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

Avenon 28mm f/3.5

Avenon · LTM · 1982 · Double-Gauss, six elements in four groups

our own finding

Also known as: Avenon 28mm f/3.5 · Avenon L 28mm f/3.5 · AVENON L28 F3.5 · AVENON L28:3.5 · AVENON MC 28mm F3.5 · Avenon MC L 28mm F3.5 · Avenon MC 28mm 3.5 · Avenon 28 mm F3.5 · Avenon M-series 28mm f/3.5 · Kobalux Wide 28mm F3.5 · Kobalux 28mm f/3.5 · Avenon Kobalux Wide 28mm f/3.5 · Pasoptik 28mm f/3.5 · アベノン AVENON MC 28mm F3.5 · AVENON MC アベノン L 28mm F3.5 · コバルックス Kobalux Wide 28mm F3.5 · アベノン 28mm F3.5

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
AVENON L28:3.5, knob tab (first type) LTM 1982 No.11057 (silver; sold twice on Yahoo! Auctions in 2026)
No.82116 (black, see serial notes)
NO.92481 (silver)
NO.94032 (glossy black, boxed with hood, case and L-M ring)
No.96083 (silver, boxed with hood, case and 28mm finder) 		—
AVENON MC 28mm 1:3.5, knob tab LTM 1992 No.870345 (black)
No.870382 (black) 		—
Kobalux Wide 28mm F3.5 LTM — NO.95855
NO.95986
NO.95988 (boxed, with a 90-keyed bayonet adaptor) 		—
AVENON MC L28:3.5, forked tab, 1 m (Avenon New, 1997) LTM 1997 NO.97320
NO.97344 (with AVENON case and silver 28mm finder)
NO.97408 		—
Late type marked to 0.8 m (renewed 2000; Kobalux M-Series) LTM 2000–2002 — —
AVENON SUPER BLACK 28mm F3.5, numbered set LTM — — —
  1. Dates. First sale is 1982 for Akagi, who gives it as hearsay, for Japanese Wikipedia, uncited, and for shige, as about 1982; Nakamura Fumio has the company founded about 1982 and the 28 as its first Leica-thread lens. Camera-wiki writes 1982 or 1983, but both sources it cites for the date say 1983. The Kobalux site, as noviplamen quotes it, says 1981, and F Stop Cameras gives 1981 to 2002. The end, February 2002, is the Kobalux site's, cited by camera-wiki and Casual Photophile; Dante Stella, who put that site together, calls it "a great 8-year run", and the archived site itself, as Casual Photophile reads it, "a successful seven-year run"; neither span reaches back to the Avenon lens of 1982, and Casual Photophile reads the seven years as a Kobalux run from 1995.
  2. The late type is split into two rows because the evidence splits. Japanese Wikipedia gives 1 m for the April 1997 lens (the date cited to Camera Nenkan '98), and two forked-tab lenses numbered 97xxx are scaled to 1 m; shige's late copy and the Leica Tsushin No.2 table give 0.8 m engraved and 0.75 m reached; Leica Tsushin No.3 announces a renewed 28 in 2000. Akagi puts 0.8 m in 1997, and Casual Photophile describes an eight-blade, crescent-tab, half-stop lens from 1995 that still focuses to 1 m. Blade counts for the late lenses are 10 (Japanese Wikipedia for the 1997 lens, Akagi, shige's copy) against 8 (Leica Tsushin No.3, camera-wiki, Casual Photophile); both may exist, and no source says which is which. Count the blades on the copy in hand.
  3. Size and build. shige gives 17.4 mm measured from the mount face, 51 mm across and 100 g; Kamerastore gives 51 × 19 mm and 120 g. Akagi calls the barrel aluminium; Fotoborse describes a silver copy as chrome-plated, and Dante Stella calls the Kobalux line heavy alloy with real chrome plating. The archived Kobalux site claimed it as the smallest 28mm ever made for the Leica thread, as of 1996 (Casual Photophile); noviplamen finds it about the size of a Leica M rear cap. shige notes that the four-group, six-element diagram in 『世界のライカレンズ Part2』 places the rear group differently from the diagram in Avenon's own leaflet.
