Summilux-M 75mm f/1.4

Serial-range notes

3063301–3988718

THE RULE. Leitz and Leica never numbered a model from one, and never put a date inside the number. Every lens the firm made drew its serial from one running sequence, so a number dates a copy in two steps: read the year off the general lens list on the Leica Wiki's serial-number links page — 100000 in 1931 rising to 4400001 and above in 2015 — then refine it against the SN Start / SN End table on this lens's own model page. Twenty-seven blocks cover the 75mm Summilux between 3063301 and 3988718, most of them 200 to 500 numbers wide, which makes it one of the more finely datable M lenses: in most years a single block answers. A number falling between the blocks belongs to some other Leitz lens, not to an undated example of this one.

2048701

Click stops, including half values, begin at this number; earlier lenses have none.

2048701 against 3063301

The click-stop number above is the wiki's, and on the wiki's own figures it cannot bite. The lowest serial published for any 75mm Summilux is 3063301; 2048701 falls in the general year list's 1964 band, sixteen years before the lens existed and a million numbers below its first block. Read together, the two say that every 75mm Summilux ever made has click stops with half values, and that the smooth-aperture lens the specification implies is not one of them. The wiki prints the same clause in the diaphragm line of several M-lens pages. Both statements are recorded here; nothing published reconciles them.

3151500 and 3223301

The hood change, and the wiki marks it not with a serial but with a divider row reading "11 814 ABOVE / BUILT-IN HOOD BELOW / 11815 / 11810". Everything at or below 3151500 is the separate-hood 11814; everything from 3223301 up has the telescoping hood. The gap between the two blocks is unassigned to this lens, so the change falls somewhere in it and no closer.

3953001–3953500 and 3977589–3977888

The two blocks the wiki marks ELW — Ernst Leitz Wetzlar, that is, German rather than Canadian assembly — dated 2002 and 2004. They are the only ELW marks on the table, but they are not the earliest German lenses: Leitz Photographica auction 34, lot 155 sold serial 3837706 as the "sought-after last version Summilux 75mm, made in Germany, with built-in lens hood", and that number falls inside the 1998 block 3837375–3837974, which the wiki leaves unmarked. German production therefore reaches at least four years further back than the table shows. This bears on the three-version account at phillipreeve.net recorded below, whose third version is the German one, and on the country given at the head of this entry.

3719103–3719602, 3797510–3797709, 3915523–3916022

The three blocks marked 11810 — a third order number alongside the 11814 and 11815 this entry carries, listed in the wiki's order-number line and in its hood divider row but nowhere explained. The German 3837706 above was catalogued 11810 by Leitz Photographica although its block carries no mark, so the number is not confined to the three blocks that name it.

3607320–3607619

Dated 1993 on the model page and 1992 by the general year list, which closes 1992 at 3610680. The general list is not self-consistent here either: it ends 1992 at 3610680 and starts 1993 at 3610381, so 300 numbers belong to both years. Both readings are recorded.

3977589–3977888, 3988519–3988718

Dated 2004 and 2005 on the model page. The general year list puts both inside its 2003 band, which runs 3970748–3999999 and does not reach 2004 until 4000000. Both readings are recorded.

3260078, 3837706

Two dated auction results agreeing with the factory blocks. Leitz Photographica auction 45, lot 191 sold 3260078 as a 1983 lens — inside the 1983 block 3258101–3260100 — for €3,600 including premium. Auction 34, lot 155 sold 3837706 as 1998 — inside the 1998 block 3837375–3837974 — for €4,080.