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

Chiyoda Kogaku Super Rokkor 5cm f/1.8 (Leica screw mount)

Minolta · LTM · 1958

Also known as: Super Rokkor 5cm f1.8 · Super Rokkor 5cm f/1.8 · Super Rokkor 5cm 1:1.8 · Super Rokkor 1:1.8 f=5cm · Super Rokkor 50mm f1.8 · Super Rokkor 50mm f/1.8 · Super Rokkor 50mm 1:1.8 · Super Rokkor 5cm 50mm f1.8 · Super Rokkor 50mm 5cm f1.8 · Super-Rokkor 5cm f1.8 · Chiyoda Kogaku Super Rokkor 5cm f1.8 · Chiyoda Kogaku Super Rokkor 50mm f1.8 · Chiyoda Kogaku Super Rokkor 1:1.8 f=5cm · Chiyoda Kogaku 50mm f1.8 · Chiyoda Kogaku 5cm f1.8 · Minolta Super Rokkor 5cm f1.8 · Minolta Super Rokkor 50mm f1.8 LTM · Minolta Super Rokkor 50mm f1.8 L39 · スーパーロッコール 5cm F1.8 · スーパーロッコール 50mm F1.8 · スーパー ロッコール 5cm F1.8 · スーパーロッコール 5cm F=1:1.8 · 千代田光学 スーパーロッコール 5cm F1.8 · 千代田光学 スーパーロッコール 50mm F1.8

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
Leica screw mount, engraved Chiyoda Kogaku LTM 1958 120032x–120661x and 130134x–130135x (Leica Copies Japan)
120xxxx, about 7,500 lenses, and 130xxxx, about 3,000 lenses (Lens QA Works; canonrangefinder; Collection Appareils gives 1 300 001–1 302 xxx for the second series)
1,200,216–1,206,863 and 1,300,338–1,302,065 seen by miyou55mane, who also lists a 1,100,xxx block (to 1,101,548) 		About 10,500 (Lens QA Works and Collection Appareils; canonrangefinder gives the same two series totals); about 11,000 (miyou55mane, from serials he logged)
  1. Groups. Leica Copies Japan, Lens QA Works, camera-wiki, Mike Eckman, miyou55mane ('５群６枚のガウス型'), JA Wikipedia and Collection Appareils give 6 elements in 5 groups, as does Kamerastore for the optically identical Super A lens. Flashback Camera's listing gives 4 groups, 6 elements ('4群6枚構成のダブルガウス型'), although the same listing says the design separates the cemented second group.
  2. Date. Leica Copies Japan, Lens QA Works, miyou55mane and canonrangefinder give May 1958, with the Model IIB. Hayata Camera Lab dates the IIB to March 1958 (昭和33年3月). JA Wikipedia gives '1957年または1958年5月'. canonrangefinder says the lens was made in 1958 and 1959; Hayata says IIB production stopped in mid-1959. No source gives an end date for the lens itself.
  3. Weight and size. 260 g, 54 mm diameter and 41–44 mm length are Lens QA Works' figures (Collection Appareils gives the same); Flashback Camera measured 258 g. Leica Copies Japan repeats Lens QA Works' figures and notes that it is unclear what the length measures, so no length is given here.
  4. Super A. The Minolta Super A of 1957, a leaf-shutter rangefinder with its own bayonet, was also offered with a 5cm f/1.8 Super Rokkor (Leica Copies Japan). Lens QA Works says it is optically identical. Its barrel has no focusing helicoid, because the Super A focuses in the body (Kamerastore, Leica Copies Japan). camera-wiki says Super A lenses were engraved 'Chiyoko' before 1958 and 'Chiyoda Kogaku' from 1958, so the engraving does not identify the mount. It does not fit a screw-mount body.
  5. Price. No price for the lens alone has been found. The Model IIB with this lens was priced at ¥42,800, a Japanese list price for camera and lens (miyou55mane: '価格は50mm F1.8付きで42,800円'; Leica Copies Japan gives the same IIB price). A 1958 Chiyoda Kogaku brochure lists the Super A at ¥33,800 with its 5cm f/2.8 (Leica Copies Japan).
  6. Designer. Flashback Camera, a Japanese dealer, credits the design to Matsui Yoshiya (松居吉哉). It says he separated the cemented part of the second group to cure the coma flare of Gauss lenses near full aperture, and that this became a standard approach for later SLR Gauss lenses. No other source consulted names a designer, so none is entered here.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • Leica 39 mm screw mount, rangefinder-coupled; engraved Chiyoda Kogaku Super Rokkor, 1:1.8 and f=5cm
  • The only Minolta-35 standard lens with a black-ringed barrel and no focusing lever; every earlier standard lens is chrome and reads Chiyoko. The W.Rokkor 35mm f/1.8 and Tele Rokkor 10cm f/3.5 of 1958 share the black-and-chrome styling (Leica Copies Japan)
  • Not the 5cm f/1.8 Super Rokkor of the Minolta Super A, which has a bayonet and no helicoid; not the Super Rokkor 5cm f/2 or f/2.8; not an SR-mount Auto Rokkor-PF 55mm f/1.8 or MC Rokkor; not the M-Rokkor lenses of the Minolta CL and CLE

