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

M-Rokkor 90mm f/4

Minolta · Leica M · 1973

Also known as: Minolta M-Rokkor 90mm f/4 · M-Rokkor 1:4 f=90mm · Leitz Minolta M-Rokkor 90mm · Mロッコール 90mm F4

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
M-Rokkor 90mm f/4 (Made by Leitz) Leica M 1973–1976 — No figure published
M-Rokkor 90mm f/4 (Minolta CLE) Leica M 1980 — No figure published
  1. This is the lens that breaks the tidy version of the CL story. The usual summary — Leitz designed, Minolta built — is exactly backwards here: the first M-Rokkor 90mm is engraved Made by Leitz on the front ring, carries a Leitz serial number, and is the Elmar-C with a different name plate. A Minolta lens made in Germany, sold in Japan, on a camera designed in Wetzlar and assembled in Osaka. English Wikipedia carries the same reading, saying of the two Rokkor lenses that the 40mm was made in Japan by Minolta while the 90mm was made by Leitz and is rare.
  2. Whether the CLE version is optically the same lens is unresolved, but the sources are not evenly split. On the side of same: English Wikipedia's sentence that the CLE lenses were multi-coated versions of the CL lenses "with the same optical scheme" — which is footnoted on that page not to the M-Rokkor instruction manual but to a 2016 blog review, the manual being cited only for the specification table beside it. On the side of different: the Manual Minolta lens list, one of the two pages Wikipedia leans on elsewhere, states plainly that "the 90mm is a different optical design than the previous CL 90mm"; Stephen Gandy writes of the CLE lens that "the optical formula is slightly different and improved from the CL's 90/4 — though the difference is a small one"; KJ Vogelius calls it a descendant with slightly altered optics and improved coatings; and two posters in the Leica Forum thread say they take Minolta to have redesigned the optics along with the mount. Nobody publishes a prescription, so the entry still declines to declare it settled — but the only source for identity is weaker than it looks, and four sources point the other way.
  3. The filter thread contradicts a statement that is otherwise reliable, and the error can be traced. English Wikipedia says Rokkor-branded lenses for the CL and CLE take the more easily found 40.5mm size; the Manual Minolta list it draws on lists both CL Rokkors, the 90mm included, at 40.5mm. That holds for the 40mm and the 28mm and does not hold for the German-built 90mm, which takes Series 5.5 like the Elmar-C: collectors report that the Elmar-C's rubber hood fits the Made by Leitz lens and does not fit the Japanese one, which came with a hood of its own. The 40.5 engraved on the front ring is itself one way of spotting the later lens.
  4. The two cams behave differently on an M body. The CL-era lens has the sloped cam cut for the CL's coupling; the CLE-era lens has the flat cam of an ordinary M lens. At f/4 and 90mm this matters less than it would on a fast lens, and reviewers of both versions report focusing without trouble on modern M bodies.
  5. No production figure exists for either version. The Leitz side of the family has 48,600 numbers on record for the Elmar-C; the Minolta-badged lens, including the portion of it that Leitz actually made, has none, and no source consulted separates the German-built lenses from the Elmar-C's blocks.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • Two lenses of one name, built on two continents, and the badge is not the way to tell them apart
  • Half-click stops between the marked apertures

M-Rokkor 90mm f/4 (Made by Leitz):

  • Front ring engraved Made by Leitz, with a Leitz serial number and no Minolta name on it
  • Series 5.5 filter mounting — the Elmar-C's 12517 rubber hood fits
  • Single coated, with a sloped rangefinder cam cut for the CL

M-Rokkor 90mm f/4 (Minolta CLE):

  • LENS MADE IN JAPAN on the barrel, with a Minolta serial number on the base ring
  • The filter size, 40.5, engraved on the front ring where the Leitz serial used to be
  • Multi-coated, with a flat cam and its own rubber hood and cap

Serial-range notes

2.7xx.xxx on the front ring, against 2.0xx.xxx on the base ring
The rough rule collectors use, and it is worth knowing what it rests on. Discussion on the Leica Forum reports that the Made by Leitz lenses carry a Leitz number in the 2.7 million range on the front ring, matching the Elmar-C blocks in the Leica Wiki's table, while the Japanese-built lenses carry a Minolta number around 2.0 million on the base ring and put the filter size on the front ring instead. This is collector observation, not a published table; no serial list for either version has been issued by either manufacturer.

Specifications

Construction
4 elements / 4 groups
Aperture range
f/4–f/22
Diaphragm blades
10
Min. focus
1 m
Dimensions
51 × 60 mm
Weight
250 g
Years manufactured
1973

What reviewers say

History

There are two lenses called the M-Rokkor 90mm f/4, and the badge on the front does not tell them apart, because one of them was made in Germany by Leitz.

That is the whole point of this page. The received summary of the Leitz-Minolta programme — German design, Japanese manufacture — survives contact with the CL body and falls apart on its lenses. The first M-Rokkor 90mm, sold on the Leitz Minolta CL from 1973, is the Elmar-C with a different name plate: same four elements in four groups, same Series 5.5 filter mounting, same 12517 rubber hood, and a front ring engraved Made by Leitz carrying a Leitz serial number in the same range as the Elmar-C’s own blocks. English Wikipedia says the same thing in a single sentence: of the two Minolta-badged CL lenses, the 40mm was made in Japan by Minolta and the 90mm was made by Leitz. Set beside Mike Eckman’s claim that the Leitz-badged 40mm was designed entirely by Minolta, the arrows on this programme point in both directions at once.

The second lens arrived with the CLE and was built in Japan. It says LENS MADE IN JAPAN on the barrel, puts a Minolta serial number on the base ring, and engraves the filter size — 40.5 — on the front ring where the Leitz number used to be. It is multi-coated where the first is single coated, and it has the flat rangefinder cam of an ordinary M lens where the first has the sloped cam cut for the CL. It also has its own rubber hood, because the Elmar-C’s does not fit a 40.5mm thread. Its year is the camera’s, and the camera’s is disputed: 1980 on CameraQuest and English Wikipedia, 1981 on camera-wiki citing Francesch. The February 1981 usually printed against the lens comes from lens-db, which would not load from here, so it is not repeated.

Whether Minolta recomputed the glass or only recoated it is not settled, but it is not evenly balanced either. The one statement of identity is Wikipedia’s — that the CLE lenses were multi-coated versions of the CL lenses with the same optical scheme — and that sentence is footnoted on the page not to the M-Rokkor instruction manual but to a blog review; the manual is cited for the table beside it. Against identity: the Manual Minolta list, the oldest page in this chain, says the CLE 90mm is a different optical design from the CL one; Stephen Gandy says the formula is slightly different and improved, and that the difference is small; KJ Vogelius calls the later lens a descendant with slightly altered optics; and the Leica Forum thread reports the same suspicion from two collectors. No prescription has been published, so this entry still declares nothing settled — but it will not pretend the evidence is symmetrical.

Nobody has published a production number for either version, and no source separates the German-built Rokkors from the Elmar-C’s 48,600 allotted numbers. The one honest thing to say about how many exist is that the Made by Leitz version is described as rare and the CLE version is not.

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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 90mm f/4
M-Rokkor 90mm f/4 — say_cheddar, via Openverse (flickr) (BY 2.0)

Sample photo wanted — shot with a M-Rokkor 90mm f/4? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $240 across 70 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-06 (middle half $200–$320). 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: Elmar-C 90mm f/4 · M-Rokkor 40mm f/2 · M-Rokkor 28mm f/2.8 · Summicron-C 40mm f/2

Sources (10)

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.