KONICA M HEXANON 35mm F2

Review and Photo example of the HEXANON 35mm / F2.

Gallery

Sample photo taken with the LEICA M9.

Review

The Hexanon-M 35mm is a wide-angle lens for the Leica M mount released in 2000, and is the third Konica lens with a focal length of 35mm, and is a modern lens that uses a retrofocus lens construction.

After screwing the lens hood onto the tip of the lens barrel, the hood tip can be rotated 120 degrees to move the slit in the hood to a position where it does not get in the way of the viewfinder. There is no device to secure the tip of the hood, so it may shift in position within the camera bag.

As mentioned earlier, this lens uses a retrofocus lens construction.
The L39 screw mount lens with the same specs, focal length 35mm, and maximum aperture F2 that Konica released in the past is a Xenotar type lens.
The Xenotar type is said to be a hybrid of a Gauss type front group and a topogon type rear group, and its origin is the Zeiss biometer.

The lens also had sufficient resolution for both film cameras and digital cameras, and had color performance without any problems.
Therefore, there are various possible directions for improvement, such as refining the lens configuration based on the previous model or increasing the aperture f-number.
However, this lens adopted a method of changing the lens configuration. I don’t know what the designer’s intention was when designing a lens using this methodology, but I feel that it is an interesting attempt in the sense that it sets it apart from past lenses.

The exterior design is almost the same as the Hexanon, 28mm, 50mm, and 90mm, and the lens barrel is equipped with a focusing lever similar to the Summicron 6-element lens. This may have been installed because the lens barrel is thicker than other Hexanons.

Although retrofocus lenses can capture a large amount of peripheral light, they have the disadvantage of increasing the size of the lens barrel. Since there is a high degree of freedom in lens design, it is possible to create high-performance lenses with unprecedented lens configurations through computer-aided design. Even though the lens barrel is a little thicker, it is still sufficiently small compared to single-lens reflex lenses, so it is easy to carry and handle.

Perhaps because this lens was released later than other lenses, there seem to be fewer lenses on the market, and it is less likely to be seen on the used market than other Konica M mount lenses, and the price is higher.

Specification

Item	Value	note
focal length(mm)	35
Maximum aperture	2
Minimum aperture	16
Lens configuration	7groups 8elements
Leaf blade	10
Minimum distance(m)	0.7
Lens length(mm)	45.1	Distance form mount frange
Lens max diameter(mm)	55.7
Filter diameter(mm)	46
Weight(g)	230
Release date	Year 2000