Glass Bodies a variant-level encyclopedia of vintage lenses and cameras by iwillpat

Avenon 21mm f/2.8

Avenon · LTM · 1994 · Retrofocus

our own finding

Also known as: Avenon 21mm f/2.8 · Avenon 21 mm f/2.8 · Avenon Super Wide 21mm f/2.8 · Avenon Super Wide L 21mm F2.8 · AVENON SUPER WIDE L21:2.8 · AVENON Super Wide L21 21mm F2.8 · Avenon Kobalux 21mm F2.8 · Kobalux 21mm f/2.8 · Kobalux 21mm 2.8 · Kobalux Super Wide 21mm F2.8 · Kobalux (Avenon) 21 mm F/2.8 · Y.K. Optical Kobalux Super Wide 21mm F2.8 · Pasoptik 21mm f/2.8 · M-Series Super Wide 21mm F2.8 · Super Wide (L) 21mm F2.8 · アベノン スーパーワイド 21mm F2.8 · AVENON アベノン SUPER WIDE 21mm F2.8 · KOBALUX コバラックス SUPER WIDE 21mm F2.8 · kobalux Super Wide 21mm F2.8 コバルックス

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
Avenon Super Wide L21:2.8, first type (silver) LTM 1994–2000 No.94114, 94467, No.95298, NO.95983 seen Announced in 1994 as a limited run of 220, then sold as a regular product (Nakamura; Matsumo). No total published; Mechelhoff guesses, without a source, that the earlier editions ran to slightly more than the few hundred Millennium lenses and all editions together to hardly more than 1,000.
Kobalux Super Wide 21mm F2.8 (silver) LTM — NO.95713, NO.95734, NO.95739 seen —
Avenon 2000 Millennium commemorative model (black) LTM 2000 NO.20003 (maker's sheet), 20026, 20169, 20230, 20231, 20251 seen Not published; Frank Mechelhoff puts it at only a few hundred, without a source
M-Series Super Wide L 21:2.8 (chrome; Kobalux third generation) LTM — — —
  1. GENERATIONS. The Japanese accounts know two types: an early silver lens of about 1994 and a revision of about 2000 (shige; Avenon's own 2000 sheet, which lists what changed; Nakamura, who mentions only the 0.75 m of the 2000 commemorative model; Akagi, who mentions a later improved 0.75 m type without a date). The Kobalux website, as quoted by Mechelhoff, numbers three: 1994, a second generation "released in 1996", and the M-Series. Japan Camera Hunter numbers three versions too, dating the second to 1996 and the third to 2001; camera-wiki instead makes the 2000 Millennium edition the second generation and the M-Series the third; Mechelhoff calls the multicoated lens of 1996 the second edition and says the Millennium model is often called the third. No source shows anything that tells a 1996 lens from a 1994 one on the outside, so there is no 1996 row.
  2. ONE OPTICAL DESIGN. Camera-wiki says the M-Series has "recomputed optics", citing the Kobalux website, and Mechelhoff calls the Millennium model optically revised according to the maker. Avenon's own sheet for that model gives the same six groups and eight elements and claims no new computation, and shige, who shot both an early and a late lens, saw no clear difference between them. With the element count unchanged, the revision is treated here as variants of one lens.
  3. DESIGN TYPE. Retrofocus according to Nakamura, Akagi, shige and Mechelhoff (asymmetric); Japan Camera Hunter's specification list calls it a symmetrical design. Mechelhoff reproduces a cross-section drawn by Marco Cavina and finds it like the Elmarit-M 21mm f/2.8 of 1980 only in its rear half.
  4. THE REAR OF THE LENS. Japan Camera Hunter: 35 mm outside the body, 17 mm inside it, 10 mm from the film plane. Mechelhoff: the rear elements sit far back inside a protective tube 29.5 mm across, which makes mounting on Canon rangefinders difficult; Leica and Voigtländer bodies take it. Hamish Gill found the rear projects quite far into the body but mounted it on a Leica CL without trouble. Akagi says that, being a retrofocus, the lens has no protruding rear element, so it does not block the light path to the metering cell of an M6 or CLE; shige blames a rear element close to the sensor for the colour casts he saw on an M9.
  5. SIZE AND WEIGHT. Avenon's 2000 sheet: 64 mm across, 49 mm long, 225 g. Shige: 64 mm, 36 mm from the mount face, 225 g (his English table gives 49 mm long); Mechelhoff: 64 mm, 34.7 mm from the mount face, 225 g, and 66 g for the finder. Japan Camera Hunter and Kamerastore: 66 × 48 mm and 220 g. Length overall and length in front of the mount are different measurements; the diameter and weight disagree.