  4. Accessories. shige says the early lenses were sold with a screw-in 43 mm hood, flared like a trumpet, and a dedicated 28mm finder, and believes the finder was dropped for the late type; boxed sets photographed in Japan include both, though the forked-tab NO.97344 also sold with a silver finder and an Avenon case. Camera-wiki says the lens came with two caps and a metal hood, the finder and a 28/90 M adapter being sold separately. Avenon's own adapter, the M-COUPLER 28-90, carries a card listing 28mm frames on the M4-P, M6 and Minolta CLE and 90mm frames alone on the M2, M3, M4, M4-2 and M5.
  5. Commemorative 28s are reported without a description. shige writes that anniversary and millennium versions are known; a ClubSnap member wrote in January 2010 that his "Millenium Edition of the Avenon28f3.5" focuses to 0.75 m, against 1 m for the older ones. Nakamura describes a 2000 commemorative model only for the 21mm, and Akagi writes only that a black-paint 28 came out later than his silver one. No photograph of a commemorative 28's markings is known, so there is no variant row; it may be the SUPER BLACK set or a 0.8 m late lens in a special box.
  6. Other names. The Kobalux site, as noviplamen reports it, says the 28mm was also sold as Pasoptik, Bower and Adorama, and camera-wiki lists the same names; noviplamen had never seen an image of one. A ClubSnap owner wrote in 2010 that the 28mm was also made in native M mount, "not just a stuck-on adapter", and camera-wiki, citing a photo.net post, says some of these lenses seem to have been made directly in M mount. Camera-wiki calls a Komura-badged version probably a false rumour; that is a question about a name ring, separate from Akagi's view that the optical design is the W-Komura's.
  7. Canon bodies. A reader under Casual Photophile's review quotes a warning from "the kobalux website (not sure if it's the official one or not)" that the lens "protrudes deeply into the camera body" and cannot be mounted on Canon series V, series VI "(Canon P, etc.)" or Canon 7 bodies, where it would hit the internal light shield. Casual Photophile photographed its Kobalux mounted on a Canon P. Neither settles the question.
  8. Popular Photography tested the Kobalux 28 in its April 1996 issue (p.80, per a ClubSnap member, who says the 21mm was tested alongside). Dante Stella reprints the SQF table under the heading "Kobalux 28mm f/3.5 (second generation)": 96.2 at f/3.5 and 99.5 at f/8 for a 5×7 print, falling to 64.0 at f/3.5 for 20×24.
  9. Market in 2026. Yahoo! Auctions: first-type silver No.11057 ¥24,750 (26 May) and ¥34,980 (22 July); first-type black NO.94032 with box, case, hood and L-M ring ¥47,000 (13 June); MC No.870382 with an M adapter ¥35,800 (6 July); forked-tab NO.97344 with case and finder ¥47,310 (17 May), NO.97320 ¥33,600 after 80 bids (21 September) and NO.97408 ¥41,800 (4 October); No.82116, junk grade, ¥18,700 (3 July); a black Bessa-L with a silver Avenon 28 and finder ¥38,100 (30 September). Asking prices: Fotoborse ¥74,800 for silver NO.92481 and ¥50,600 for MC No.870345; Five Star Camera ¥43,800 for Kobalux NO.95986, sold out; F Stop Cameras US$460 for a Kobalux Wide, sold out; Kamerastore an average certified price of €425. No original list price is known; shige's table gives it as unknown.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • AVENON or Kobalux Wide on the front ring with the focal length and a serial; MADE IN JAPAN on the mount collar
  • A pancake barrel 51 mm across with a 43 mm filter thread; distance scale in feet and metres, depth-of-field scale and a red R infrared index
  • The tab places a lens: a knurled knob without infinity lock on the early lenses, a forked two-pronged tab on the late ones
  • Read the closest distance on the scale: 1 m on the early lenses and the 1997 type, 0.8 m on the last

