About a month ago, Panasonic announced the development of a new 15mm f1.7 Summilux lens built in cooperation with Leica, as a side note to the GM1 mirrorless camera announcement. Back then, it had us scratching our heads a bit, for various reasons. Today, 43rumors reports that the lens popped up in the eBay store of a Korean seller, with a price tag of US-$ 1,059. The listing was taken down shortly thereafter, since the lens isn’t yet available.
If it wasn’t a mistake by the seller, then this price tag has us scratching our heads even more. $1k is a lot to charge for a lens like this, especially considering that the 25mm f1.4 Summilux for Micro Four Thirds sells for half of that. It would have to show really spectacular optical performance to justify that price tag. On the other hand, it’s possible that the price was meant to be in South Korean Won, in which case this would be the starting price for a regular eBay auction.
Any way, we cannot be sure what the final retail price of the 15mm f1.7 will be until Panasonic officially announces it. And we don’t know when that will be.