Minolta Tele. Rokkor QE 100mm f/3.5 (Leica screw mount)

Minolta · LTM · 1958

our own finding

Also known as: Tele Rokkor QE 100mm f/3.5 · Tele Rokkor QE 100mm f3.5 · Tele Rokkor QE 100mm 3.5 · Tele Rokkor QE 1:3.5 f=100mm · Tele. Rokkor QE 100mm f3.5 · Tele. Rokkor QE 1:3.5 f=100mm · Tele Rokkor 100mm f/3.5 · Tele Rokkor 100mm f3.5 · Tele Rokkor 3.5/100mm · Tele Rokkor 3.5/100 · Tele-Rokkor 100mm f3.5 · Tele Rokkor 10cm f3.5 · Rokkor QE 100mm f3.5 · Rokkor 100mm f3.5 · Minolta Tele Rokkor 100mm f3.5 · Minolta Tele Rokkor QE 100mm f3.5 · Minolta 100mm f3.5 LTM · Minolta 100mm f3.5 L39 · Minolta 100mm f3.5 M39 · テレロッコールQE 100mm F3.5 · テレロッコール QE 100mm F3.5 · テレロッコール 100mm F3.5 · ミノルタテレロッコール 100mm F3.5

Variants & identification

Variant	Mount	Years	Serial ranges	Production
Leica screw mount, engraved Minolta TELE. ROKKOR QE	LTM	1958	—	No figure published. Leica Copies Japan knows of one example; camera-wiki says it was made 'probably in very small numbers'; miyou55mane once guessed at a few thousand but later found no further serial

Date. JA Wikipedia gives 1958 (1958年発売). miyou55mane lists it as 'Tele Rokkor QE 100mm F3.5(1958〜)'. camera-wiki and Leica Copies Japan place it with the Model IIB of May 1958, but Leica Copies Japan has 'some uncertainty in that regard'. Leitz Auction catalogued its lens as 'Manufacture Year 1960s'. No source gives an end date; miyou55mane says the IIB lenses were made for less than a year (製造期間が１年未満と短く).
Filter. The 46 mm thread is given only by JA Wikipedia ('アタッチメントはφ46mmねじ込み'). Leica Copies Japan gives no filter size for this lens.
Rarity. Leica Copies Japan knows of one example and calls the two second-edition lenses 'definitely quite rare'. Topgabacho writes that it has never seen a 100mm F3.5 but has heard that one exists ('100mm F3.5は見たことが無いが有るという話は聞く'). miyou55mane first guessed at a few thousand ('本数は不明なるも、数千？', number unknown, a few thousand?), then wrote that the IIB's 35/1.8 and 100/3.5 are 'really few in number' (本当に数が少ない). Hayata Camera's list of Minolta-35 lenses leaves it out.
Name. The engraving reads TELE. ROKKOR QE, with a period. camera-wiki calls it a '10cm f/3.5 Chiyoda Kogaku Tele Rokkor', citing Cooper's 'The Minolta Manual' (1959) p.24, but the one documented lens is marked Minolta and in millimetres, not Chiyoda Kogaku or cm.

How to tell them apart (expand)

Leica 39 mm screw mount, rangefinder-coupled; 100mm f/3.5 with QE on the front ring and Minolta as the maker name
Not the SR-mount reflex lenses of the same focal length and speed: Leica Copies Japan counts at least three, the early Auto Tele Rokkor and the later meter-coupled MC and MD versions, and JA Wikipedia says the optics are shared. Those are far easier to find; this lens is not
Not the Tele Rokkor 100mm f/4.8 of the Minolta A-2 LT, which has its own 24 mm mount, nor the Chiyoda Kogaku Tele Rokkor 10cm f/3.8 of the Minolta Super A bayonet (Leica Copies Japan)

Leica screw mount, engraved Minolta TELE. ROKKOR QE:

Front ring engraved 'Minolta TELE. ROKKOR QE 1:3.5 f=100mm' with the serial number (Leitz Auction 36 lot 223, serial 1100188). The period after TELE is part of the engraving; Leica Copies Japan points out that it sits differently from the one in W.Rokkor
Maker name Minolta and focal length in millimetres, not Chiyoko or Chiyoda Kogaku and centimetres: Leica Copies Japan says this lens and the W.Rokkor QF 35mm f/1.8 drop the 'Chiyoda Kogaku' name that the IIB's 5cm f/1.8 still carries, switch from cm to mm and are the first to carry Minolta's group/element code
Black barrel with a wide ribbed focusing grip, a chrome hood-like front ring, a chrome depth-of-field ring and a chrome ring at the mount; aperture ring at the front, f/3.5 to f/22; distance scale in metres only, with a red R infrared mark on the depth-of-field scale (Leitz Auction lot photographs)
Leica 39 mm thread with a rangefinder cam at the rear (Leitz Auction: 'original, rangefinder-coupled M39 mount'). An SR bayonet at the rear means one of the reflex lenses of the same name, not this one

Leica screw mount, engraved Minolta TELE. ROKKOR QE: The only version known, and one documented lens: Leitz Auction 36 lot 223, serial 1100188, sold with both original caps (the front cap a chrome slip-on embossed 'Minolta'). Leica Copies Japan says it is aware of only one example and points to pictures of an LTM lens on the Film Photograph site, which credits its photographs to Leitz Photographica Auction, so the two are probably the same lens. None of these sources gives a weight, blade count, close-focus distance or serial range; the lot photographs show the distance scale marked down to at least 1.5 m.