AVENON L28:3.5, knob tab (first type):

  • Front ring reads AVENON L28:3.5 JAPAN No.xxxxx, with no MC
  • A knurled knob for a focusing tab, as on a screw-mount Elmar, and no infinity lock
  • Distance scale ends at 1 m / 3.5 ft; aperture ring 3.5–16 in whole stops; six blades, a hexagonal opening when stopped down
  • Silver with a silver front ring, or glossy black
  • Red box printed AVENON 28mm F3.5 for Leica mount camera

AVENON MC 28mm 1:3.5, knob tab:

  • Front ring laid out differently from the first type: AVENON MC, 28mm 1:3.5, φ43mm and a six-digit No.870xxx, the MC in white
  • Knurled knob tab, scale ending at 1 m / 3.5 ft, aperture 3.5–16 in whole stops
  • Six blades (Fotoborse), a hexagonal opening in seller photos
  • Glossy black on both copies photographed

Kobalux Wide 28mm F3.5:

  • Front ring reads Kobalux Wide 28mm F3.5 JAPAN NO.xxxxx; MADE IN JAPAN on the mount collar
  • Silver, knurled knob tab, scale ending at 1 m / 3.5 ft: the first-type barrel under the North American name
  • Box printed 28mmF3.5 TO FIT LEICA M-SERIES TYPE CAMERAS

AVENON MC L28:3.5, forked tab, 1 m (Avenon New, 1997):

  • Front ring reads AVENON MC L28:3.5 JAPAN NO.97xxx, the MC in red
  • A forked, two-pronged focusing tab in place of the knob
  • Distance scale still ends at 1 m / 3.5 ft on NO.97344 and NO.97408; aperture ring 3.5–16 marked in whole stops; red R infrared index
  • Black, with a near-round aperture opening

Late type marked to 0.8 m (renewed 2000; Kobalux M-Series):

  • Distance scale engraved to 0.8 m; the helicoid turns on past the mark to about 0.75 m (shige, on his own copy)
  • Forked tab; matte, anodised-looking black on shige's copy; the Kobalux M-Series is described as black with a silver rim and grip tabs on the aperture ring
  • Blade count disputed: 10 on shige's copy, 8 in Leica Tsushin No.3 and in the Kobalux M-Series description
  • shige believes the late type was no longer sold with a finder

AVENON SUPER BLACK 28mm F3.5, numbered set:

  • Box top printed AVENON SUPER BLACK 28mm F3.5 for Leica mount camera; box side AVENON SUPER WIDE 28mm F3.5 with a BLACK sticker and a 100/185 label
  • Warranty card AVENON MC 28mm F3,5 BL, with レンズ番号 No. 100/185 where a serial would go
  • The card's issuer is (有)アベノン, Sotokanda 5-1-8, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; the leaflet is headed アベノン MC28mmF3.5

Serial-range notes

No.11057–NO.97408; No.870345–No.870382
No dating rule is published, and the numbers seen do not supply one. Five-digit numbers appear under all three engravings: first-type AVENON L28:3.5 lenses at No.11057, No.82116, NO.92481, NO.94032 and No.96083; Kobalux Wide at NO.95855, NO.95986 and NO.95988, inside the Avenon span; forked-tab red-MC lenses at NO.97320, NO.97344 and NO.97408. The two knob-tab MC lenses carry six-digit numbers, No.870345 and No.870382. Reading the first two digits as a year fits the 97xxx forked-tab lenses of 1997 and fails on No.11057 and on an MC lens numbered 87 against a multicoating date of 1992.
No.82116
A glossy black AVENON L28:3.5 lens, sold as junk grade in July 2026, with a low notched tab in place of the knob and a 1 m scale. One copy; whether it left the factory that way is unknown.
No.11057
The same silver first-type lens sold twice on Yahoo! Auctions within two months: ¥24,750 on 26 May 2026 and ¥34,980 on 22 July. A serial that recurs in listings is worth checking against earlier sales.

