Leica MONOPAN 50 will be available worldwide in Leica Stores and through authorised retailers from 21 August 2025, with a recommended retail price of $10.

Leica, who has always kept at least a film camera in its product range and recently reintroduced the M6, has now announced that next August the company’s first emulsion will be available for those shooting 35mm film. The MONOPAN 50, black-and-white film offering 36 exposures, is the first true Leica 35 mm film, a new brand created to honor a century of 35 mm photography.

The Leica I transformed photography when it made its debut back in 1925, establishing the 35 mm format as the new industry standard. The compact format swiftly gained traction with retailers and photographers commonly referring to it simply as “Leica film”, even though the 35 mm film packs used with the Leica I originated from manufacturers like Kodak, Agfa or Perutz. Now, 100 years later, Leica finally has its “first true film”, a high-resolution black-and-white film with enhanced spectral sensitivity.

Featuring an extended spectral range, the high-resolution MONOPAN 50 film gets its name from its components: “mono”, “pan” and the number “50”. “Mono” refers to Leica’s renowned Monochrom series, a line of digital black-and-white cameras first introduced in 2012. “Pan” denotes the film’s outstanding panchromatic properties, while the number “50” represents its ISO rating.

Perfectly suited to Leica lenses

Leica MONOPAN 50 features an ultra-fine grain, delivering, according to Leica, an impressive resolution of up to 280 line pairs per millimetre. With superpanchromatic sensitivity of up to 780 nm, it ensures remarkable sharpness and an exceptional tonal range. The film encapsulates Oskar Barnack’s vision of “small negative – big picture”, the very principle that gave rise to the original Leica.

With its refined specifications, the black-and-white film is, Leica says, “perfectly suited to Leica lenses, showcasing their remarkable optical performance, particularly in high-end large-format prints and detailed scans. Back in Barnack’s day, most films had low sensitivity. Leica has embraced this historical context in its choice of ISO 50/18°. With high-performance Leica lenses like the Noctilux-M, Summilux-M and Summicron-M, the film’s low sensitivity enables wide-aperture shooting, rendering the distinctive Leica bokeh – even in bright lighting conditions.”

Thanks to the film’s enhanced spectral sensitivity, the new Leica black-and-white film is also ideal for infrared photography, demonstrating exceptional responsiveness to filtration. As such, MONOPAN 50 pairs seamlessly with Leica colour filters. This enhances photographs with striking contrast and a dramatic aesthetic, granting photographers greater creative freedom in their compositions.

Produced in Germany, MONOPAN 50 is, Leica claims, “particularly perfect for landscape, architectural, cityscape and travel photography. The film is compatible with all black-and-white developers. It guarantees complete control over black-and-white photography, ensuring the highest degree of detail. Its vintage-style packaging evokes the pioneering era of 35 mm photography, while its outstanding specifications encourage photographers to carry forward this legacy by creating impressive images.”

Different packages, a collector’s item

Leica does not manufacture films, so this emulsion must be sourced elsewhere. The similarities with ADOX-HR 50, a film “made in Germany” by ADOX, the world’s first photochemical factory, from 1860, are evident, suggesting that the Leica film is a rebranded emulsion from the factory that produced legendary films such as the KB 14 and KB 17,  the world´s first thin layer films, that made ADOX famous inside and outside of Germany. In the USA KB 14 and KB 17 were called “the German wonderfilm”.

ADOX, who continues to follow its passion for analog and continues to make a wide assortment of “real film” products available to the enthusiast who loves silver halides, is also the name behind the reintroduction of back Agfa’s MCP, MCC, APX (Silvermax) and the entire Agfa B/W chemical line, after the closure of Agfa´s consumer imaging branch. ADOX tried to save as much knowledge as possible and transfer it to a smaller level of production.

Now its own ADOX-HR 50 is made available with a new skin, rebranded as a “Leica film”, an emulsion that appears to be a marketing strategy from Leica as part of the celebration of a century of 35 mm photography. Available in different packages that celebrate the anniversary, MONOPAN-50 will be a collector’s item that will probably sell well, despite being more expensive than the original ADOX-HR 50 emulsion. If you’re familiar with the Spanish language, the article written by Valentin Sama “Leica Monopan 50: ¡bienvenida al mundo de las películas negativas en blanco negro!” is a good read to better understand what the emulsion is… and isn’t!

Leica MONOPAN 50 will be available worldwide in Leica Stores and through authorised retailers from 21 August 2025. The recommended retail price is $10 USD.