MS Optics Super Triplet Perar 28mm f/4

MS Optics · Leica M · 2012

our own finding

Also known as: MS Optics Super Triplet Perar 28mm f/4 · MS-Optics Super Triplet Perar 28mm F4 · MS Optical Perar Super Triplet 28mm F4 · MS-Optical Perar 28mm F4 · MS-OPTICS PERAR 28mm F4 · MS-PERAR 28mm F4 · PERAR 28mm F4 MS-OPTICAL SUPER TRIPLET MC · Perar Super Triplet 28mm F4 · Super Triplet Perar 28mm f/4 · Super Triplet Perar 4/28 · Super Triplet Perar 28 · Perar 4/28 MC · Perar 4/28 · Perar 28mm f/4 · Perar 28mm · Perar 28 · MS Optics 28mm f/4 · MS-Optical 28mm f/4 · MS Optical R&D Perar 28mm · Miyazaki Perar 28mm · 宮崎光学 PERAR 28mm F4 · 宮崎光學 PERAR 28mm F4 · 宮崎光学ペラール 28mm F4 · ペラール 28mm F4 · ペルーラ PERAR 28mm F4 · ミヤザキ PERAR 28mm

Variants & identification

Variant	Mount	Years	Serial ranges	Production
PERAR 4/28 MC, production lots (black)	Leica M	2012	—	First lot of 180 (maker's leaflet 'ロット180個'; Leica Rumors, 4 February 2012). Japan Exposures later sold a 'second lot of n lenses'; no figure for it or for any later lot has been published
Pre-production lens, serial '000' (one of 9)	Leica M	2012	—	9, numbered x/9 (Japan Exposures). The same page's option label reads 'serial "000" 1/4', which it does not explain
Premium Gold	Leica M	—	—	—
Premium Platinum	Leica M	—	—	—

Weight: 38 g for the lens and 43 g as a set on the maker's leaflet, and 38 g on Phillip Reeve's overview. Leica Rumors' launch post and Japan Exposures give 45 g (55 g with the hood); shige (lens only) and camera-wiki give 45 g; Hedström, writing for Japan Camera Hunter, gives 'a smallish 50 grams'. The family row uses the maker's figure.
Thickness: the maker's leaflet gives 5.5 mm at the rim and 10 mm at the centre, which accounts for the other figures: 5.5 mm at Japan Exposures, 9 mm in shige's review text, Japanese review table and both list tables, 10 mm from the mount face in his English review table, 50 × 10 mm at Reeve.
Filter: the maker's leaflet gives M19 × 0.5 Elmar-type filters inside the metal hood, as do Japan Exposures, shige and Hedström. Reeve's overview says instead that the glass of a 19 mm filter is to be removed and glued to the hood; the maker's own leaflet does not say so. A reader commenting on Japan Camera Hunter's February 2012 article wrote that no filter came with the lens.
Design: the maker's leaflet calls it a front-stop triplet (前絞りトリプレット型) with two ultra-high-index elements, and the lens is engraved SUPER · TRIPLET. Japan Exposures says 'tantalum glass' and 'two double thickness positive lenses, superior to Tessar design'. Japan Camera Hunter's February 2012 article calls it a Tessar type and, asked by a reader, said the maker's material describes it as 'based on the tessar but not quite the same'. Hedström calls it 'a straight three lens construction'.
Aperture: f/4–16 on the lens scale, in shige's review and in Hedström. shige's English list table gives f/22; his Japanese table gives f/16. The ten-blade iris is German-made (maker's leaflet); Japan Exposures names Otto Niemann Feinmechanik of Berlin.
Release: February 2012 (maker's leaflet, Leica Rumors on 4 February, Reeve); shige's English review table dates it April 2012 and his Japanese pages 2012. shige counts it as MS's fourth original lens and the second triplet.
Diameter: 50 mm on the maker's leaflet, in shige's Japanese table and at Reeve; shige's English table gives 48.6 mm. Angle of view 74° (leaflet and Japan Exposures). Japan Exposures' description says 'Wide 24mm focal length', a slip for 28 mm.
Prices. Dealer: Japan Exposures ¥64,900, plus ¥10,000 for serial #001 in black or for a pre-production lens; tax status not stated. Collector's tables: ¥45,000 before tax (shige, Japanese list) and ¥60,000 (shige, English list). Market: a near-unused lens on Yahoo! Auctions at a ¥99,800 Buy It Now price with no tax added, the auction ending early on 23 August 2026; a Catawiki lot of No. 10, hammer price unknown.
Batch sizes: 180 in the first lot (maker's leaflet; Leica Rumors), with 9 pre-production lenses on top (Japan Exposures). Japan Exposures mentions a second lot without a number, and Leica Rumors listed a reissue among upcoming lenses in July 2013. No total has been published, and no count exists for the Premium Gold or Premium Platinum.
⁰ The lens in shige's photographs shows a suffix reading '-B.P' after the number on the rim. No source explains it.

