Rollei Sonnar 40mm (L39)

Review and Photo example of Rollei Sonnar 40mm/F2.8

Gallery

Review

The Rollei Sonnar 40mm is a Leica L39 screw mount rangefinder camera lens.
It is a Rollei-branded lens released in 2002 with Japan’s Cosina supplying most of the parts.
It comes with an M/L ring and can be used as a Leica M mount lens.

Like the Planar, it was released in two colors: black and silver.
Although the lens barrel doesn’t have much of a feature, the green letters indicating the distance in feet are a beautiful accent to the design.
It says “Made in Germany”, so it seems that it was assembled in Germany.

The lens size and quality of the Sonnar 40mm were comparable to Cosina’s early color Scoper, and the lens barrel was compact and seemed to be made of brass and was quite heavy. During the film era, the Rolle brand had many fans for its depiction, but I think the quality of this lens is quite average. I used both black and silver, but perhaps because the grease was missing, the focus ring was a bit light and sparse when I turned it, so I didn’t get a very good impression.

Some English reviews say that the lens hood is fixed, but the standard cylindrical hood can be removed by screwing it in. After removing it, you can change to the optional hood shown with the black lens. The lens position of this hood can be adjusted after it is screwed onto the lens, and the construction of the hood is the same as the initial Color Scoper 35mm/50mm, with the Rollei inscription on the hood surface instead of Voigtlander.

When this lens was released, I thought Cosina would also acquire the Rollei brand, but they ended up only partnering with the Sonnar 40mm, Planar 80mm, and Rollei 35 RF cameras. Planar 50mm / F1.8 seems to have been planned as a release plan, and there are documents with specific specifications of 7 elements in 6 groups. Although there were some concrete discussions going on, it never actually went on the market.

Silver had been sitting at the Yodobashi Camera Shinjuku store for a long time, and I bought it at a sale price along with a Rollei 35 RF. At that time, it was the final stage of film cameras, and the disposal price was about half the used price in 2023. I hesitate to purchase this lens at the current high price.

Specification

Item	Value	note
focal length(mm)	40
Maximum aperture	2.8
Minimum aperture	22
Leaf blade	10
Lens configuration	4groups 5elements
Minimum distance(m)	0.7
Lens length(mm)	30.5
Lens max diameter(mm)	51
Filter diameter(mm)	39mm
Weight(g)	172
Release date	2002