers to the maximum lens aperture - here f/1.4 , "-lux" added for "light" (ie. the enhanced light gathering abilities). In Leica terminology a Summilux is always a f/1.4 lens and a Summicron is a f/2.0 lens.

mm = millimeter(s), as in a 50mm lens. (Earlier in lens history lenses focal length was given in cm = centimeters; as in a 5 cm lens). For anyone used to centimeters and millimeters, it’s no wonder. But if you grew up with inches, feet and yards, you may have had a hard time grasping what a 50mm lens was. But as lenses were designed first in Europe, the metric system with centimeters and millimeters was used to describe lenses.
(Leica and others made lenses for a while with either meter scale or feet scale; but then eventually started including meter and feet on all the lenses (two scales, usually distinguished with different colors). However, the lens' focal length remained always 50mm, 75mm and so on). 
The reason a 50mm lens is a 50mm lens is that there is 50mm from the focus plane (the film or sensor surface) to the center of focus inside the lens. When photography was a young subject, it was engineers who made it all, and the users were expected to understand. The engineers were so into the making of the lenses, that it apparently never dawned upon them that today’s users would think of a 21mm lens as a wide angle lens rather than a lens where there is 21mm from the sensor to the center of focus inside the optics.

MM Focal length is determined by the distance from focus inside the lens to sensor surface to, and is given in milliemeters (mm). © Thorsten Overgaard. 

- Thorsten Overgaard