Minolta M-Rokkor 28mm f/2.8

The front element decides what an M-Rokkor 28 is worth. Many copies have grown white spots or a haze behind it, and while the CLE was still current, Minolta repaired affected lenses free of charge. That service is long gone. Phillip Reeve's September 2023 review put a spotted copy at about $200 and a clean one at $450 or more. Shine a flashlight through the rear element before you agree to either number.

The Leica CL never had a 28mm frame line. The CLE's finder added one, and Minolta made this lens to fill it, releasing it in 1981 at a list price of 54,000 yen. That is why no CL-era version exists. Minolta's CLE brochure lists seven elements in five groups and a weight of 135 g. On the CLE it brings up the 28mm frame; on Leica M bodies it calls up the 35/135 lines instead. On bodies with 28mm lines (M4-P onward) the preview lever shows the 28/90 pair; on an M2 or M3 you need a 28mm shoe finder.

The photographer and columnist Koichi Akagi rates it about even with Leitz's 28mm Elmarit, and the test numbers back him up. On a Leica M10, Reeve got good, even resolution across the frame at infinity from f/2.8. Distortion is close to zero, which matters on a wide pointed at doorways and shopfronts. Coma smudges point lights in the corners wide open and clears by f/5.6, and ten straight blades turn the sun into a tidy star from there to f/16. Casual Photophile's James Tocchio called the contrast and clarity phenomenal in 2016 and warned that it "vignettes like crazy." By Reeve's measurement the falloff is 2.9 EV at f/2.8 and still 1.3 EV from f/8 to f/22, which he called in line with what to expect from a compact 28mm f/2.8.

The photographer Shigeichi Nagano worked mostly with a CLE and this 28, and he liked the outfit because it was lighter than a Leica. That is a street shooter's reason. At f/8 with the scale set around 3 m, focus largely takes care of itself. It stops at 0.8 m up close, and wide open a 28 barely softens a background anyway, so portraits show people in their surroundings rather than faces floating on blur.

Nobody agrees on how much the spots matter. Tocchio shot a perfect copy and a heavily afflicted one and could not see a difference. Reeve's sample had been cleaned by its owner and still showed traces, which he tied to bloom around point lights and a loss of contrast. Separately, with the sun barely outside the frame it could throw veiling flare, though a small reframe cleared it. Cleaning is no permanent fix, either: Akagi had his own copy serviced several times and watched the symptoms return.

For most buyers Reeve pointed to Voigtlander's Color-Skopar 28mm f/2.8 Type II instead, and on an M that is sound. On a CLE, where this lens brings up its proper frame line, a clean copy is still the one to own. Yellow and orange filters for black-and-white are easy to find in 40.5mm. The CLE's meter reads through them. A hand-held reading cannot, so on a meterless M4-P or M2, enter the filter factor in Zone Light Meter and let the app fold it into the exposure.