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

MS Optics Super Triplet Perar 21mm f/4.5 MC Super Wide

MS Optics · Leica M · 2015

Also known as: MS Optics Super Triplet Perar 21mm f/4.5 · MS Optics Super Triplet Perar 21mm f/4.5 MC Super Wide · MS-Optical Perar 21mm f/4.5 MC Super Wide Triplet · MS-Optical Perar 21mm f/4.5 · MS-Optics Perar 21mm F4.5 · MS-OPTICS PERAR 21mm F4.5 MC · MS-Optics 21mm f/4.5 Perar · MS Optics 21mm f4.5 Perar · MS-Optics Super Wide Triplet Perar 21/4.5 · MS Perar 4.5/21 · MS-PERAR 21mm F4.5 · PERAR 21mm F4.5 MC · PERAR 21mmF4.5 MC · PERAR 21mm F4.5 · PERAR 4.5/21 MC · Perar 4.5/21 · Perar 21/4.5 · Perar 21mm f/4.5 · Perar 21mm · Perar 21 · Super Triplet Perar 21mm f/4.5 · Super Wide Triplet Perar 4.5/21 · Super Wide Triplet 21mm f/4.5 · Miyazaki Perar 21mm · 宮崎光学 PERAR 21mm F4.5 · 宮崎光学 ペラール 21mm · 宮崎光学 ペラール 21mm F4.5 · MS-OPTICS ペラール 21mm F4.5 · ペラール 21mm F4.5 · ペラー 21mm F4.5 · ミヤザキ PERAR 21mm

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
PERAR 4.5/21 MC, SUPER WIDE TRIPLET (black) Leica M 2015 — Leica Rumors' launch post speaks of an 'initial lot' without giving its size; no figure for any lot has been published
  1. Specifications are the maker's, from the leaflet reproduced on Phillip Reeve's overview: front-stop triplet of three elements in three groups, true focal length 21.5 mm at f/4.5, 90° angle of view (70° on APS-C), ten-blade circular iris, Ø50 mm, 5.2 mm thick, 45 g (55 g as a set), coupled from infinity to 85 cm, about 50 cm on mirrorless bodies, M25 filter in the hood. Leica Rumors' launch post agrees on the angle of view, weight, thickness, ten blades (which it calls 'quasi-round') and 25 mm filter, but gives no true focal length or diameter and puts closest focus at 0.8 m.
  2. Closest focus: 85 cm coupled on the maker's leaflet; 0.8 m on the lens's distance scale and in Leica Rumors, shige and Gill. La Vida Leica gives 0.8–1.0 m and says each handmade lens is a little different. Beyond the rangefinder's range, about 50 cm on mirrorless bodies (leaflet), 0.5–0.6 m on mirrorless (Leica Rumors), 0.5 m (Reeve, shige) and about 40–50 cm (Gill). The family row gives the engraved 0.8 m.
  3. Weight: 45 g in the leaflet, Leica Rumors, La Vida Leica, Reeve and shige, and 55 g with the hood in the first three; Sony Alpha Rumors gives 42 g. Thickness: 5.2 mm everywhere except shige's review text, which rounds it to 5 mm; the leaflet's drawing is dimensioned '4.5–5.2' over the lens, with the word 'Focus' beneath. Diameter: 50 mm (leaflet, Reeve, shige's review table); shige's English list table gives 48.6 mm.
  4. Filter: 25 mm (leaflet, Leica Rumors, shige, Reeve). Leica Rumors puts the thread in the hood and shige says a 25 mm filter screws onto the front of the lens; Reeve says the glass of a 25 mm filter has to be taken out and glued into the hood. The leaflet says only 'Hood Filter M25mm規格' and marks a hood in front of the filter 'APS Only'. La Vida Leica's launch report gives a 19 mm filter, the size of the Perar 28's.
  5. Aperture: f/4.5–16 on the lens and in shige's review table; his English list table gives f/22. Leica Rumors calls the iris 'quasi-round'.
  6. Release: announced on 30 April 2015 by Leica Rumors, La Vida Leica and Sony Alpha Rumors; Reeve gives May 2015, shige 2015. Leica Rumors' list of upcoming MS lenses of 29 July 2013 already named a 'Super Triplet Perar 4.5/21 new issue', alongside a Perar 4.5/25 of which nothing more is recorded. shige calls the 21 MS's sixth product and fourth triplet, although his own list also dates both 2013 Sonnetars before it; DC Watch (20 October 2015) counts eight original MS lenses by then, the 21 among them. Sony Alpha Rumors called it the third Perar, counting only the 24 and 28 before it.
  7. Prices. Dealer: ¥85,000 ($710) through Japan Camera Hunter at launch (La Vida Leica, 30 April 2015); ¥69,900 in black at Japan Exposures, listing undated; tax status not stated for either. Collector's table: ¥60,000 before tax (shige). Japan Exposures' finish menu also offers Silver at ¥10,000 more, although its own description says 'Available in black finish'. No silver 21 has been seen in a photograph or listing, so it has no row of its own; Leica Rumors' launch text, which matches Japan Exposures' wording, mentions black only.
  8. Batch size: Leica Rumors speaks of an 'initial lot'. Unlike the Perar 35 (lots of 200, 200 and 250) and the Perar 28 (first lot of 180), no number has been published for the 21.
  9. Coding: a native M mount with an 'area for 6-bit coding' (Leica Rumors, Japan Exposures); whether any lens left the workshop coded is not recorded. Japan Exposures recommends setting the 21mm f/2.8 profile (code 11134) on a Leica Typ 240 or 262.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • Engraved 'PERAR … 4.5/21' with 'SUPER WIDE TRIPLET'; the 24 and 28 read 'SUPER · TRIPLET' and are f/4, so read the aperture and focal length
  • About as thin as a body cap: 5.2 mm, 45 g
  • The iris is exposed on the front, ahead of the first element, so look at the blades in any photograph