  6. CLOSE FOCUS OF THE REVISION. Avenon's sheet gives 0.75 m with the scale marked 0.8 m, and warns that some cameras will not couple the rangefinder at 0.75 m; shige measured the same on his own lens, and Nakamura and Akagi give 0.75 m. Japan Camera Hunter's specification list, without saying which version it means, gives coupling to 0.75 m on the M6 and 0.9 m on most other bodies.
  7. A BLACK FIRST TYPE? Mechelhoff writes that the lenses came in silver and black from the start, silver being commoner, though he also says the first lenses were always silver; camera-wiki says the 21 was sold in chrome or black. Matsumo lists silver at ¥68,800 and black at ¥72,800 against a 1994 date, the black price being the 2000 model's. Flashback Camera says the normal finish was silver and black was sold in limited numbers in 2000. No black lens with six blades or a 1 m scale is known from photographs, so there is no row for one.
  8. NATIVE M MOUNT. Camera-wiki says some of these lenses seem to have been made directly in Leica M mount, citing a photo.net owner. Avenon's 2000 sheet describes a screw-mount lens used on M bodies through its separately sold M-coupler ring, and no bayonet-mount 21mm is known from photographs. Sellers often title the thread-mount lens "Leica M", and the M-SERIES name on the later lens and on Kobalux boxes invites the same reading.
  9. OTHER NAMES. Camera-wiki lists Pasoptik, Bower and Adorama, and perhaps Avenar, as names the lenses were reportedly sold under; Mechelhoff gives Pasoptik as the British name. The one Pasoptik 21mm known is a ClubSnap sale of 28 April 2014, "Pasoptik 21mm f2.8 LTM (Kobalux/Avenon Clone)", S$1,420 with a matching 21mm finder, its engraving not shown. That is too little for a row.
  10. KIT CONTENTS. Nakamura's 1994 price includes the dedicated hood, Matsumo's the hood and a lens case; Avenon's 2000 sheet includes case and hood and sells the finder and M-coupler separately, and shige says Avenon's 21mm finder was sold separately from the lens, silver for the early lens and black for the late. Camera-wiki describes a kit of two caps, metal hood, external brightline finder and 35/135 L-to-M ring, the finder and ring also sold separately; Japan Camera Hunter lists the same kit but elsewhere in the article calls the M adapter an option. Stella's chrome M-Series set shows lens, hood, finder and 35/135 ring, and Gill says the finder did not always come with the lens. Mechelhoff describes Avenon's finder as a 39 mm metal Albada type with bright frame and parallax marks. A silver Kobalux-branded finder is photographed with an Avenon lens on Commons.
  11. PERIOD TESTS. A ClubSnap poster wrote in 2010 that Popular Photography of April 1996 (p.80) carried a full test of both the 21 and the 28; Stella prints SQF figures from that issue for the 28 only, and for the 21 from the September 2000 issue, headed "third generation": 96.9 at f/2.8 and 99.4 at f/5.6 for a 5×7 print. The Kobalux website, as Mechelhoff quotes it, cited the British Journal of Photography of 6 November 1996 ("at least the equal of the 21/4.5 Biogon") and Shutterbug of July 1999; Japan Camera Hunter quotes the same two reviews.
  12. END OF PRODUCTION. February 2002 according to camera-wiki, citing the Kobalux website; early 2002 according to Japan Camera Hunter; "a great 8-year run" in Stella's postscript; about six years on sale according to shige. Nakamura says Abe died suddenly and the company was dissolved a few years later, without dates; Mechelhoff supposes that making and selling the lenses stopped with the founder's death.
  13. MARKET, 2026. Ten sales of the lens closed on Yahoo! Auctions between May and October 2026 under the AVENON and KOBALUX searches, from ¥22,550 (an as-is Kobalux, NO.95734) to ¥43,799 (a boxed silver Avenon, NO.95983); the black NO.20231 sold twice, for ¥30,500 and ¥32,000, so the ten sales were of nine lenses. Finders sold on their own made ¥4,950 to ¥8,500. Kamerastore gives an average certified price of €525.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • Engraving is all on the front ring: the name, SUPER WIDE, focal length and aperture, JAPAN and a five-digit number; MADE IN JAPAN is on the mount collar
  • Short, fat barrel, 64 mm across a ribbed and scalloped focusing ring with no focusing tab, unlike the Avenon 28
  • A large, strongly curved front element sits close behind the 58 mm filter thread
  • Leica thread with a rangefinder cam that moves straight in and out; on M bodies it needs an L-to-M ring

