Focus shift apertures: f/4 and f/5.6

Optical condition:
Excellent for its age, with some very fine/ minor cleaning marks on the front element. These marks are difficult for us to photograph and have to be seen with a magnifying glass and flashlight. Glass is very clear, no haze, fungus or scratches.

Rear element has tiny “ghost of fungus” marks, where fungus was cleaned off the element, but coating marks were left as a result. For those that may wonder, why the rear element has this slight blue/ grey coating to it – this is the natural lens coating/ oxidation that forms over time on uncoated glass. It’s a primiteve form of single coating, and we try to leave it on the Sonnar lenses if it forms on the uncoated glass. It performs as a single coating in helping mitigate lens reflections, which for the rear element probably the most important element to coat in terms of reducing flares. The “ghost of fungus” has slightly eaten away this natural coating, and instead of polishing all the lens coating off this element, we decided to leave it as it improves the lenses flare resistance.
For a lens that is about 80 years old, it’s in excellent condition.Mechanical condition:
Lens underwent a complete overhaul and restoration.  It’s been painted Black Chrome finish to match the Monochrom / M10-P/ M11-P cameras finish.   Depth of field fonts have been left stealth/ blacked out, with only the aperture control and aperture indicator tick being painted in.  Lens is very smooth to focus.

This uncoated lens is ideally suited for black & white and Monochrom photography, where the expanded dynamic range due to the lack of coatings yields an almost infinite range of grey tonality.  These lenses work fantastic with Yellow, Orange and Red filters on the Monochrom M cameras, creating grey tone tonalities that most modern coated lenses struggle to acheive.

If you are looking for an excellent condition, uncoated 5cm f/1.5 Sonnar lens to go with your Leica M Monochrom camera, this is it.

The optics of this lens are pre-war, around 1937.