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

M-Rokkor 40mm f/2

Minolta · Leica M · 1973 · Double Gauss

Also known as: Minolta M-Rokkor 40mm f/2 · M-Rokkor-QF 40mm f/2 · Minolta M-Rokkor 1:2 f=40mm · Mロッコール 40mm F2

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
M-Rokkor-QF 40mm f/2 (Leitz Minolta CL) Leica M 1973–1976 — No figure published
M-Rokkor 40mm f/2 (Minolta CLE) Leica M 1980 — No figure published
M-Rokkor 40mm f/2 (gold bayonet, CLE Gold set) Leica M — — Supplied with the gold CLE set; no figure published for the lens
  1. The claim this page exists to test is that the M-Rokkor 40mm and the Leitz Summicron-C 40mm are the same lens under two names. Here is what actually supports it. English Wikipedia's CLE specification table, whose only citation is the M-Rokkor lenses instruction manual, gives six elements in four groups, a 57° diagonal, an f/2 to f/16 scale, 0.8 m minimum focus and half-click stops. Four of those figures have a counterpart in the Leica Wiki's line for the Summicron-C — construction, angle, aperture range, close focus — and all four agree. The QF on the early name plate is Minolta's own construction code and decodes, on Minolta's published scheme, as four groups and six elements: the barrel engraving states the same construction the Leitz table does.
  2. Two things routinely offered in support of the claim do not belong in that list. The ten blades are not in the manual-sourced table at all — Wikipedia gives no blade count, and the ten comes from phillipreeve, who counted them on a lens. And the sentence that the CLE lenses were multi-coated versions of the CL lenses "with the same optical scheme" carries its own footnote on that Wikipedia page, and the footnote is not the instruction manual: it is James Tocchio's 2016 lens review for Casual Photophile. The strongest-looking statement in the literature is therefore a blog post that has been laundered through an encyclopedia.
  3. Here is what else does not support it. No source consulted publishes a prescription — radii, thicknesses, glass types — for either lens, and neither manufacturer released one. Matching element counts, angles of view and focus limits are consistent with an identical computation and are also consistent with two computations to the same brief, which is what a joint programme with two optical departments would be expected to produce. The remaining positive statements are reviewers', not makers': KJ Vogelius calls the M-Rokkor a descendant with improved coatings and otherwise identical optics, and Hamish Gill writes that the CL-era Rokkor is the same optical design made in Japan with Minolta glass — and Gill adds, of the Minolta versions, "I haven't used either so don't feel informed enough to comment." The entry records the construction data as matching and does not assert that the two lenses are optically identical.
  4. Following the claim back does not find a maker. Wikipedia's line about which company made which CL lens rests on the Manual Minolta rangefinder-lens list, and that page says only where each lens was built — Rokkor-marked 40mms in Japan, Summicron-C-marked ones in Germany. It says nothing at all about the two sharing a computation, and where it does address optics it says the opposite of identity: the CLE 90mm, it states, "is a different optical design than the previous CL 90mm." The oldest traceable source behind the received view is a page that never made the claim.
  5. The identity question is stranger than it looks, because the direction of the borrowing is not settled. Mike Eckman's history of the CL states that the 40mm was designed entirely by Minolta while the 90mm was a Leitz design. If that is right, the M-Rokkor is not a Minolta copy of a Leitz lens; the Summicron-C is a Minolta lens wearing a Leitz badge, and this is the original. Against it, Thorsten Overgaard names four Leitz optical designers for the Summicron-C. No source consulted reconciles the two accounts, and the barrel engravings — LEITZ WETZLAR on one, MINOLTA on the other — settle nothing, because the camera they were made for was designed in Wetzlar and built in Osaka.
  6. What is certainly not the same is the barrel. The Rokkor takes 40.5mm filters and the Summicron-C takes Series 5.5 on a 39 × 0.75mm thread; the Rokkor weighs 105 g against 120 g, aluminium against black-chromed brass; the hoods do not interchange. Anyone told the two lenses are identical should know that the mounting hardware disagrees.
  7. The cam is the difference people argue about, and the argument is one-sided. The CL-era lens has a sloped rangefinder cam cut for the CL's coupling; the CLE-era lens has a flat cam like any other M lens. Leitz advised against putting the C-cam lenses on an M body, and English Wikipedia records the advice and then flatly contradicts it — "This difference however has no impact on actual focusing precision." Stephen Gandy, having set out the two cam profiles, writes that "some people believe the CL lenses are not 100% compatible with the M's — I disagree," and KJ Vogelius reports no focusing trouble with a sloped-cam lens on an M. Nobody consulted has published a measurement either way; what exists is a manufacturer's caution and several careful users saying they cannot find the effect.
  8. On any M body, either version brings up the 50mm frame rather than a 40mm one — Stephen Gandy puts it as the 50/75 pair on an M6 — because the CL is the only Leica body with a 40mm frame and it displays that frame permanently.
  9. Neither Minolta nor any independent compiler has published a production figure for any version of this lens, in contrast to the Leitz side of the family, where 54,350 serial numbers are on record for the Summicron-C. The only counted thing here is the gold CLE edition, and the 300 counts cameras.
  10. The gold set is where this entry is thinnest and the thinness is worth stating. What is reachable is camera-wiki's description — 300 gold cameras, Japanese market only, a leather case marked CLE GOLD LIMITED, and a standard lens with a gold-plated bayonet — with the 300 attributed to CameraQuest, flagged on English Wikipedia as needing a better source, and the rest of the description attributed to somebody looking at one camera in an online auction. The familiar extras — 1984, Minolta's thirty millionth camera, sale to Japanese dealers by lottery — are repeated by dealers and by lens-db, which would not load from here at all, so they are named rather than asserted. Nothing consulted says whether every gold body shipped with a gold-mount lens or whether any lens was sold on its own.
  11. Dates on the CLE-era lens are borrowed from the camera, because nothing consulted dates the lens on its own, and the camera's own date is unsettled: CameraQuest and English Wikipedia put the CLE at 1980, camera-wiki at 1981 citing Francesch. The frequently seen "February 1981" for the lens traces to lens-db, which could not be reached, and is not stated here.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • 40.5mm filters, where the Leitz Summicron-C takes Series 5.5
  • 105 g against the Summicron-C's 120 g — aluminium against black-chromed brass
  • Half-click stops between the marked apertures

M-Rokkor-QF 40mm f/2 (Leitz Minolta CL):

  • QF on the name plate — Minolta's own code for four groups, six elements
  • Serial number on the front bezel rather than the barrel
  • Single coated, and a sloped rangefinder cam cut for the CL

M-Rokkor 40mm f/2 (Minolta CLE):

  • Serial number on the barrel, beside LENS MADE IN JAPAN
  • Multi-coated, and a flat cam like an ordinary M lens

M-Rokkor 40mm f/2 (gold bayonet, CLE Gold set):

  • Gold-plated bayonet mount, matching the gold CLE body

Serial-range notes

(none published)
Minolta has published no serial table for the M-Rokkors and none has been assembled independently, which is the ordinary state of Japanese lens records and the opposite of the Leitz side of this family. What collectors use instead is the position of the number, and the rule is Stephen Gandy's rather than a forum's: "The easiest way to spot CLE lenses is their serial numbers are on the lens barrel. CL lens serial numbers are on the filter ring." James Tocchio gives the same rule alongside the coating difference.

Specifications

Formula
Double Gauss
Construction
6 elements / 4 groups
Aperture range
f/2–f/16
Diaphragm blades
10
Min. focus
0.8 m
Dimensions
51 × 24.5 mm
Weight
105 g
Filter
40.5 mm
Years manufactured
1973
Country
Japan
Coating
Single coated on the CL lens; Minolta Achromatic multi-coating on the CLE lens

What reviewers say

History

Every account of the Leica CL contains the same sentence in some form: the Minolta M-Rokkor 40mm is the Summicron-C with a different badge. It is repeated so consistently that it is worth setting out what the evidence for it actually is.

The published construction data matches on every figure the two tables have in common. English Wikipedia’s CLE table, whose only citation is the M-Rokkor instruction manual, gives six elements in four groups, a 57-degree diagonal, f/2 to f/16, 0.8 metres and half-click stops. Four of those have a counterpart in the Leica Wiki’s Summicron-C line, and all four agree. Better still, the early Rokkor’s name plate carries the suffix QF, which is not decoration: Minolta’s own naming scheme encodes groups in the first letter and elements in the second, and Q-F reads as four groups, six elements. The barrel states the construction, and it agrees with Wetzlar’s.

