Light Lens Lab 90mm f/2 "Apochromatic"

This entry describes an announcement, not a lens. On 11 August 2026 Leica Rumors published a list of five apochromatic M-mount lenses attributed to Light Lens Lab — 28mm, 50mm, 75mm, 90mm and 135mm, all f/2 — coming, in the site’s words, “in 2027 and beyond”. The 90mm f/2 is one of the five names on that list, and the list is the whole of the public record: no prototype has been shown, no optical formula given, no price quoted, no date fixed beyond that phrase.

What the maker itself has said is narrower. Light Lens Lab’s apochromatic series announcement of 4 August 2026 commits to one lens, the 35mm f/2 “Apochromatic” — eleven elements in six groups with four aspherical surfaces, ultra-low-dispersion and anomalous partial-dispersion glass, pre-orders from 10 August, shipping from the end of September — and says a 50mm follows beginning in 2027, “followed closely by other focal lengths”. Neither a 90mm nor a 135mm appears anywhere in it. That last phrase matters, because Leica Rumors attributes its claim of more lenses to a previous post by the maker, and this is the post: the continuation is the workshop’s own commitment, and only the list of five particular focal lengths belongs to the rumour site. So the five-lens list is a rumour site’s reporting of a range the maker has said will continue, not a specification the maker has published. Treat the focal length and the aperture as the entire claim, and treat both as provisional: announced optics change before they ship, and this one has not reached the stage where there is anything to change.

The reason it belongs in a catalog of vintage glass is what it is not. Nearly everything Light Lens Lab has shipped exists because an older lens does — the eight-element Summicron, the ELCAN 50mm f/2, the Noctilux 50mm f/1.2, the Summarit 50mm f/1.5 — and the interesting question about each is how much of the original survived the copy. That question does not apply here. There is no discontinued 90mm f/2 apochromatic rangefinder lens to recreate. Nor is the apochromatic series quite the workshop’s first design of its own, as the announcement’s framing invites a reader to assume: the 75mm f/1.5 “Z21”, on sale since June 2026, is sold on its product page as an “independently researched and developed optical design… rather than follow an existing formula”, a Z21 in name and rendering only. What the 90mm would be is the point where the workshop meets Leica head-on rather than at a distance. Leica’s APO-Summicron-M 90mm f/2 ASPH has held that specification since 1998 and is still made. A second 90mm f/2 apochromatic for the M mount would be a competitor to a current lens, which is a different business from reissuing one that has been out of production for fifty years.

The caution is worth stating plainly, because a single rumour post is thin ground for a catalog page. One source names this lens. The maker has not confirmed the focal length, shown a sample or quoted a price, and the timeframe given is a two-word hedge. Nothing here should be read as a description of a product that exists.