Leica screw mount, engraved Chiyoda Kogaku:

  • Name ring reads 5cm f/1.8 Chiyoda Kogaku Super Rokkor; no 'Chiyoko' and no © coating mark
  • Wide black focusing ring and black aperture ring near the front; only the front filter ring and the depth-of-field ring at the back are chrome
  • No focusing lever or infinity lock: the wide ring replaces them
  • 46 mm filter thread; aperture scale runs to 22
  • Seven-digit serial, usually starting 120 or 130 (miyou55mane also lists a 110 lot)
  • Leica 39 mm thread and its own focusing helicoid at the rear; the Super A version has a bayonet and no helicoid

Serial-range notes

1100xxx–1302xxx
Chiyoda Kogaku reused the same block numbers for several lenses. The Super Rokkor 5cm f/2 also has 110, 120 and 130 blocks, and the Super A versions of the 5cm f/1.8 share the LTM lens's numbers: miyou55mane gives 1,100,221–1,202,481 for the Super A lens against 1,101,548–1,302,065 for the Minolta-35 lens in his revised table. A serial number therefore identifies this lens only together with the engraving and, above all, the mount at the rear.
1100xxx
miyou55mane lists a 1,100,xxx–1,101,548 lot for the Minolta-35 lens. Leica Copies Japan, Lens QA Works and Collection Appareils know only the 120 and 130 series, and Lens QA Works calls No. 1200154 the earliest known LTM example. Because the Super A lens uses 110 numbers, check any 110 lens for a 39 mm thread. In his revised post miyou55mane lists No. 1,100,187 under the W.Rokkor 35mm f/1.8 and adds No. 1,204,215, which he strikes through and marks '50/1.8の間違い' (a mistake: it is a 50/1.8), without saying which mount; both numbers also appear in his summary table against the 35mm f/3.5.

Specifications

Formula
Double-Gauss type, 6 elements in 5 groups (Leica Copies Japan, Lens QA Works, camera-wiki, Mike Eckman, miyou55mane, JA Wikipedia, Collection Appareils); Flashback Camera says 4 groups. Leica Copies Japan describes it as the 5cm f/2 design with the front pair replaced by a single element
Construction
6 elements / 5 groups
Aperture range
f/1.8–f/22
Diaphragm blades
10
Min. focus
1 m
Dimensions
54 mm diameter
Weight
260 g
Filter
46 mm
Years manufactured
1958
Country
Japan
Coating
Minolta 'achromatic coating' (Lens QA Works). It carries no © coating mark: by its release Chiyoda Kogaku had stopped marking its lenses as coated, and the last 5cm f/2 and f/2.8 lenses also lack it (Leica Copies Japan)
Material
Metal barrel: black focusing and aperture rings, chrome front ring and depth-of-field ring (Mike Eckman; Leica Copies Japan: 'black body and chrome bezel'). canonrangefinder instead describes black rings on a satin chrome body

What reviewers say

History

The Super Rokkor 5cm f/1.8 was the last standard lens Chiyoda Kogaku made for its Leica-thread Minolta-35. It came out with the Model IIB in May 1958 (Leica Copies Japan, Lens QA Works, miyou55mane; Hayata Camera Lab dates the IIB to March) and replaced both earlier 50mm lenses, the f/2.8 and the f/2, as the camera’s standard lens. It is the only Minolta-35 standard lens engraved Chiyoda Kogaku instead of Chiyoko. Its black-ringed barrel was a clean break from the chrome Chiyoko lenses, and both Lens QA Works and canonrangefinder see it as the first appearance of the look Minolta’s SR reflex lenses carried from late 1958. The IIB lasted about a year before the SR-2 took over. miyou55mane’s serial counts give about 11,000 lenses against about 9,000 IIB bodies, a gap he could not explain; Lens QA Works, Collection Appareils and canonrangefinder give about 10,500 lenses.