PERAR 4.5/21 MC, SUPER WIDE TRIPLET (black):

  • Engraved on the front: 'MS-OPTICS' at the top, 'SUPER WIDE TRIPLET' round the left, and 'PERAR' with the serial, then '4.5/21' and a red 'MC' (the Fotoborse lens reads 'PERAR 215-BL 4.5/21 MC'; Japan Exposures' lens has '040-BL' above 'PERAR 4.5/21 MC')
  • A black disc 50 mm across and 5.2 mm thick, with a short round focusing knob standing out from the rim
  • Distance scale 0.8–1–1.4–2–3–5–∞ in metres, with a depth-of-field scale for f/4.5, 8, 11 and 16 either side of the index
  • Aperture scale 4.5–5.6–8–16 on the front ring, set by turning the ring or the hood screwed onto it, without click stops

Serial-range notes

040-BL, 215-BL
Japan Exposures' product photographs show a lens engraved '040-BL' above 'PERAR'; the lens in Fotoborse's photograph, reproduced on Phillip Reeve's overview, reads 'PERAR 215-BL'. The lens in shige's review also ends '-BL', its number not legible. The number appears to be the serial. No source explains the suffix; shige's silver Perar 24 reads '-S' and his Perar 28 '-B.P' in the same place, which suggests it marks the finish.

Specifications

Formula
Triplet with the stop in front, three elements in three groups
Designed by
Miyazaki Sadayasu (宮崎貞安) — optical design, manufacture and hand assembly
Construction
3 elements / 3 groups
Aperture range
f/4.5–f/16
Diaphragm blades
10
Min. focus
0.8 m
Dimensions
50 × 5.2 mm
Weight
45 g
Filter
25 mm, 25 mm, in the hood
Years manufactured
2015
Country
Japan
Coating
Multicoated on all six glass surfaces (maker's leaflet); Leica Rumors gives 96% transmission, La Vida Leica 95%
Original price
No maker's list price has been found. At the April 2015 launch La Vida Leica gave ¥85,000 ($710, its conversion) for the lens sold through Japan Camera Hunter (dealer price; tax not stated). Japan Exposures lists it at ¥69,900 in black and ¥10,000 more in silver (dealer price, date of the listing not given; tax not stated). shige's review table gives ¥60,000 before tax ('価格（税別）' on his Japanese page).

What reviewers say

Optical Ratings

Aggregated from the reviews above — follow the links for the full picture.

Vignetting
very strong
Flare & ghosting
resistant
Distortion
slight pincushion
Optical formula — Triplet with the stop in front, three elements in three groups
ⓘ What these charts mean

MTF (modulation transfer function) shows how much contrast the lens keeps at a given fineness of detail, from the center of the frame to the corner — the coarse curves track punch, the fine ones resolving power, and a gap between solid and dashed lines means astigmatism. Relative illumination (falloff) shows how much darker the corners are than the center at each aperture. Manufacturers only began publishing these for modern lenses; no 1950s maker issued them, which is why older families here cite period magazine bench tests instead.