Specifications

Formula
Double-Gauss, six elements in four groups
Construction
6 elements / 4 groups
Aperture range
f/3.5–f/16
Min. focus
1 m
Dimensions
51 × 17.4 mm
Weight
100 g
Filter
43 mm (0.75 mm pitch)
Years manufactured
1982–2002
Country
Japan
Coating
Single-coated at first; multicoated from 1992 (Akagi; Japanese Wikipedia citing Classic Camera Senka No.19), or from 1995 (Casual Photophile)
Material
Aluminium (Akagi)

What reviewers say

History

The Avenon 28mm f/3.5 is a pancake wide-angle for the Leica thread: six elements in four groups, 51 mm across, 17.4 mm from the mount face and about 100 g by shige_yuki’s figures. It was first sold around 1982 and made in several versions until, by the Kobalux site’s account, production stopped in February 2002, as Avenon in Japan and, in the same barrels, as the Kobalux Wide in North America. Akagi Koichi, who owns a copy of each, says its optical design is that of Sankyo Kohki’s W-Komura 28mm f/3.5 pancake of 1963; he says it plainly once and later, in the same column, as his presumption. The barrels are not the same: the Komura takes 48 and 55 mm filters, the Avenon 43 mm.

There are two accounts of the maker, and they meet in only one sentence. Japanese sources name アベノン光機 (Avenon Kōki), founded around 1982 by a Mr Abe from Sankyo Kohki, the Komura lens maker that went bankrupt in 1980. They differ on what Abe did there: Nakamura Fumio, writing for CAPA in 2019, says he handled sales and that Komura alumni developed the products; Akagi, who met him while covering reviews for Asahi Camera, says he was reportedly a senior figure at the company and that the name means “the lens Mr Abe made”; Japanese Wikipedia, citing Classic Camera Senka No.19, and the Tokyo dealer Fotoborse make him the designer, as does the Kobalux site in English, which noviplamen quotes calling him “the chief lens designer”. shige reports his full name as 阿部毅, which 萩谷剛’s entry on p.96 of 『世界のライカレンズ Part2』 gives as the name of Avenon Kōki’s president. Nakamura says Abe died suddenly and the company was dissolved a few years later. A warranty card photographed with a boxed set was issued by (有)アベノン of Sotokanda 5-1-8, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo. English sources name Y.K. Optical of Yokohama instead, which used the Kobalux and Avenon names for this lens and a 21mm; camera-wiki, resting on one forum post, says the 28mm was introduced by another small company that Y.K. bought in the mid-1990s, and James Tocchio of Casual Photophile treats the Abe story as unverified. The only text that joins the names is a line noviplamen quotes from the Kobalux website, crediting the lenses to “Abe-san, who started his own company, Avenon Kohki (Y.K. Optical)”. None of the Japanese writers, Nakamura, Akagi, shige or Japanese Wikipedia, mentions Y.K. Optical, and how (有)アベノン, Avenon Kōki and Y.K. Optical relate is not settled.

The first type has a knurled knob for a focusing tab, as on a screw-mount Elmar, with no infinity lock, six blades, a 1 m close limit that Akagi links to the coupling range of the screw-mount Leicas, and a front ring reading AVENON L28:3.5. It came in silver or glossy black, and shige says it was sold with a screw-in hood and a 28mm finder. Multicoating came in 1992 by Akagi’s and Japanese Wikipedia’s dates; the two knob-tab MC lenses photographed carry a ring laid out differently, AVENON MC 28mm 1:3.5 φ43mm, with a six-digit number. In April 1997, by Japanese Wikipedia’s entry, which takes the date from Camera Nenkan ‘98, the Avenon New brought ten blades for a near-round opening, better coating and a new focusing lever while keeping 1 m, and three black lenses numbered 97320 to 97408 fit it as far as photographs show: each has a forked two-pronged tab and a red MC on an AVENON MC L28:3.5 ring, and the two whose scales are pictured end at 1 m. The closer focus appears to have come later. shige’s late copy is engraved to 0.8 m and turns on to about 0.75 m; Leica Tsushin No.3 of 2000 carried a news item on a renewed Avenon 28, which shige reports as an improved lens with eight blades; camera-wiki’s account of the Kobalux M-Series describes a black barrel with a silver rim, a crescent tab, eight blades and 0.75 m. Akagi puts the 0.8 m in 1997, and Casual Photophile puts an eight-blade multicoated lens in 1995 that still focuses to 1 m, so the dates remain in dispute.

