If colleges offered camera equipment anatomy classes, this Leica lens cutaway might be one of the things you’d be examining in the lab. It’s a Leica Tri-Elmar-M 28-35-50mm sliced cleanly down the middle, revealing all the glass and pieces inside that go into making the lens.





These were actually made by Leica students as a graduation project and boxed as a “cutaway model” of the lens.

Here’s the same thing done with a Leica 50mm f/1.4 Summilux M ASPH lens:

eBay seller leicaplace sells these Tri-Elmar-M cutaways for $995.

Camera companies should do one of these cutaways for every single lens — it’d be neat to see what the guts of our favorite lenses look like!

Image credit: Photographs by Duncan Meeder and used with permission