Hidden in-between all of the camera announcements from Leica at their May 10th event, was a lens that made quite a stir. At 50mm and f/2.0 the new Leica APO-Summicron-M ASPH lens doesn’t seem like anything to write home about; and with a price tag of almost $8,700 it falls a bit outside most consumers’ price range.

Leica’s justification of the price, however, has to do with the craftsmanship that goes into each of these lenses, and the quality that this leads to. Like all of Leica’s lenses, each one is hand-made: the optics are inspected and assembled by hand, the casing is put together by hand, even the numbers on the lens are painted by hand; and the catch phrase for the lens on Leica’s website, “Anything but a standard lens,” isn’t off the mark. Read more…

When two photographers got engaged in Japan, they asked their jewelry-maker friend to create wedding rings based on the Leica 50mm Summilux lens. The groom’s ring was the focusing ring while the bride’s was the aperture ring. The friend also created a stunningly realistic miniature Leica M3 to hold the rings (they slide onto the lens)!

(via Tokyo Camera Style)

Update: Here are some new photos of the rings:

This one shows the scale of the mini M3 next to actual Leica cameras: