Leica Unveils MONOPAN 50, the Brand’s First True High-Res 35mm Black-and-White Film
As part of the company’s 100-year celebration of its 35mm photography history, Leica has unveiled its newest complement to analog shooting.
Jourdan Aldredge • Jul 17, 2025

Film photographers rejoice, Leica has just introduced its first true high-resolution 35mm black-and-white film. As part of the company’s 100-year celebration of its 35mm photography history, Leica has unveiled its newest complement to analog shooting.
Ever since the Leica 1 first debuted in 1925, which helped establish the 35mm format as the industry standard, the company has continued to work on defining this distinctive aesthetic, as well as ensuring the highest degree of detail.
Let’s take a look at Leica MONOPAN 50 and how this high-res 35mm black-and-white film could prove to be one of the company’s most popular film stocks yet.
Leica MONOPAN 50 Introduced
Designed to honor the origins of 35mm photography and its distinctive aesthetic, Leica is has introduced its high-resolution MONOPAN 50 film, which features an extended spectral range.
Leica shares that the name MONOPAN 50 is derived 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.
Leica MONOPAN 50 features an ultra-fine grain, delivering an impressive resolution of up to 280 line pairs per millimeter. With super-panchromatic 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 ideally suited to Leica lenses, showcasing their remarkable optical performance, particularly in high-end large-format prints and detailed scans.
Featuring Enhanced Spectral Sensitivity
Back in Barnack’s early days of photography, 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.
Plus, thanks to its 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 color filters.
This enhances photographs with striking contrast and dramatic aesthetics, granting photographers greater creative freedom in their compositions.
Here are some more key features for this new MONOPAN 50 film.
- Designed for high-performance Leica lenses, with a film resolution of 280 line pairs per millimeter.
- Ultra fine grain & super-panchromatic sensitivity: sensitive to wavelengths of light within & outside of human vision, including infrared.
- Designed to fully support filtration: offering creative new opportunities for photographers using yellow, orange, red, blue, green & IR filters.
- Offered in 4 distinctive packaging options, allowing artists to collect their favorite design.
Price and Availability
The Leica MONOPAN 50 will be available worldwide in Leica stores and through authorized dealers starting August 21, 2025.
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