Avenon Super Wide L21:2.8, first type (silver):

  • Front ring AVENON SUPER WIDE L21:2.8 JAPAN No.xxxxx, with no space between L and 21; MADE IN JAPAN on the mount collar
  • Silver aluminium barrel. The front ring is usually silver but black on some, among them shige's own lens and Japan Camera Hunter's
  • Distance scale ends at 1 m / 3.5 ft, the feet figures in black
  • Six blades, so a hexagonal opening when stopped down; clicks at full stops only
  • Red retail box printed AVENON SUPER WIDE 21mm F2.8 for Leica mount camera

Kobalux Super Wide 21mm F2.8 (silver):

  • Front ring Kobalux Super Wide 21mm F2.8 JAPAN NO.xxxxx: the focal length in millimetres, with no L prefix
  • Otherwise the Avenon first type: silver barrel, 1 m / 3.5 ft scale, six-blade hexagonal opening, MADE IN JAPAN on the mount collar
  • Box printed Kobalux 21mmF2.8 M-SERIES SUPER WIDE-ANGLE LENS, seen holding the 1 m lens NO.95713, so M-SERIES on a box does not identify the later M-Series lens

Avenon 2000 Millennium commemorative model (black):

  • Black barrel with a chrome mount collar and chrome depth-of-field ring
  • Front ring AVENON SUPER WIDE L 21:2.8 JAPAN NO.20xxx, with a space between L and 21
  • Distance scale marked to 0.8 m / 2.6 ft, the feet figures in orange; the ring turns past the mark to about 0.75 m
  • Eight blades and a near-round opening; intermediate clicks between the engraved full stops, which still read 2.8·4·5.6·8·11·16·22
  • Box with a MILLENNIUM 2000 rosette; the black finder boxed separately as AVENON 21mm FINDER

M-Series Super Wide L 21:2.8 (chrome; Kobalux third generation):

  • Chrome barrel with JAPAN, M-Series, SUPER WIDE, L 21:2.8 and NO.xxxxx on the front ring, and no Avenon or Kobalux name
  • Same scalloped focusing ring as the first type; photographed with a chrome finder, a chrome hood and a 35/135 L-to-M ring
  • Eight blades and 0.75 m close focus per camera-wiki, citing the Kobalux website; neither is visible in the one photograph

Serial-range notes

94114–95983
First-type lenses of both names. Avenon-engraved: 94114, 94467, 95298, 95983. Kobalux-engraved: 95713, 95734, 95739, all inside the Avenon run. Mechelhoff suggests the first digits give the year of manufacture; 94 and 95 fit a lens launched in 1994, but no maker document says so.
20003–20251
The black 2000 Millennium model. 20003 is on the lens pictured in Avenon's own sheet, 20026 is Mechelhoff's, 20169 is on Commons, 20230 passed unsold at Tamarkin in November 2016 with no finish stated, and 20231 (sold twice on Yahoo! Auctions in 2026, the same lens both times) and 20251 are seller photographs. Numbers this low and this close together are consistent with a run of a few hundred, but they set no figure.
80015 or 80016
Mechelhoff reports a 21mm with this number pictured on Peter Lausch's site and reads it as a 1980 date, which cannot be right for a lens first sold in 1994. The number on the chrome M-Series lens in Dante Stella's photograph also appears to begin with 8, but it is not legible at the published size. What an 80xxx number denotes is not established.
No number
Some lenses have no serial. Japan Camera Hunter says this is because Mr Abe died before many were stamped, a story no other source confirms; a Kobalux owner on ClubSnap in 2010 reported no number on the front of his lens.