How to tell them apart (expand)

Engraved 'PERAR 4/28' with a red 'MC': the 28 is the only Perar at f/4 and 28 mm. The Perar 24 is also f/4, so read the focal length
A flat disc with no barrel to speak of: 5.5 mm at the rim and 10 mm at the centre (maker's leaflet)
The iris is exposed on the front, ahead of the first element, so look at the blades in any photograph

PERAR 4/28 MC, production lots (black):

Engraved on the front: 'MS-OPTICAL' and the serial number on the rim, 'SUPER · TRIPLET', and 'PERAR 4/28' with 'MC' in red. Sellers often write 'PERAR 28mm F4', which is not what the lens says
A black disc 50 mm across with a small knurled focusing lever; distance scale 0.8 m to infinity in metres, with a depth-of-field scale
The ten-blade iris sits exposed on the front of the first element, and the aperture is set by turning the hood, without click stops
Comes with a cylindrical metal hood that takes 19 mm Elmar-thread filters and two metal caps (maker's leaflet); the small front cap screws in and is turned with a fingernail or a coin

Pre-production lens, serial '000' (one of 9):

Serial '000' in place of a production number; Japan Exposures says the lens is otherwise identical to production
Japan Exposures' uncaptioned product photograph shows a black lens engraved '000 MS-OPTICAL' on the rim, with the same 'SUPER · TRIPLET' and 'PERAR 4/28 MC' engraving as production

Premium Gold:

Gold-coloured barrel, lever and front ring, with 'PREMIUM GOLD' engraved in red in an arc above the iris, on the same ring as the 'PERAR 4/28 MC' marking

Premium Platinum:

Bright silver-coloured barrel with 'PREMIUM PLATINUM' engraved in red in an arc above the iris, on the same ring as the 'PERAR 4/28 MC' marking

PERAR 4/28 MC, production lots (black): Every production lens pictured in the sources is black: No. 419 in Juha Kannisto's photograph on Phillip Reeve's overview, the lens in shige's photographs and No. 316 on Yahoo! Auctions in August 2026. The maker's handwritten leaflet shown with No. 419 has a quality-check box for that serial (spherical aberration, polishing, glass striae, assembly and centring, and focus checked at infinity, 3.5, 2, 1.5 and 0.8 m). A Catawiki lot was titled 'No. 10 of 180 manufactured'. Leica Rumors' list of upcoming MS lenses of July 2013 included a 'Super Triplet Perar 4/28 re-issue'. No source describes how a reissued lens differs, so it has no row of its own.
Pre-production lens, serial '000' (one of 9): Japan Exposures offered a 'limited amount of pre-production lenses' at a discount, then listed them as an option at ¥10,000 over the ¥64,900 production price. Its description says the numbering is x/9, 'i.e. only 9 were made'; the drop-down calls the option 'Pre-production lens serial "000" 1/4'. Both are recorded because the dealer gives both. Ask a seller for a photograph of the rim engraving.
Premium Gold: Known from a photograph captioned 'Premium Gold' on Japan Exposures' Perar 28 page. The dealer gives no price, date, plating or edition size for it, and none has been seen in a listing. The Perar 24 was also made in Premium Collection editions (Japan Camera Hunter, July 2015).
Premium Platinum: Known from a photograph captioned 'Premium Platinum' on Japan Exposures' Perar 28 page, the companion to the Premium Gold. No price, date, finish detail or edition size is given.

Serial-range notes

000: Pre-production. Japan Exposures numbers these x/9 and says nine were made; its option label also reads '000 1/4'.
001: Japan Exposures offered serial #001 in black as a separate option at ¥10,000 over the standard price. One lens, so it has no row of its own.
10: A Catawiki lot was titled 'No. 10 of 180 manufactured', which matches the first lot of 180.
316: Black, near unused, offered on Yahoo! Auctions at ¥99,800 Buy It Now in August 2026.
419: Photographed by Juha Kannisto on Phillip Reeve's overview with its leaflet, which still announces a lot of 180. With No. 316 also above 180, and serial #001 sold by Japan Exposures, later lots probably continued the numbering and the leaflet text was carried over unchanged. No source says so.