Two of the props usually put under the claim will not bear weight. The matching ten-blade diaphragm is not in the manual-sourced table — Wikipedia gives no blade count for any of the three Rokkors, and the ten comes from phillipreeve counting them on a lens. And the line everyone reaches for, that the CLE lenses were multi-coated versions of the CL lenses “with the same optical scheme,” has a footnote on that Wikipedia page which is not the instruction manual: it is a 2016 blog review. The most authoritative-sounding statement of the identity claim turns out to be a blog laundered through an encyclopedia.

What does not exist is a prescription. Neither company published radii, thicknesses or glass types for either lens, and nobody consulted here has measured one. Matching element counts and angles of view are what an identical computation looks like; they are also what two computations to the same specification look like, which is precisely what a joint programme with two optical departments would tend to produce. The remaining affirmative statements come from reviewers rather than makers — Vogelius calls the Rokkor a descendant with better coatings and otherwise identical optics, Hamish Gill calls it the same design made in Japan with Minolta glass, while saying in the same review that he has used neither Minolta version and does not feel informed enough to comment — and neither cites a source.

Following it further back finds nothing better. The oldest page in the chain is the Manual Minolta lens list that Wikipedia cites, and it makes no identity claim about the 40mm at all: it says where each lens was built and stops. Where it does talk about optics, it says the CLE 90mm is a different design from the CL 90mm — which is a statement against identity, in the very source the received view is built on.

There is a stranger possibility underneath. Mike Eckman’s history of the camera states that the 40mm was designed entirely by Minolta and only the 90mm was a Leitz computation. On that reading the copy runs the other way: the M-Rokkor is the original and the Summicron-C is a Minolta lens with LEITZ WETZLAR on the front ring. Against it, Thorsten Overgaard names four Leitz designers for the Summicron-C. Nothing reconciles them, and the engravings are no help, because the camera these lenses were built for was drawn in Wetzlar and assembled in Osaka.

The barrels, at least, are definitely not the same. The Rokkor takes 40.5mm filters against the Leitz lens’s Series 5.5 on a 39 × 0.75 thread; it weighs 105 grams against 120; the hoods do not swap. Whatever is true of the glass, the hardware around it was built to different drawings.

Three versions matter to a buyer. The CL lens of 1973 is single coated, carries QF on the plate and its serial on the front bezel, and has a sloped rangefinder cam cut for the CL. The CLE lens is multi-coated, carries its serial on the barrel next to LENS MADE IN JAPAN, and has a flat cam like any other M lens — which is the version to want on an M body. And a lens with a gold-plated bayonet went out as part of the gold CLE set, an edition of 300 cameras sold only in Japan.

Dates on the last two are borrowed, because nothing consulted dates the lenses apart from the cameras and the CLE’s own year is not settled — 1980 on CameraQuest and English Wikipedia, 1981 on camera-wiki citing Francesch. The February 1981 that circulates for the lenses comes from lens-db, which would not load from here, and is left out rather than copied. The gold set is thinner still: the 300 is CameraQuest’s figure, carried by camera-wiki and flagged on Wikipedia as wanting a better source, and the description of the gold bayonet is sourced to one auction photograph. The 1984 date and the thirty-millionth-camera story attached to it are the trade’s, not a maker’s.

No production figure has ever been published for any of them. On the Leitz side of this family there are 54,350 numbers on record; on the Minolta side there is nothing at all, and the only counted thing is 300 cameras.

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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 taken with the M-Rokkor 40mm f/2
M-Rokkor 40mm f/2 — 松林Ｌ, via Openverse (flickr) (BY 2.0)

Sample photo wanted — shot with a M-Rokkor 40mm f/2? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $670 across 91 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-11 (middle half $460–$930). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 2 days: unchanged from $670.

By day
DateMedianMiddle halfListings
2026-09-11$670$460–$93091
2026-09-06$670$460–$93090

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Related: Summicron-C 40mm f/2 · M-Rokkor 90mm f/4 · M-Rokkor 28mm f/2.8 · Elmar-C 90mm f/4

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.