Specifications

Formula
Retrofocus
Construction
8 elements / 6 groups
Aperture range
f/2.8–f/22
Dimensions
64 × 49 mm
Weight
225 g
Filter
58 mm
Years manufactured
1994–2002
Country
Japan
Coating
Multicoated
Material
Aluminium alloy
Original price
¥68,800 with hood (1994, silver; Nakamura, and Matsumo, who adds a lens case); ¥72,800 with case and hood (2000 Millennium model, black; Avenon's own sheet) (today ¥78,000)

What reviewers say

Optical Ratings

Aggregated from the reviews above — follow the links for the full picture.

Chromatic aberration
low
Flare & ghosting
minor ghosting
Optical formula — Retrofocus

History

Two accounts of who made this lens exist, and only one line, from the Kobalux website, joins them. Japanese writers give it to アベノン光機 (Avenon Kōki; the katakana is also romanised Abenon), a company founded around 1982 by a Mr Abe who had worked at Sankyō Kōki, the maker of Komura lenses, which went bankrupt in 1980. Nakamura Fumio, writing for CAPA in 2019, says Abe had been in sales and that former Komura staff did the product development; Japanese Wikipedia, the Tokyo dealer Fotoborse, Frank Mechelhoff and Japan Camera Hunter call him a designer. Akagi Kōichi, who met him while reviewing for Asahi Camera, says the name means simply the lens Mr Abe made, and shige, citing an article by 萩谷剛 in 『世界のライカレンズ Part2』, gives his full name as 阿部毅. Avenon’s own specification sheet for the 2000 model is issued by (有)アベノン, a limited company at Sotokanda 5-1-8, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo. English sources name instead Y.K. Optical, a small firm in Yokohama, which camera-wiki says sold the lens as Kobalux, seemingly the main name in North America, and as Avenon, the only name in Japan, and reportedly also as Pasoptik, Bower and Adorama. None of the Japanese writers mentions Y.K. Optical, though one Japanese seller names it as the maker of a Kobalux-engraved lens. The Kobalux website, in a passage noviplamen quotes, credits the lenses to the chief lens designer, Abe-san, “who started his own company, Avenon Kohki (Y.K. Optical)” after Sankyō Kōki failed in 1980. Two other English sources run the stories together without citing one: Mechelhoff writes that Avenon Kōki was later taken over by Y.K. Optical or renamed, and Japan Camera Hunter calls Mr Abe Y.K. Optical’s founder and chief lens designer. How (有)アベノン, Avenon Kōki and Y.K. Optical relate is not settled. What the lenses themselves show is consistent with one production line: Kobalux-engraved examples carry numbers inside the run of Avenon-engraved ones, on the same barrel, scales and diaphragm.

The Super Wide was Avenon’s second Leica-thread lens, after the 28mm f/3.5 of 1982. Nakamura says it was announced in 1994 at the used-camera fair at Ginza Matsuya as a limited run of 220 and, because the response was strong, sold as an ordinary product; Matsumo’s table of screw-mount lenses gives the same 220 from the 1994 advertisement, and Japanese Wikipedia gives April 1994 from Camera Nenkan ‘98; camera-wiki gives 1994 or 1995, the later year from a 1997 Camera Review article. It cost ¥68,800 with its hood. In Matsumo’s table it is the first 21mm newly released for the screw mount in Japan after 1980, five years before Ricoh’s limited GR 21mm f/3.5 and seven before Cosina’s Color-Skopar 21mm f/4, and Akagi, noting that Cosina’s Voigtländer lenses did not appear until 1999, wonders whether Avenon planned it for the film-Leica boom of the time. The Kobalux website, as Mechelhoff quotes it, went further and called Kobalux the first maker of Leica-thread lenses since Canon stopped in 1972, a claim that the Japanese sources’ 1982 date for Avenon’s own 28mm contradicts.