Optically it is a six-element double-Gauss design. Leica Copies Japan describes it as similar to the 5cm f/2 design with the front pair replaced by a single element, and miyou55mane notes that it has one element fewer than the f/2. Almost every source gives six elements in five groups; Flashback Camera says four groups. The lens has ten aperture blades, stops down to f/22, focuses to 1 m and takes 46 mm filters. Lens QA Works weighed one at 260 g, and Flashback weighed another at 258 g. Flashback credits the design to Matsui Yoshiya and says separating a cemented group cured the coma flare of earlier Gauss lenses. No other source consulted names the designer. The lens has no focusing lever: a wide black focusing ring does the job. The aperture ring sits at the front. Mike Eckman says only the front ring and the depth-of-field scale are chrome, and Leica Copies Japan calls it a black lens with a chrome bezel, while canonrangefinder describes black rings on a satin chrome body. There is one version. The 120 and 130 serial series are not known to differ in anything but number.

It has a better reputation than the 5cm f/2 it replaced. World Leica Copies, which was hard on the 5cm f/2, says Minolta had to wait for this lens for a fast standard lens of its own that was really good. Mike Eckman found it extremely sharp across the frame, with excellent contrast and no vignetting, on film in a IIB. Lens QA Works, testing the earliest known example on a Sony A7II, found it usable for portraits wide open, very good by f/4 and needing f/8 for landscapes. Hayata Camera Lab found its pictures clean and its colour bright. Lens QA Works recommends a hood; Leica Copies Japan shows the lens’s black screw-in hood with a chrome base.

The lens fits and couples on any Leica-thread body. None of the Minolta-35 bodies has frame lines. The IIB’s 0.8x finder, with a 32 mm effective rangefinder base (camera-wiki), is the body the lens was made for. Earlier bodies will take it, but their rangefinders are shorter: about 28 mm effective from the Model C to the Model II and 13 mm on the A and B (camera-wiki; miyou55mane, Hayata Camera Lab and the Ei Mook 735 table instead keep the short-base 0.33x finder on the Models C and D and put the larger finder at the Model E). Bodies sold with the 45mm lens, up to the early Model II, also have a larger finder window matched to that wider lens (Leica Copies Japan).

When buying, look first at the back of the lens. The Minolta Super A of 1957 was also sold with a 5cm f/1.8 Super Rokkor, optically the same (Lens QA Works), but in that camera’s own bayonet and without a focusing helicoid, because the Super A focuses in the body. Its engraving is no help, since camera-wiki says Super A lenses also read Chiyoda Kogaku from 1958, and its serial numbers overlap the screw-mount lens’s (miyou55mane). A screw-mount lens has a 39 mm thread and a helicoid of its own. Then check the serial against the 120 and 130 series, look for haze and cleaning marks, and see that the hood is the original black one with its chrome base. No price for the lens alone has been found. In 1958 the IIB with this lens was priced at ¥42,800, a list price for camera and lens (miyou55mane, Leica Copies Japan). Lens QA Works says it usually goes for too much at auction because collectors want it. A lens-only Yahoo! Auctions listing, described as scuffed and soiled, ended in October 2026 at ¥18,150, an auction result.

Expand Collapse

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

More sample photos elsewhere

These photographers keep all rights to their work — enjoy it at the source.

Sample photo wanted — shot with a Chiyoda Kogaku Super Rokkor 5cm f/1.8 (Leica screw mount)? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $300 across 22 fixed-price listings on 2026-11-10 (middle half $230–$460). First day tracked.

Asking prices from the listings scanned, not sales; junk-flagged rows and auction lots excluded; other currencies are not converted.

Show 8 more listings

Buying from Yahoo! Auctions outside Japan. It is a domestic marketplace: sellers ship within Japan, and most will not register an overseas buyer. A proxy service bids on your behalf, receives the item and forwards it, for a fee and a wait. Buyee, Jauce and ZenMarket each accept a Yahoo auction number directly. Listed alphabetically for information — none is recommended over another, and none of these is an affiliate link.

Listings updated 2026-11-10. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.

Sources (16)

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.