The Kobalux Wide lenses photographed are the silver knob-tab barrel under the other name, numbered NO.95855 to NO.95988, inside the span of the Avenon numbers. One was boxed “TO FIT LEICA M-SERIES TYPE CAMERAS”, so the words M-Series on a box or in a listing title do not by themselves mean the late lens. Adorama imported the Kobalux lenses and placed its last order in 1999, Tocchio says. The Kobalux site, as noviplamen reports it, also named Pasoptik, Bower and Adorama as badges for the 28mm, and a 2010 owner on ClubSnap says he owned a 28 made in native M mount; none of these is known from a photograph of its name ring. A numbered SUPER BLACK set, its warranty card giving the lens number as 100/185, is known from the box and papers alone, and the millennium and anniversary 28s that shige and a ClubSnap member mention have not been shown at all.

On the pictures the sources agree about the centre and differ about the edges. Tocchio found the centre sharp at every aperture and the frame even by f/8, comparable, he says, to Voigtländer’s 28mm f/3.5 Color Skopar, with flare well handled on a single-coated copy but vignetting heavy and still there at f/8 in samples he made on digital bodies, which he says show more of it than film. shige, on film, saw little light falloff on his negatives, though his summary notes some at the edges of the 35mm frame, and a slight disturbance of the image there, which he thinks may come from an image circle with little margin over the 35mm frame, and found no difference between his early and late copies; on APS-C and APS-H sensors the crop removes the problem. Akagi, on a Leica M11-P, describes slightly thick lines, some weakness against the light, good contrast and tonality, falloff only near full aperture, and corners that do not fully clean up stopped down. Popular Photography’s test of a Kobalux in April 1996, as Dante Stella reprints it, gives an SQF of 96.2 at f/3.5 and 99.5 at f/8 for a 5×7 print.

When buying, the front ring, the tab and the closest mark on the distance scale together place a lens among the versions; count the blades through the front, since the late lenses are given as eight or ten. The original hood vignettes slightly with a filter under it, Akagi notes. On an M body the lens needs an L-M ring, and Avenon’s own M-COUPLER 28-90 card lists 28mm frames on the M4-P, M6 and Minolta CLE. A warning that a reader under Casual Photophile’s review quotes from a Kobalux website, unsure whether it was the official one, says not to fit the lens to Canon V-series, VI-series and 7 bodies, where it would strike the internal light shield, though Casual Photophile photographed its own copy on a Canon P. A serial that recurs in listings is worth checking against earlier sales: the silver No.11057 changed hands twice on Yahoo! Auctions in two months of 2026, the second time for ten thousand yen more.

Expand Collapse

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

These photographers keep all rights to their work — enjoy it at the source.

Sample photo wanted — shot with a Avenon 28mm f/3.5? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

Buying from Yahoo! Auctions outside Japan. It is a domestic marketplace: sellers ship within Japan, and most will not register an overseas buyer. A proxy service bids on your behalf, receives the item and forwards it, for a fee and a wait. Buyee, Jauce and ZenMarket each accept a Yahoo auction number directly. Listed alphabetically for information — none is recommended over another, and none of these is an affiliate link.

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

Related: Avenon 21mm f/2.8 · Avenon P.H. 28 Air Lens

Sources (14)

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.