Summarit 5cm f/1.5

Serial-range notes

the whole Leitz lens sequence

THE RULE. Leitz numbered every lens it made in one continuous run, whatever the model, so a Summarit is dated from the company-wide lens serial/year list and not from a list for this lens alone. Read the number off the front ring and find its bracket: 1939 = 490001–538500, 1949 = 682001–756000, 1950 = 756001–840000, 1951 = 840001–950000, 1952 = 950001–1051000, 1953 = 1051000–1124000, 1954 = 1124001–1236000, 1955 = 1236001–1333000, 1956 = 1333001–1459000, 1957 = 1459001–1548000, 1958 = 1548001–1645300, 1959 = 1645301–1717000, 1960 = 1717001–1827000 (Leica Wiki, Leica Lens Serial Numbers). Every block on this model's own page falls inside the bracket it is dated to — including the anomalous 1939 block below, which the company-wide list also places in 1939.

491898–492000

103 lenses dated 1939 — ten years before the model's stated introduction, and inside the Xenon's last serial block. See this entry's own finding.

740001–741000

The first post-war block, and the point where ordinary production begins.

1246001–1247000

The one block on the list marked ELC alone — 1,000 Canadian screw-mount lenses of 1955, and the only place a serial number establishes Midland manufacture by itself. Everything else Canadian on the list is mixed in with Wetzlar lenses.

1418001–1421000

Marked "ELW+ELC.M": 3,000 bayonet lenses of 1956 built in Wetzlar and Midland together, so a number inside it proves the year and the mount but not the factory. The Midland lens Leitz Photographica sold as lot 73 of auction 44, no. 1419746 and catalogued as 1956, falls inside this block — an independent confirmation that Canadian lenses were being numbered there.

820001–823000

Marked "ELW.S+TH": 3,000 screw lenses of 1950, Wetzlar and Taylor-Hobson in one block. It is the only Taylor-Hobson marking anywhere on the list, and no block is Taylor-Hobson alone, so the English lenses cannot be separated by number.

1052001–1054000

The first block marked (M): 2,000 Wetzlar bayonet lenses dated 1953 — a year before the M3 reached buyers, and before the 1954 date the same page attaches to the SOOIA-M 11 120 order number. The list offers no explanation for numbering a bayonet lens ahead of the camera.

890001–893000, 950001–955000, 999001–1000000, 1025001–1029500, 1054201–1058000, 1078001–1080000, 1470001–1473000, 1515001–1518000

The blocks marked ELW.S — Wetzlar screw mount alone. Five further blocks mix screw with bayonet lenses (1098001–1100000, 1209001–1212000, 1357001–1360000, 1430001–1435000, 1499001–1501000), and eight more carry no marking at all, so the mount cannot be read from every number.

1052001–1054000, 1119201–1121000, 1275001–1277000, 1297001–1300000, 1330001–1333000, 1389001–1393000, 1527161–1530000

The blocks marked ELW.M — Wetzlar bayonet alone, running 1953 to 1957.

1288001–1291000

A row printed on this model's page that the page attributes to the Summaron 3.5 cm f/3.5, bracketed and excluded from the Summarit total; the Summaron's own page carries the same numbers as one of its blocks. Both pages footnote the same lens inside it, 1290589, as a Canadian screw-mount Summarit — the two lists agree with each other here, which is not true of every shared block on the Leica Wiki.

1546001–1546150

The last block: 150 lenses of 1957. Nothing is listed after it, although the same page runs production to 1960 and this entry's table to 1960 as well.