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–f/16
Diaphragm blades: 10
Min. focus: 0.8 m
Dimensions: 50 × 10 mm
Weight: 38 g
Filter: 19 mm (0.5 mm pitch), 19 mm Elmar thread, inside the hood
Years manufactured: 2012
Country: Japan
Coating: Multicoated on all six glass surfaces (maker's leaflet; Japan Exposures gives 97% transmission)
Original price: No maker's list price from 2012 is recorded. Japan Exposures, the export dealer, lists it at ¥64,900 on its product page (undated; tax status not stated), with serial #001 in black or a pre-production lens at ¥10,000 more. shige's tables give ¥45,000 before tax (Japanese list) and ¥60,000 (English list, tax not stated).

What reviewers say

Lars-Göran Hedström (Japan Camera Hunter) (blog) — A 2012 user report on a Leica M9 and M4-P: pocketable, almost no vignetting and little distortion, with some lateral colour and soft corners that he says won't matter for most pictures. The tiny threaded front cap is fiddly and easy to lose; with the hood on, the lens handles well.
shige_yuki (Shige's hobby) (blog) — A crisp centre that falls away gradually towards the edges. On full-frame digital the gap shows and close-up backgrounds swirl at the edges, so he finds it better on smaller APS-H or APS-C sensors; on coarse-grained black-and-white film the falloff reads as character. It distorts less than the Perar 21 and 24.

Optical Ratings

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

Distortion: low

Optical formula — Triplet with the stop in front, three elements in three groups

The maker's leaflet, with a full-size cross-section of lens and hood, MTF curves and aberration plots (on Phillip Reeve's overview)

ⓘ 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 28mm f/4 is the second of Miyazaki Sadayasu’s triplet wide-angles and the fourth original lens from his workshop, then trading as MS-Optical R&D. It was released in February 2012 in a first lot of 180. The handwritten leaflet supplied with the lens presents it as the answer to a question: can a 28mm be made from only three elements? Miyazaki’s answer after a year’s work was a triplet with the iris moved in front of the glass. Two of its elements are of very high refractive index, and all six surfaces are multicoated. The leaflet says the stop was put at the front with digital cameras in mind, so that light reaches the corners at a gentler angle. It also claims resolution at f/4 on a par with a Topogon, contrast better than a Topogon’s, and distortion within ±0.3% out to 90% of the way to the corner. Japan Camera Hunter called it a Tessar type at launch, citing the maker’s literature, but the leaflet and the engraving both say triplet, and Hedström called it a straight three-element construction.

The result is a 50 mm disc 5.5 mm thick at the rim and 10 mm at the centre, weighing 38 g by the maker’s leaflet or 45 g in the launch specification quoted by Leica Rumors and Japan Exposures. Camera-wiki calls it the smallest 28mm in the world. Focus is set by a small lever, coupled from 0.8 m to infinity. Aperture is set by turning the hood, with no click stops. The ten-blade German iris sits exposed in front of the first element. The leaflet itself sets out the optical trade-off: very good contrast and resolution across the middle of the frame at f/4, a dip in the outer zone from field curvature that partly recovers in the extreme corners, and better edges at f/5.6–8. Reviewers found the same. Hedström, on a Leica M9 in 2012, found almost no vignetting and little distortion but some lateral colour and soft corners. shige, using it on film and several digital bodies, found a crisp centre that falls away towards the edges, more visibly on full-frame sensors. He liked it best on the smaller APS-H and APS-C sensors, and noted that it distorts less than the Perar 24 and 21.

The standard lens is black, engraved MS-OPTICAL with its serial, SUPER · TRIPLET, and PERAR 4/28 with a red MC. Sellers often write ‘PERAR 28mm F4’, which the lens does not say. Japan Exposures, the dealer that sold the Perars abroad, offered pre-production lenses with the serial 000, of which it says nine were made (the page also labels the option ‘1/4’), serial #001 in black, and a second lot of unstated size. Its product photographs also show Premium Gold and Premium Platinum lenses with the edition name engraved in red. No price or edition size has been published for either. Leica Rumors listed a reissue of the 28 among MS’s upcoming lenses in July 2013, but no source says how a reissued lens differs. Lenses numbered 316 and 419 have been pictured, the second with a leaflet still announcing the 180-lens lot, so later lots appear to have continued the numbering.

When buying, look first at the exposed iris: it has no glass in front of it, so check the blades for oil, dents or bending. Check that the hood and the two metal caps, including the small threaded front cap, are present. The cap is easy to lose, and the hood is the filter holder, taking 19 mm Elmar-thread filters. The leaflet, with its hand-drawn MTF curves and a quality-check box for the lens’s own serial, is part of a complete set. The Perar 35mm f/3.5 came before this lens, and the Perar 24mm f/4 of 2014 and 21mm f/4.5 of 2015 followed it. The Apoqualia-G 28mm f/2 of 2016 later gave MS a faster 28 of the same 50 mm diameter.

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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.

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