History

The Super Triplet Perar 21mm f/4.5 MC Super Wide is the last and widest of Miyazaki Sadayasu’s four triplet wide-angles for the Leica M mount, after the Perar 35 (2010), 28 (2012) and 24 (2014). It was announced on 30 April 2015, two months after the workshop became MS-Optics on incorporation, and the lens is engraved MS-OPTICS rather than MS-OPTICAL. Leica Rumors had listed a ‘Perar 4.5/21’ among the firm’s coming lenses two years earlier. The maker’s leaflet frames it as a question: who would have thought a 21mm super-wide could be made as a triplet? It says the Perar 24 was received well enough for Miyazaki to try again at 21 mm. The answer is three elements in three groups with the ten-blade iris in front of the glass, an arrangement the leaflet says this lens shares with its predecessor, and all six surfaces multicoated. The leaflet gives a true focal length of 21.5 mm and 90° of coverage.

The leaflet is frank about the compromises. Putting the stop in front moves the pupil out to 25.3 mm, as far as on a 28 mm lens, which it says reduces the loss of sensitivity in the corners of a CCD sensor. The field still curves by up to 0.25 mm within a 28 mm image circle, though the leaflet says astigmatism is matched so that points stay sharp where they are in focus. Corner fall-off is nearly twice that of a recent retrofocus wide (the leaflet puts the corner at 15%), which the leaflet likens to a 1960s Topogon and suggests using to make the centre of the picture stand out. The lens is a 50 mm disc 5.2 mm thick weighing 45 g. Focus is set with a small knob and is coupled from infinity to 0.8 m (85 cm on the leaflet); the lens focuses to about 0.5 m, which can be used by eye or on a mirrorless body. The aperture, f/4.5 to f/16 without click stops, is set by turning the front ring or the hood screwed onto it. Leica Rumors and the leaflet put a 25 mm filter in the hood; Reeve says the glass of a 25 mm filter has to be taken out of its ring and glued in.

Reviewers found what the leaflet promised. Hamish Gill, testing a lens lent by West Yorkshire Cameras for 35mmc in 2016, called the vignetting on a Leica M9 extreme, and found it still strong on film. He also saw soft corners and magenta shifts on digital, but little distortion and good flare resistance, and judged it a character lens rather than one for perfection. shige, who has used it on film and on Leica, Olympus and Hasselblad digital bodies, found it surprisingly clear for three elements. He also found curvature at the edges and slight pincushion distortion. On older full-frame sensors such as the Leica M typ240 he saw heavy vignetting, and colour casts at the edges when shooting a blue sky wide open, so he suggests film, a smaller sensor that crops the edges, or monochrome. At f/8 the lens is a zone-focus snapshot lens: Gill notes that everything from 1 m to infinity is in focus, and the leaflet gives ∞–1 m at f/8–11.

Every lens seen in photographs is black, engraved SUPER WIDE TRIPLET and PERAR 4.5/21 with a red MC, and the 2015 launch text mentions black only. Japan Exposures’ finish menu also offers Silver at ¥10,000 over its ¥69,900 black lens, but no silver 21 has been seen. No lot size has been published, unlike the 180-lens first lot of the Perar 28. When buying, check the exposed iris first. It has no glass in front of it, so look for oil, dents or bent blades. Changing the aperture means pressing on the front of the lens, so hold the focusing knob or the focus will move. Ask whether the hood and the screw-on caps are included, as they were from Japan Exposures: the hood is the only filter holder, and Gill describes the rear cap as a disc the hood screws onto for storage. Check also how close the lens focuses and that the rangefinder agrees near 0.8 m, since La Vida Leica’s launch report said the closest distance varies from 0.8 to 1.0 m from one hand-made lens to the next. The Perar 17mm f/4.5 of 2017 went wider with four elements in a retrofocus layout. shige writes that retrofocus lenses, though larger, suit digital bodies because they keep light and colour even at the edges, but in his own review of the body-cap-sized 17 he found weak edges and colour casts on some full-frame and APS-C sensors.

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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

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Sample photo wanted — shot with a MS Optics Super Triplet Perar 21mm f/4.5 MC Super Wide? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

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Related: MS Optics Perar 17mm f/4.5 Ultra Thin Retrofocus (Perar-R) · MS Optics Super Triplet Perar 24mm f/4 Super Wide · MS Optics Super Triplet Perar 28mm f/4 · MS Optics Super Triplet Perar 35mm f/3.5

Sources (13)

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.