The M mount is where the difference between price and worth is widest, so this guide is mostly about not paying for a name. The entry and value picks are the lenses and bodies whose optics or engineering stand on their own; the collector picks are the ones whose prices are earned by history and scarcity rather than by anything a photograph would show. Every Leica line here is on a page that speaks the market’s version numbers — v1 to v6 for the Summicron 50, v1 to v4 for the Noctilux f/1 — so a seller’s description can be checked against it.
Stories · Buyer's guides · Leica M
Where to start in the Leica M mount
A Minolta-made way into the mount, the Summicron that is still Leica's design, and the f/1.2 that was the first aspherical lens anyone sold.
Lenses
Entry level — the cheapest way in that is still the real thing
M-Rokkor 40mm f/2
Minolta's lens for the CL and then the CLE, an M-mount six-element f/2 that is a Summicron-C by another name. It brings up the 50mm frame on most M bodies and the 40mm frame on a CLE or a CL, and it costs what an M-mount lens cost before the word Leica did the pricing.
Asking today: around $670 (middle half $460–$930) — median of 91 fixed-price USD listings on 2026-09-11
Also consider Elmar-M 50mm f/2.8 .
Best value — the most lens or camera for the money
Summicron-M 50mm f/2 (v4 · v5)
Walter Mandler's 1979 design, still in Leica's catalogue in 2026 as the plain Summicron-M 50. The v4 and the v5 with the built-in hood are the same glass; buy on condition and skip the premium the APO asks for its last few percent.
Asking today: around $1,300 (middle half $1,000–$1,600) — median of 58 fixed-price USD listings on 2026-09-11
Also consider Summicron 50mm f/2 (v3) .
Collector level — the one the reference books are about
Noctilux 50mm f/1.2
The first production lens with aspherical surfaces, ground by hand at Wetzlar from 1966 and abandoned in 1975 because so few could be made. Under two thousand exist, and the price reflects the two dozen a year that reach the market.
Asking today: around $8,200 (middle half $5,600–$9,900) — median of 44 fixed-price USD listings on 2026-09-11
Also consider Noctilux-M 50mm f/1 .
Bodies
Entry level — the cheapest way in that is still the real thing
Leica CL
The compact M that Leitz designed and Minolta built, with a through-the-lens meter and a 40/50/90 finder. A few lenses cannot be mounted because of the meter arm — the page lists them — and everything else works. The cheapest body that takes the whole mount.
Asking today: around $800 (middle half $500–$1,000) — median of 43 fixed-price USD listings on 2026-09-11
Also consider Minolta CLE .
Best value — the most lens or camera for the money
Leica M5
The M with a meter, a larger body, and a shutter dial that overhangs the front so the finger finds it without looking. It was disliked for not being an M4 and it is the best-metered mechanical M ever built; the market still prices the dislike.
Asking today: around $1,800 (middle half $1,200–$2,500) — median of 80 fixed-price USD listings on 2026-09-11
Also consider Leica M2 .
Collector level — the one the reference books are about
Leica M3
The camera that started the mount and, for many, the finder that has never been bettered: 0.91×, brightline frames for 50, 90 and 135. Two hundred and twenty-six thousand were made, so the collector's questions are which one — double-stroke, single-stroke, the early glass pressure plate — and the page answers them.
Asking today: around $1,800 (middle half $1,500–$2,300) — median of 184 fixed-price USD listings on 2026-09-11
Also consider Leica M2 .
The picks and the reasons are editorial and AI-written from the family pages, which say where each claim comes from. The prices are read from the listings I scan on the day the page was built — a median of a handful of asking prices, not a valuation, and not what anything sold for. Updated 2026-09-07.