DJ-Optical’s New 35mm Pancake Lens
DJ-Optical has announced its new Ultra Slim 35mm f/3.5 Pancake Lens for Leica M-mount cameras, following its first appearance at the 2026 China P&E Imaging Show earlier this year. As the name suggests, the main thing about this lens is its size. It measures 15mm in length, excluding the mount. Japanese retailer Shotenkobo describes it as a body-cap-style lens, basically saying that you can leave it attached to your camera all day, every day, without adding much bulk, while still having a usable 35mm lens ready whenever you need it. The lens also features an all-metal construction and weighs 140g.
Despite its small size, the Ultra Slim 35mm f/3.5 has a fairly substantial optical construction, with eight elements arranged in five groups, including one ED element and three high-refractive-index elements. The aperture ranges from f/3.5 to f/16, with eight aperture blades. The lens is completely manual, so both focusing and aperture adjustments are handled directly on it. It is also rangefinder-coupled, allowing Leica M users to focus through the optical rangefinder down to 70cm. If you use live view instead, the minimum focusing distance drops to 50cm.
The lens can be adapted to other mirrorless camera systems as well, although adding an adapter obviously takes away some of the advantage of having such a small lens in the first place. Of course, the f/3.5 maximum aperture is not particularly fast, especially compared to the many f/1.4 and f/2 lenses available for Leica M mount. That means it will be less suitable for low-light photography or situations where you want a very shallow depth of field. The DJ-Optical Ultra Slim 35mm f/3.5 Pancake Lens is priced at $520.
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