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M-Rokkor 28mm f/2.8

Minolta · Leica M · 1980

Also known as: Minolta M-Rokkor 28mm f/2.8 · M-Rokkor 1:2.8 f=28mm · Mロッコール 28mm F2.8

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
M-Rokkor 28mm f/2.8 (Minolta CLE) Leica M 1980 — No figure published
  1. Which camera this is for, stated plainly: the Minolta CLE, not the Leica CL of 1973. The CL's finder carries frames for 40, 50 and 90mm and has no 28mm frame at all; the CLE added one, and Minolta made this lens to fill it. It mounts on a CL and works, and the photographer is guessing at the edges of the picture. It belongs on this site with the other M-Rokkors because it is the third lens of the same line, not because the CL had one.
  2. The lens takes its date from the camera, because nothing consulted dates it separately, and the camera's own date is disputed: CameraQuest and English Wikipedia give the CLE as 1980, camera-wiki as 1981 citing Francesch, and Mike Eckman puts the three new CLE lenses at 1981. The 1980 in the fields above is the earlier of the two and is carried as the first possible year, not as a settled one. The "February 1981" that circulates for the lens comes from lens-db, which could not be reached from here, and is not stated. Either way it arrives four or five years after the CL went out of production in 1976.
  3. It is also the only lens in the whole CL and CLE programme with no Leitz counterpart. The 40mm and the 90mm each have a Leitz-badged twin and an argument about who computed it; this one was developed by Minolta alone, and — macfilos's claim, and the one that matters — Leica's own 28mm lenses of the period were far larger. The site's own figures bear that out for the period: the Elmarit 28mm f/2.8 of 1972 is 300 g and the Elmarit-M of 1979 is 250 g, against 135 g here. Read against later lenses it does not hold — BastianK notes that the modern Elmarit-M and the Voigtländer Color-Skopar are both smaller than this Minolta — so the comparison needs its date kept on it. Whatever the authorship of the other lenses turns out to be, this one is Minolta's.
  4. The white spots, and what they actually are. The shorthand for them — separation — points at the wrong thing. Every account that has taken the lens apart puts the fault in the black paint applied to the ground rim of the front element to kill internal reflections, not at a cemented interface: Stephen Gandy calls it "poor edge coating", and Victor Doroshenko, who unscrewed the front group and pulled the front element out of it, writes that the spots "are just bubbles of air between the black paint used to blacken the sides of the lens and the glass, are not on the glass surface." Whether the front group contains a cemented pair at all is not established here — seven elements in five groups means two cemented pairs somewhere in the lens, and no cross-section was located — but the damage is under the rim paint, which is outside the picture-forming area, and is not balsam failure.
  5. Accounts of the mechanism differ underneath that agreement. Doroshenko's is trapped air; collector threads describe crystals leaching out of the paint with heat accelerating the process, and one poster dates a sudden onset to a single very hot day. BastianK, who reviewed the lens for phillipreeve, declines to choose: "I am not exactly sure what is the problem. Some people say the paint dissolves and can lead to oil residue on the rear of the front element, others also claim that if this isn't fixed, it will lead to corrosion of that element and permanently damage it."
  6. What the spots do is also disputed, and less comfortably than the phrase "purely cosmetic" suggests. Doroshenko says they "do essentially no harm"; Gandy says small spots probably have no noticeable effect but a progressed case will ghost; BastianK, testing a cleaned example that still showed traces, found blooming around point sources and veiling flare in overcast light. What all three agree on is that the secondary damage is the one that matters: the same paint gives off an oily condensate that settles on the inner surface of the front element and costs contrast and flare resistance. When buying, the question to ask is not how many spots are visible around the rim but whether the inner surface of the front element is clear.
  7. Minolta acknowledged the fault by fixing it for nothing, which is as close as this defect gets to an official statement, though not under warranty and not only while the CLE was current: Stephen Gandy writes that "Minolta realized the problem and repaired it no charge for a long time" and that "at one time Minolta USA repaired such spotted 28 Rokkors free of charge", and James Tocchio that "for quite some time they were repairing these lenses for everyone who requested the service, free of charge." No Minolta service bulletin was located, and the arrangement ended long ago. How many lenses are affected is not known: forum posters put it very high and Tocchio says flatly that not every example suffers from it, and neither is a survey. Doroshenko's account for 35mmc is the clearest published repair procedure — unscrew the front group, cut away part of the retaining frame, extract the front element, soak and wipe the inner face with alcohol, and re-blacken the rim.
  8. Framelines are the other thing to know before mounting it on a Leica. The lens brings up the 35 and 135mm pair on an M body; on a body that has 28mm frames at all, pulling the frame selector shows the 28 and 90mm pair instead. On the CL neither is available.
  9. How good it is depends on who is asked, and the two clearest voices disagree. James Tocchio rates the multi-coated M-Rokkors as matching or beating their Leica equivalents; Stephen Gandy writes of this one that "while sharp, it is not as good as the much more expensive Leica 28/2.8's" and advises against buying a spotted example at all. Nothing consulted ranks the three M-Rokkors against each other, so no such ranking is given here.
  10. No production figure has been published for this lens, or for any M-Rokkor. The CLE ran to 1985 and Minolta released no numbers for either.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • The only lens in the CL and CLE family with no Leitz counterpart at all
  • 40.5mm filters, matching the other CLE lenses
  • Half-click stops between the marked apertures

