Zeiss ZM 35mm F/1.4 Distagon For Leica

The Zeiss ZM 35mm f/1.4 Distagon is a fast-aperture, moderately wide-angle lens for Leica M-mount cameras. Key features include:

• Advanced optical design for high-quality images

• Great for street and landscape photography

• Excellent corner-to-corner sharpness

• High-quality all-metal build

Moderately Wide Angle. The 35mm focal length is very popular for street and landscape photography, but can be useful for just about any type of shooting. The moderately wide angle provides a slightly wide perspective without the distortion commonly associated with wide-angle lenses.

Fast Aperture. The fast f/1.4 aperture provides great low-light capability and performance, with the ability to create images with a very shallow depth-of-field to isolate the subject from background.

Optical Design. The ZM 35mm f/1.4 Distagon is optimized for digital sensor capture. It offers an extremely flat image field that enables a high degree of corner-to-corner sharpness with minimal distortion. Each element has the Carl Zeiss T* anti-reflective coatings to help minimize reflections and boost image clarity and microcontrast.

Build. Like the rest of the ZM line of lenses, the ZM 35mm f/1.4 Distagon features an all-metal barrel and lens mount. The ultra-smooth manual focus ring is perfect for still and video use. This lens is fully manual and rangefinder-coupled for use with Leica rangefinder cameras.

Experience: Used in the field.

Take: If there was a perfect, fast 35mm Leica M mount lens, this one would be near the top (only bested by the Leica 35mm Summilux FLE). This lens is sharp as a tack…

Experience: Used in the field.

Take: If there was a perfect, fast 35mm Leica M mount lens, this one would be near the top (only bested by the Leica 35mm Summilux FLE). This lens is sharp as a tack through the entire focal range, has 1/3 increment f-stops and great ergonomics. The overall image quality of the lens is a really nice blend of character and sharpness. The only downside? Its size. It feels really unbalanced on a film M body or M10 but feels better on the fatter digital Ms and adapted onto Sony bodies.