Leica Elmar-M 50mm f/2.8 (collapsible)

Everyone cross-shops this against the 50mm Summicron, and that is the wrong fight. The Summicron is the reference standard, a stop faster, sharper wide open, and double the price on the used market. The Elmar-M is not chasing that. It collapses into the body. Push the barrel in and the camera goes flat enough to disappear into a coat pocket. Nobody buys an f/2.8 fifty in 1995 for the speed; they buy it for the way it folds away.

The modern Elmar-M keeps the classic four-element, three-group Tessar-type Elmar formula, re-computed with modern glass and coatings rather than redesigned into a faster double-Gauss. It is the same lineage as the old four-element Elmar that wore the name in the 1920s and 1930s, brought up to date. The name carries the heritage; the glass inside is newer than it looks. Wide open at f/2.8 the center is already crisp and the corners are soft, with a gentle drop in contrast that some people read as classic and others read as veiled. Stop down to f/5.6 and it snaps into a sharpness across the frame that holds its own against far more expensive glass. This is a landscape-and-travel aperture lens, not a low-light lens. At working apertures you get the usual Leica look: color stays accurate, contrast stays restrained, and nothing swirls or smears at the edges.

Bokeh is the honest weakness. At f/2.8 there simply is not enough background separation to throw a scene into soft falloff the way a Summilux will, and the Elmar was never built to. To my eye the out-of-focus highlights stay defined, sometimes with a hard rim, and a busy background can render a little nervous behind the subject. If subject isolation and smooth falloff are the goal, this is the wrong tool, and the Summicron or a Voigtlander Nokton is where you go. Where the Elmar pays off is depth-of-field work. Stopped down on the street at f/8, a cityscape with everything in focus, the kind of frame where you want the whole plane sharp and the camera invisible.

Flare control is good for a vintage-name lens. Credit the modern coatings and the recessed front element, which keeps stray light off the glass. The filter thread is 39mm, the standard E39 Leica size, so screw-in filters and a vented hood are cheap and easy to find. For an ND or a polarizer on bright travel days the small thread keeps the whole kit light, which matters more on this lens than most.

So it lands in a strange spot today. People who want one fifty and want it fast skip it. People who already own a Summicron buy it anyway, because collapsed it turns an M into something genuinely pocketable for a walk where you do not want a bag. That niche keeps used prices healthy. One operational note: collapsing the barrel on a digital M risks the rear element touching the sensor stack, so on those bodies you leave it extended; on film it collapses freely. Since you mostly shoot this one stopped down in daylight, an incident or reflected reading in Zone Light Meter at your taking aperture is all the metering it needs. No leaf shutter, no close-focus bellows factor to fold in here.