Leica Summicron-M 50mm f/2 (Rigid, v2)

Available light at f/2, a face two feet away, a dim cafe or a gallery opening with no flash allowed. The rigid Summicron from the late fifties still handles that better than glass costing five times as much. Other fast fifties of the era go soft and milky wide open. This one holds a sharp, contained center at f/2 with a gradual falloff into a background that goes quiet rather than busy.

The design is a seven-element, six-group layout, a double-Gauss derivative of the Planar-type arrangement almost every fast normal lens leans on. What separates the rigid v2 from the collapsible Summicron before it is mostly the glass and the optical cell. Leica revised it slightly, a harder front element and a deeper rear element, which gives the rigid a touch more contrast; the rigid is the version most people picture when they talk about a 50 Summicron's drawing. Wide open it is sharp where you focus and soft everywhere else, with low veiling flare and a tonal scale that keeps shadow separation instead of crushing it. Stop to f/4 and it bites across most of the frame. By f/5.6 it is as sharp as anything from the period, corner to corner, on a flat subject.

Bokeh is why clean copies get hoarded. Out-of-focus highlights stay smooth near the center with only a touch of bright-edge outlining wide open that cleans up by f/2.8, and the transition off the focus plane is unhurried rather than busy. Color is neutral and slightly warm, with the lower contrast of older Leica glass, less punch than a modern aspherical Summicron but never flat. This is a reportage and street lens at heart. It rode in a lot of working M bodies during the years Leica was the press camera, and the look it produces is bound up with the black-and-white documentary tradition of that era.

The honest weakness is flare control against a bright source. Shoot into a window or a low sun and contrast drops fast, with veiling across the frame; the period coatings do not hold up the way multicoated glass from the seventies onward does. Keep the hood on it. It also has a curved field, so flat-subject work like copying art needs a stop or two before the corners catch up.

Today it lands in an odd place, valued as both a user lens and a collector item, which keeps clean copies expensive for what is optically a sixty-year-old normal lens. People cross-shop it against the later tabbed 50mm Summicron (the 1969-on Type III/IV) and the rigid Summilux, and the ones who buy the rigid v2 want the rendering, not the resolution chart. With a 39mm thread it takes the standard Leica filter and slip-on hood, and there is no shutter in the lens, so flash sync is whatever your M body's focal-plane curtain allows, usually 1/50 on the older bodies. One practical note for shooting it wide open in a dark room: meter at f/2 directly in Zone Light Meter and place your subject's skin on Zone VI rather than trusting an averaged reading, because the lens gives up so little to the dark background that the meter will want to overexpose the face.