M-Rokkor 28mm f/2.8 (Minolta CLE):

  • Serial number on the barrel beside LENS MADE IN JAPAN, with a flat cam
  • A vented metal bayonet hood of its own design

Serial-range notes

(none published)
No serial table for the M-Rokkors has been published by Minolta or assembled independently, so no date can be read off a number. What a serial is good for on this lens is the condition question rather than the dating one: whether a given example has already had the front element attended to is a matter of its service history, which no list records.

Specifications

Construction
7 elements / 5 groups
Aperture range
f/2.8–f/22
Diaphragm blades
10
Min. focus
0.8 m
Dimensions
51 × 35.5 mm
Weight
135 g
Filter
40.5 mm
Years manufactured
1980
Country
Japan
Coating
Minolta Achromatic multi-coating

What reviewers say

History

Strictly, this is not a CL lens. The Leica CL’s finder shows frames for 40, 50 and 90mm and has no 28mm frame at all; this lens was made for the Minolta CLE, four or five years after the CL went out of production, and the CLE’s finder is the reason it exists. It mounts on a CL and works, and the photographer is guessing where the edges are. It sits on this site with the 40 and the 90 because it is the third lens of the same line, not because the camera those two were built for could use it.

Its date is the camera’s, and the camera’s is not settled. CameraQuest and English Wikipedia give the CLE as 1980, camera-wiki as 1981 on Francesch’s authority, and nothing consulted dates the lens on its own. The February 1981 that circulates for it comes from lens-db, which I could not reach, so it is not repeated here.

It is also the only lens in the entire Leitz-Minolta programme that is unambiguously Minolta’s own. The 40mm and the 90mm each come with a Leitz-badged twin and an unresolved argument about which company computed the glass. Nobody argues about this one: Minolta designed it alone, and the Leica 28s of the same years were about twice its weight — 300 grams for the 1972 Elmarit, 250 for the 1979 Elmarit-M, against 135 here. Seven elements in five groups, ten blades, 40.5mm filters, focusing to 0.8 metres. How it ranks against the other two M-Rokkors is not something any source consulted attempts, so this entry does not attempt it either.

Which brings up the thing everyone asks about first. A great many surviving examples have white marks around the edge of the front element — how many is nobody’s measurement; forum posters say nearly all and James Tocchio says not every example — and the standard shorthand for them, separation, points at the wrong part of the lens. The failure is in the black paint applied to the ground rim of the front element to stop internal reflection, not at a cemented surface. Victor Doroshenko, who has had one apart, describes the spots as bubbles of air between that paint and the glass; Stephen Gandy calls it poor edge coating; collector threads describe crystals leaching out of the paint with heat speeding it along. BastianK, reviewing it for phillipreeve, says outright that he is not sure what the problem is. What they agree on is where it is: the rim, outside the imaging area. Whether the front group has a cemented pair in it I cannot say — seven elements in five groups means two cemented pairs exist somewhere in the lens, and no cross-section turned up — but nothing in any account puts the fault at one.

So the spots themselves do little to the picture, and “purely cosmetic” is a shade too generous: Doroshenko says essentially no harm, Gandy says none if they are small and ghosting if they are not, and BastianK, shooting a cleaned example with traces left, still found blooming around point sources and veiling flare on overcast days. The problem that everyone agrees matters is what else the paint does. It gives off an oily condensate that settles on the inner surface of the front element, and that costs contrast and flare resistance; the harsher accounts have crystals reaching the coating and etching it. The question to ask a seller, then, is not how many spots are visible around the edge but whether the inside face of the front element is clean. Doroshenko’s account for 35mmc is the published fix: unscrew the front group, cut away part of the retaining frame, get the element out, soak and wipe the inner face with alcohol, re-blacken the rim.

Minolta acknowledged it by fixing it for nothing — Gandy: “Minolta realized the problem and repaired it no charge for a long time”; Tocchio: “for quite some time they were repairing these lenses for everyone who requested the service, free of charge” — which is as close to an admission as the record contains. It was not a warranty scheme and it was not confined to the years the CLE was on sale, and it ended a very long time ago. No Minolta service bulletin was found.

On a Leica M the lens brings up the 35 and 135mm frames. Bodies that have 28mm frames at all will show the 28 and 90mm pair if the frame selector is pulled across. No production figure has ever been published for this lens or for any other M-Rokkor.

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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

Sample photo wanted — shot with a M-Rokkor 28mm f/2.8? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $250 across 23 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-06 (middle half $200–$330). First day tracked.

Asking prices from the listings scanned, not sales; junk-flagged rows and auction lots excluded; other currencies are not converted.

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Related: M-Rokkor 40mm f/2 · M-Rokkor 90mm f/4 · G-Rokkor 28mm f/3.5

Sources (8)

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.