Let's start with the lens this thing is chasing the ghost of. In 1965, Leica did something it had never done before at 28mm: it built a lens fast enough to actually shoot in real light. Before that, Leitz's wide-angle glass topped out at f/6.3 and then f/5.6 with the little Summaron. The new Elmarit 28mm f/2.8 blew past that with a symmetrical nine-element, six-group design โ spherical elements, no exotic glass tricks, just good old-fashioned optical engineering pushed to its limit. Collectors now just call it the "9-Element," and it's become one of those lenses whispered about in Leica forums the way vintage-guitar people talk about a '59 Les Paul.
The catch, and the reason it's so scarce, is that Leica barely made it and then more or less orphaned it. Reportedly only around 3,000 units were ever produced, and the lens's bulging rear element meant it physically couldn't be mounted on the Leica M5 or the film CL โ two cameras that were, at the time, very much still in the lineup. It was also never a technical showcase: testing has shown it carries noticeable distortion at f/2.8, some color fringing on modern digital sensors, and famously triangular bokeh balls instead of the smooth discs collectors usually chase. None of that has stopped originals from becoming genuine unicorns โ real examples on the used market now regularly trade for $8,000 to well over $15,000, prices that put it firmly in "admire from across the room" territory for almost everyone.
Which is exactly the gap Light Lens Lab was built to fill. LLL is a Chinese optical house founded by a collector known simply as Mr. Zhou, who by his own account once owned more than 200 Leica bodies and many M lenses. The company's first project, released in late 2019 after years of Zhou personally analyzing the original optical formula and glass composition, was a replica of the legendary 1958 Leica Summicron 35mm f/2 v1 โ the "Eight Element." That first clone earned LLL a real reputation โ reviewers in blind tests reportedly couldn't tell it apart from the original โ and the company has spent the years since working through a wish list of Leica's most unreachable optics, reportedly sourcing specialty leaded glass formulations to match the original refractive properties of decades-old designs. The 28mm f/2.8 "Nine Element" reissue, released in late 2024, is their take on the 1965 Elmarit: same nine-elements-in-six-groups formula, same body aesthetic, but with a new ED glass element and proprietary fluorite-like elements engineered specifically to tame the chromatic aberration and edge softness that show up when the 60-year-old formula meets a digital sensor.
What's genuinely fun about this lens, on either side of the original-versus-clone divide, is that it splits people. Some reviewers find the rendering โ moderate distortion, that triangular bokeh, the flare โ to be the entire point, a deliberate, honest artifact of 1965 optical engineering rather than a flaw to be corrected. Others shrug at the f/2.8 speed and modest low-light chops and wonder why you wouldn't just buy something smaller and faster. Nobody seems neutral about it, which is usually the sign of a lens worth having an opinion on.
A genuinely strange, short-lived piece of Leitz engineering history, now available as a faithful, improved clone for a fraction of the original's price โ and at $799.99 Glass Hound found, this particular copy is sitting well under what LLL's own 9-Element typically changes hands for.