Serial-range notes

1100188: The only serial documented, from Leitz Auction 36 lot 223. miyou55mane gives the serial block he saw as '#1,10x,xxx' and later writes that he could find no further 100/3.5 ('100/3.5は追加確認できず'). Chiyoda Kogaku numbered its lenses in blocks shared across types (the 110 and 120 blocks also hold the Super Rokkor 5cm f/2 and f/1.8 and the Rokkor 3.5cm f/3.5, and miyou55mane notes lens serials duplicated across the Minolta A-series models), so a number in the 110 block does not by itself identify this lens.

Specifications

Formula: Ernostar type, 5 elements in 4 groups (JA Wikipedia, citing Classic Camera Senka No.12 p.53; JA Wikipedia adds, without a separate citation, that the optical design is shared with the SR-mount lens, and miyou55mane says the construction is the same as the SR-2 lens's). Leica Copies Japan gives the same 5 elements in 4 groups, which is what the 'QE' engraving means in Minolta's lens code (Q = four groups, E = five elements)
Construction: 5 elements / 4 groups
Aperture range: f/3.5–f/22
Filter: 46 mm
Years manufactured: 1958
Country: Japan
Material: Black barrel with a chrome front ring ('black barrelled, chrome nose', Leica Copies Japan), as on the Model IIB's Super Rokkor 5cm f/1.8

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History

The Tele. Rokkor QE 100mm f/3.5 is the short telephoto that Chiyoda Kogaku made in Leica 39 mm screw mount for the last Minolta-35, the Model IIB of 1958. JA Wikipedia and miyou55mane, a Japanese collector who has logged Minolta-35 serial numbers, date it to 1958, and camera-wiki and Leica Copies Japan place it with the IIB, released in May of that year. Leica Copies Japan is not sure the two arrived together, and Leitz Auction catalogued the one lens it sold as made in the 1960s. The system’s earlier short telephoto, the Chiyoko Tele Rokkor 11cm f/5.6 of 1948 (JA Wikipedia), is missing from the Minolta brochure of about 1955-56 (Leica Copies Japan), and the new lens is about a stop and a third faster.

It belongs to the IIB generation rather than the Chiyoko line before it. Like the W.Rokkor QF 35mm f/1.8 of the same year, it has a black barrel with a chrome front ring, reads “Minolta” instead of “Chiyoko” or “Chiyoda Kogaku”, gives its focal length in millimetres, and carries Minolta’s code for its construction. In that code Q means four groups and E five elements. JA Wikipedia calls it an Ernostar type and says the optical design is shared with the SR-mount lens; miyou55mane says it has the same lens construction as the SR-2’s lens. That shared design is why the name is a trap in listings. Reflex versions of the 100mm f/3.5, the Auto Tele Rokkor-QE and its MC and MD successors, have a bayonet mount and are far easier to find; this lens almost never turns up.

Almost nothing more is known, because only one example is documented: serial 1100188, sold at Leitz Auction 36 in near-mint condition with both caps, for €1,440 including buyer’s premium against an estimate of €1,600 to €2,000. That is an auction result, not a list price; no period list price is known. Leica Copies Japan knows of one example, topgabacho has never seen one but has heard that it exists, and miyou55mane, who once guessed at a few thousand, found no further serial on his second search and now says only that the IIB’s 35mm and 100mm lenses are really few in number. The 46 mm filter thread comes from JA Wikipedia alone, and none of these sources gives a weight, blade count or close-focus distance.

The lens fits any Leica-thread body and couples to its rangefinder. No Minolta-35 body has frame lines, so a 100mm lens needs an accessory finder in the shoe; Leica Copies Japan says each Minolta-35 accessory lens, the 100mm included, was supplied with a finder for its focal length; it pictures the finders for the 8.5cm, 13.5cm and 3.5cm lenses but not one for the 100mm. Anything offered as this lens should be checked closely. The front ring should read “Minolta TELE. ROKKOR QE 1:3.5 f=100mm”. The rear must have a 39 mm thread and a rangefinder cam, not an SR bayonet or an adapter, and the barrel should be black with chrome rings like the IIB’s 5cm f/1.8. Do not confuse it with the Tele Rokkor 100mm f/4.8 of the Minolta A-2 LT, which has its own 24 mm mount, or the Tele Rokkor 10cm f/3.8 of the Minolta Super A bayonet. A serial in the 110 block proves nothing alone, since Chiyoda Kogaku shared those blocks across several lenses. Ask for clear photographs of the engraving and the mount, and for provenance.

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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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