“I’ve always tried to walk the road Leica walked” — Light Lens Lab founder finally opens up on painstakingly recreating rare $25k Leica lenses you could actually afford

• First video interview with Light Lens Lab founder Mr Zhou
• The 20-minute discussion unpacks the stories of popular LLL lenses
• LLL's lens roadmap and other upcoming projects are covered, too

Since being founded in 2018, Light Lens Lab has built a stellar reputation among Leica fans for its M-mount lenses for Leica cameras.

Some LLL lenses are a love letter to rare Leica lenses that very few people get to see, let alone touch or use, painstakingly recreated down to the minute details, including the choice of metal and characterful signature optical quality.

Others are reimagined vintage Leica lenses with reworked optical constructions for improved image quality.

But what all LLL lenses have in common is that they are way more affordable than the real thing, while still giving users the closest possible experience of these desirable Leica M lenses.

Take the Leica Summilux 35mm f/1.4 ('11873') – a rare double aspherical lens produced in the early 1990s, limited to a sub-2,000 production run. It'd set you back around $25,000 / £20,000 / AU$40,000, yet LLL has recreated the lens to a 98% match, and sells its creation for a fraction of the price, around $1,500 / £1,043 at its online store.

YouTuber Bobby Tonelli describes the original as a 'Holy Grail' of Leica lenses, and compares it with the LLL homage on his YouTube channel – let's just say he's seriously impressed with the affordable LLL alternative.

Recently, Tonelli was able to do something no one else has before: arrange a video interview with the founder of Light Lens Lab, Mr Zhou.

Their 20-minute discussion (linked below) unpacks the story behind Light Lens Lab, digs deeper into some of the high-profile LLL lenses available for purchase, its lens roadmap, and other upcoming projects, including reworking a classic Chinese TLR camera and making its own film. The chat is well worth a watch.

‘We want to reach that level'

The story behind Light Lens Lab is actually rather heart-warming. This is no soulless business, but one born out of fandom. In his own words, Mr Zhou is a huge Leica fan and once owned more than 200 Leica bodies and Leica M-mount lenses. He was a regular member of Leica groups in China, where the idea was born to tear down and recreate Leica lenses.

His first project was another 35mm lens, an 8-element from 1953. He didn't have the design ability to remake the lens, but its patent had fully expired, the patent documents were publicly available, and he was able to follow Leica's prototype to create a complete replica with fine attention to detail.

The more he used Leica lenses, the more he was impressed with the performance and quality of such a small optics, the type he chooses to recreate. Zhou says, "In such a small package, to reach the highest possible quality – Leica did it very well and it's hard to surpass."

"So I've always tried to walk the path Leica walked, and that's why, in terms of workmanship and quality, we've earned broad recognition."

Other projects include a rare $50,000 Elcan lens – again, Leica had published the Elcan optical patent – plus a 1966 Noctilux, which took four years to make. One hurdle was that two of the glass types in the original are long discontinued, but with the help of the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Zhou was able to match the original 70-year-old formula by re-melting/remaking this special glass.

The results? Equally small and light lenses of similar optical quality, if not better, exhibiting what are essentially the same characterful looks, including bokeh.

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Certain Leica lenses can be both pricey and hard to find, so it's little wonder that so many Leica fans appreciate the dedication of Light Lens Lab in remaking rare Leica optics. I'm yet to try a LLL lens, but I've read enough online reviews from discerning Leica fans to believe the hype.

And Zhou isn't stopping with vintage Leica lenses. He's remaking modern Leica lenses, again selling his creations for a fraction of the cost, and has earmarked an 'ACDK' series (Angineux, Cooke, Dallmeyer, and Kintoptic) – lens types with a signature look; if you're a cinema lover, you will be familiar with the legendary Cooke look.

Zhou also revealed another long-term project: reworking a traditional Chinese TLR film camera with modern design to achieve better mechanics and optics, as well as manufacturing his own film, much like Leica recently did, and of course, in the footsteps of Fujifilm.

Manufacturing lenses, cameras, and film. "We want to reach that level", says Zhou, and honestly, I'm rooting for him.

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