This Tiny 28mm Lens Turns Your Leica Into a Pocket Camera

Brightin Star launched a solid brass manual focus 28mm f/2.8 pancake lens last year, painted in gloss black lacquer. My first impression when I saw the publicity photos wasn’t its incredibly small size. It should have been, but I was distracted somewhat by that high-gloss black lacquer with gold and red engraving. It looked a little garish. That aside, a tiny, stealthy lens is what we street and travel photographers love, so I eventually decided I should test it out.

So here we are, over a year after its launch, and Brightin Star sent me one. I’d not shown much interest when it was launched, I must confess, and here I am late to the party. But when I took it out of the box, I was very surprised. It wasn’t black; it was a chromed brass version, a version yet to be released. It looked much classier and more “high-end” than the black version.

It is so incredibly flat that when I attached the Brightin Star 28mm f/2.8 pancake lens to my Leica M10, the camera looked like a toy point-and-shoot. That is a good thing, as it draws no attention and is perfect for street and urban photography. The lens protrudes a mere 10 mm (0.39 in), quite incredible. And bonus—my camera now pops into all of my jacket pockets.

Not Just for Leica

It didn’t feel like a toy, though. The solid brass construction felt reassuring and expensive, weighing in at a surprising 125 g. It pairs perfectly with Leica M cameras. What I like about this lens is that Brightin Star knows that tiny M-mount lenses are used by many photographers who don’t shoot on Leica cameras. So they’ve got a lens and adapter combo for Sony, Nikon, Fuji, and Canon. And there’s also an L-Mount adapter for Lumix, Sigma, and Blackmagic users.

I have an M-to-Z adapter, so I popped it onto my Nikon Z6III. Even with the adapter being bigger and thicker than the lens itself, you still end up with a small lens. In the case of my Z6III, it barely protruded much beyond the camera's hand grip. This small footprint makes it the perfect everyday carry or travel lens.

The lens comes with a metal screw-on lens cap and a tiny 22.5mm screw-on UV filter. After a few outings, I stopped using the lens cap and attached the filter to protect the optics from getting scratched.

Image Quality

Obviously, with a vintage-inspired lens this tiny, you’re not going to get clinical perfection—and that’s not the point of a lens like this. I was expecting soft corners and a bit of field curvature. Soft corners are very present at f/2.8, although the center of the image is tack sharp. Stop down, and by the time you get to f/8, the Brightin Star 28mm f/2.8 pancake lens is sharper further across the frame, although there is still evidence of a little corner softness. If you insist on shooting at f/2.8 and the soft corners bother you, simply crop your image, and problem solved. The soft corners being noticeable at any aperture is really dependent on what the subject of your composition is. Architectural subjects will have more noticeable corner softness than a landscape photo. The same goes for curvature, too, which is not a friend of flat surfaces being shot square-on.

Some vignetting was present wide open, but nothing that ruined any test photos. Chromatic aberration is very well managed, too, and is nonexistent in my test photos.

Usability

I should note, I don’t do controlled lab tests when reviewing lenses; I test them in real-world situations. I take the lens out and use it for a few months in all the scenarios I would normally photograph. After three months of playing, this little 10-blade diaphragm, rangefinder-coupled Brightin Star lens has really impressed me.

For travel and street photography, the Brightin Star 28mm f/2.8 pancake lens is the most useful new lens I’ve ever tested. If you travel and don’t want to carry a bag, an M camera paired with this lens is pocketable, and if you want to take, say, this 28mm and a 50mm, the smallest of bags is all that is required if you don’t have a jacket with bigger pockets.

Because the lens is so small, it can be a little hard to read the markings, and the aperture ring is so minuscule it can be fiddly to turn. I find myself setting it to f/8 or f/11 and forgetting about it. I also set the focus distance to about 8–10 ft and forgot about it, too, when wandering the streets. The focus tab is easy to use, turns smoothly, and thankfully doesn’t have an annoying infinity lock that many vintage-inspired manual focus lenses do.

Conclusion

After spending plenty of time using this little Brightin Star manual focus 28mm f/2.8 pancake lens, I have to say, I love it.

The chromed silver version is gorgeous, a work of art. Being solid brass, it feels exactly like a real lens should feel—there is some heft to it, unlike so many chintzy plastic jobbies being made these days. And talking of chintzy, I originally thought the black lacquer version would look a little OTT on a nice, sophisticated Leica, but I’ve changed my mind. Like a brass Leica with black paint, the paint will wear down and chip off over time; therefore, this could be the perfect lens to pair with one of those black-paint models. And the truth is, the markings on the lens are easier to read on the black than on the silver version.

The chromed brass version looks great on my black chrome M10, and I would imagine it would look lovely on a chrome or Safari version, too.

It’s a fun lens to pair with an M that allows you to take your camera everywhere with you and not draw any attention. For street and travel photography, it’s a set-it-and-forget-it lens, which I can highly recommend. The small form factor is paired with an equally small price tag, too. At only $339, it’s an incredibly good deal.

I rate the Brightin Star 28mm f/2.8 pancake lens an 8.5/10.