Optically it is a retrofocus of eight elements in six groups, with a large, strongly curved negative front element and no aspherical surfaces. Akagi remembers that this disappointed part of the Leica audience, which held that a 21 for the camera had to be symmetrical like Schneider’s Super-Angulon 21mm f/3.4; he also points out that the retrofocus layout keeps the rear element from protruding, so it does not block the light path to the metering cell of an M6 or a CLE, and lets light reach the edges of a digital sensor more easily. Japan Camera Hunter’s specification list calls the design symmetrical, against every other source that describes it. The rangefinder cam moves straight in and out rather than riding an inclined face, which Nakamura counts as a sign of quality. The barrel is aluminium, 64 mm across a ribbed focusing ring with no tab, and the big front element sits close behind a 58 mm filter thread: shige advises thin filters only, and Akagi found that the hood and a filter together cut into the corners.

The Japanese accounts know two types and the Kobalux account three generations. The first type of 1994 is silver, with six blades, clicks at full stops and a scale that ends at 1 m / 3.5 ft, and carries either AVENON SUPER WIDE L21:2.8 or Kobalux Super Wide 21mm F2.8 on the front ring. Around 2000 the lens was revised. Avenon’s sheet for the 2000 Millennium commemorative model, black type, lists the changes: a black baked finish, close focus shortened to 0.75 m though the scale stops at 0.8 m, intermediate clicks on the aperture ring, and eight blades in place of six for a rounder opening; it warns that some cameras will not couple at 0.75 m. Matsumo records that the regular product was improved in the same year, and Dante Stella photographs a chrome lens engraved M-Series SUPER WIDE L 21:2.8, with no maker’s name on the ring; camera-wiki, citing the Kobalux website, names the third generation the M-series and credits it with recomputed optics, eight blades and 0.75 m. Avenon’s sheet gives the same six groups and eight elements and claims no new computation, and shige, who shot both types, saw no clear difference between them. The Kobalux website also counts a second generation of 1996, which no source distinguishes on the outside.

To tell them apart, look at the distance scale and the diaphragm. A scale ending at 1 m and a hexagonal opening mean the first type; 0.8 m with 2.6 ft in orange and a nearly round opening mark the black revision. Numbers seen run from 94114 to 95983 on first-type lenses of both names and from 20003 to 20251 on black ones. Some lenses carry no number at all, which Japan Camera Hunter puts down to Abe dying before they were stamped, a story no other source confirms. On an M body the lens needs an L-to-M ring. Avenon sold its M-coupler separately and said any frame-line key would do, since no M body has a 21mm frame, while the Kobalux kits that camera-wiki, Japan Camera Hunter and Stella describe include a 35/135 ring. The finders, Avenon’s own at ¥17,000 in 2000 (a 39 mm Albada type, per Mechelhoff) and a Kobalux-branded one, are often missing or sold on their own. Mechelhoff calls them optically very good if rather large, but the reviewers who used them found fault: Hamish Gill with distortion and frame lines that vanish, shige with a view that is not clear, Michael Nguyen of Japan Camera Hunter with corners hidden from a spectacle wearer. On an M11-P, Akagi found much of the lower part of a 21mm optical finder’s view blocked. Mechelhoff warns that the tube around the deep-set rear element makes mounting on Canon rangefinders difficult, while Leica and Voigtländer bodies take it, and Gill had no trouble on a Leica CL.

On film shige found it clean to the edges and Gill found the corners better than on his M9. On full-frame digital, Gill on an M9 and Akagi on an M11-P found the corners smeared even stopped down, and shige saw disturbed edges wide open on his M9, while APS-C and APS-H bodies crop the problem away. The reviewers disagree on the rest. Gill found contrast not particularly high and vignetting pronounced wide open, and Mechelhoff found contrast weaker wide open than on the Avenon 28, where Akagi found fairly high contrast and little falloff; Gill saw pincushion distortion where Akagi saw slight barrel distortion.

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This history is AI-written, from the sources listed at the foot of the page. Where the record is silent it says so rather than filling the gap — but no human wrote these sentences.

Example photos

More sample photos elsewhere

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Sample photo wanted — shot with a Avenon 21mm f/2.8? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

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Listings updated 2026-10-28. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.

Related: Avenon 28mm f/3.5 · Avenon P.H. 28 Air Lens

Sources (21)

Every page here is assembled from public sources, and the gaps are real ones. If you own this lens, know a serial number I'm missing, or can see where I have it wrong, tell me — corrections, serials and sample photos are all worth having.