New Summarit-M 2.5 lenses

[WPSteele]

The Leica website has just posted a new series of Summarit-M lenses to be delivered starting in November. They seem to be aimed for use on the M8 - the images of them seem quite compact. And they feature spherical elements only. Sounds like the prices will be user friendly as well. dpreview has the lead-in news article. Hope this makes the M8 a bit user price friendly and gives Zeiss a run for their money.

[Kent10D]

There is a very long thread on the new lenses that has been moved to the Customer Forum, here:

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-...summarits.html

[ken_tanaka]

DPreview announcement: "Deliveries of Leica Summarit-M lenses are scheduled to begin at the end of November 2007."

Yeah, right. Leica is so under-staffed and over-tasked that I'd be surprised to see many, if any, of these lenses available before fall 2008. I also seriously doubt that they'll carry reasonable pricing; Leica doesn't know how to charge less that 4 figures for anything,

There are some performance proof DNGs on the site now.

[MP3]

Note the difference in min. focus distance - 0.8m, 0.8m, 0.9m, 1m.

Back to classic formula, these min. focus distances are bit like their '60s ancestors.