Leica MONOPAN 50 might be accessible worldwide in Leica Shops and thru authorised retailers from 21 August 2025, with a really helpful retail worth of $10.
Leica, who has all the time saved no less than a movie digicam in its product vary and not too long ago reintroduced the M6, has now introduced that subsequent August the corporate’s first emulsion might be accessible for these capturing 35mm movie. The MONOPAN 50, black-and-white movie providing 36 exposures, is the primary true Leica 35 mm movie, a brand new model created to honor a century of 35 mm pictures.
The Leica I remodeled pictures when it made its debut again in 1925, establishing the 35 mm format as the brand new trade customary. The compact format swiftly gained traction with retailers and photographers generally referring to it merely as “Leica movie”, despite the fact that the 35 mm movie packs used with the Leica I originated from producers like Kodak, Agfa or Perutz. Now, 100 years later, Leica lastly has its “first true movie”, a high-resolution black-and-white movie with enhanced spectral sensitivity.
That includes an prolonged spectral vary, the high-resolution MONOPAN 50 movie will get its title from its parts: “mono”, “pan” and the quantity “50”. “Mono” refers to Leica’s famend Monochrom collection, a line of digital black-and-white cameras first launched in 2012. “Pan” denotes the movie’s excellent panchromatic properties, whereas the quantity “50” represents its ISO score.
Completely suited to Leica lenses
Leica MONOPAN 50 options an ultra-fine grain, delivering, in response to Leica, a formidable decision of as much as 280 line pairs per millimetre. With superpanchromatic sensitivity of as much as 780 nm, it ensures outstanding sharpness and an distinctive tonal vary. The movie encapsulates Oskar Barnack’s imaginative and prescient of “small destructive – massive image”, the very precept that gave rise to the unique Leica.
With its refined specs, the black-and-white movie is, Leica says, “completely suited to Leica lenses, showcasing their outstanding optical efficiency, significantly in high-end large-format prints and detailed scans. Again in Barnack’s day, most movies had low sensitivity. Leica has embraced this historic context in its selection of ISO 50/18°. With high-performance Leica lenses just like the Noctilux-M, Summilux-M and Summicron-M, the movie’s low sensitivity permits wide-aperture capturing, rendering the distinctive Leica bokeh – even in brilliant lighting circumstances.”
Due to the movie’s enhanced spectral sensitivity, the brand new Leica black-and-white movie can be supreme for infrared pictures, demonstrating distinctive responsiveness to filtration. As such, MONOPAN 50 pairs seamlessly with Leica color filters. This enhances images with hanging distinction and a dramatic aesthetic, granting photographers larger inventive freedom of their compositions.
Produced in Germany, MONOPAN 50 is, Leica claims, “significantly good for panorama, architectural, cityscape and journey pictures. The movie is appropriate with all black-and-white builders. It ensures full management over black-and-white pictures, making certain the very best diploma of element. Its vintage-style packaging evokes the pioneering period of 35 mm pictures, whereas its excellent specs encourage photographers to hold ahead this legacy by creating spectacular pictures.”
Totally different packages, a collector’s merchandise
Leica doesn’t manufacture movies, so this emulsion have to be sourced elsewhere. The similarities with ADOX-HR 50, a movie “made in Germany” by ADOX, the world’s first photochemical manufacturing facility, from 1860, are evident, suggesting that the Leica movie is a rebranded emulsion from the manufacturing facility that produced legendary movies such because the KB 14 and KB 17, the world´s first skinny layer movies, that made ADOX well-known inside and outdoors of Germany. Within the USA KB 14 and KB 17 had been known as “the German wonderfilm”.
ADOX, who continues to observe its ardour for analog and continues to make a large assortment of “actual movie” merchandise accessible to the fanatic who loves silver halides, can be the title behind the reintroduction of again Agfa’s MCP, MCC, APX (Silvermax) and all the Agfa B/W chemical line, after the closure of Agfa´s shopper imaging department. ADOX tried to save lots of as a lot data as attainable and switch it to a smaller stage of manufacturing.
Now its personal ADOX-HR 50 is made accessible with a brand new pores and skin, rebranded as a “Leica movie”, an emulsion that seems to be a advertising and marketing technique from Leica as a part of the celebration of a century of 35 mm pictures. Obtainable in numerous packages that commemorate the anniversary, MONOPAN-50 might be a collector’s merchandise that can in all probability promote nicely, regardless of being dearer than the unique ADOX-HR 50 emulsion. In case you’re accustomed to the Spanish language, the article written by Valentin Sama “Leica Monopan 50: ¡bienvenida al mundo de las películas negativas en blanco negro!” is an efficient learn to raised perceive what the emulsion is… and isn’t!
Leica MONOPAN 50 might be accessible worldwide in Leica Shops and thru authorised retailers from 21 August 2025. The really helpful retail worth is $10 USD.
