henning

I haven't read the whole thread, so some of what I'm saying will likely already have been mentioned (and/or refuted). In the mid 90's we trekked around Annapurna for 3 weeks. We had a full support crew for tents, cooking etc., but I carried all photo gear at all times. These were film days, so a lot of bulk and weight were dedicated to film. I took 2 M6's with 21, 35, 50 and 90mm lenses as well as a Noblex 150 and a Mamiya 6 with 3 lenses, tripod and light meter, etc. Lots of stuff. I took lots of photos and don't really regret taking all that stuff. I used the 21 relatively seldom, it was probably the least used item. The Noblex was much better suited for the wide views. I used the 35 the most, just like for most of my life for personal photography and the 90 next. We climbed as high as 5000m, but on the way, as one of the locals said, every day it's 'a little bit up and a little bit down'. Usually meaning it was about 1000m+ up a steep path, then down a 1000m+ steep path. Nothing was flat, and the 1000m up and down happened multiple times many days. After the first day I regretted everything; the weight as well as the whole trip. The next day was better and after three days it was all fantastic, as I was acclimatized by then and had no trouble with the strenuous pace or the altitude. Now, of course I would take different gear. In your case, I would add a small 90, preferably the Macro-Elmar but the next best would be the App-Skopar. Their performance is surprisingly fairly similar but the Macro-E is smaller and can focus closer. Get and take extra batteries; the M10 batteries don't last that long. I don't know how good your recharging opportunities will be. The camera will be fine in -20 or even -40C° weather, as long as you can tuck it under a top layer between shooting opportunities to keep blowing snow off it. Try not to bring it directly into a warm space in one go; moisture will condense and freeze on various parts and make it inoperable for a while. I've shot quite a bit in -40° weather with Leicas since the 60's, including digital M8, M9, M240 and M10 and all worked fine when used continuously in the cold for up to an hour. After that I warmed them up (slowly). Film was tricky, as it got brittle and cameras could tear it at the sprocket holes, and rewinding could be an issue. Larger formats had more and different issues.

Actually, the light is hitting the sensor at exactly the same angle in each case, as the lens would not function otherwise. I am surprised though that you find the performance better on the SL than on the M10-R. The best that can usually be hoped for is that there is no worse performance on the SL (or other non-M cameras) than on the M, and that happens usually only with lenses longer than 50mm. I don't have an 18mm SEM and have sold my 18 Distagon, so only have the WATE for 18mm at the moment. When I did try the SEM it was better than the WATE and the Distagon while the latter 2 were effectively equal for my purposes. In any case, the 18 SEM is an outstanding lens, and I'm sure is better than a strong retrofocus lens designed over 30 years ago.

I have no idea about acquiring an old 50 SLX lens cap, but if you just want something that works, inexpensive snap-on 43mm lens caps are available. For various lenses, I've bought 37, 39, 41, 43, 46 etc. mm lens caps and stashed the originals away, especially the Leica ones. I don't know how they're doing now, but Heliopan used to make a huge variety of filters in some very odd sizes. I'd order them (usually through a store in Germany) and then wait, as apparently they made them in batches or via some other plan and then have them shipped to me here in Canada. I just looked at an old pdf pricelist I have, and they produced filter for black and white in 37 different sizes between 19 and 127mm in diameter, plus special order. I'm attaching the pdf here for your enjoyment; I only have it in German, unfortunately. Good luck.Heliopan Filter Preisliste.pdf

Fully agree. As far as tilt lenses are concerned, things are more complicated. But on the other hand, I really hate it when I find I have a tilt lens that I thought wasn't.

Since the Canon TS-E lenses are some of the most common, I should mention that the procedure to use them at other than wide open apertures is to put them on a Canon body, set the aperture to whatever you need and then press the shutter button to close down the aperture and shut the camera off during the exposure. Then dismount the lens and put it on your Leica. The aperture will remain closed down. I tried this with my 17 TS-E, the 24 vII and the older 90 and 5D mkII. Whether this would work with other lenses/bodies I don't know. In any case, the results were disappointing and I never used them this way for anything serious.

I've had and used many shift and tilt shift lenses over the past decades due to my architectural photography business, but most of them have now become irrelevant. For shift, the Nikkors, all 35mm and 28mm versions, are easy to use. I still have a 28/3.5 but don't use it on the M's, but have it mounted on a 28/220 Roundshot (film). I've had various Canon TS-E lenses from 17 to 90, but you really need an adapter that has electronics and batteries to allow aperture changes, otherwise you need a Canon body at hand to let you set an aperture before mounting it on a Leica; a cumbersome process. I've tried the Super-Angulon 28 for the R, but it has too much distortion at maximum shift to be useful. Same for the Pentax 28 and Olympus 24. These 3 are also not sharp enough when shifted to be recommended. There are many more shift options and some tilt options for 35mm and medium format cameras, but few new formulations for digital, and if you're not going for maximal quality lens shift is a bit pointless compared with the easy perspective corrections available in software. One of the better lenses that also doesn't cause too many problems is the Canon FD 35/2.8 TS. Optically it's one of the best older lenses, much better than the Nikons for example, plus it has a significantly larger image circle. One of the main arguments against using shift lenses on digital cameras is the well known bugbear of light hitting the sensor at angles it wasn't designed for. Colour casts can be a big problem, without easy solutions. The shift and tilt-shift lenses vary in producing this colour shift, but the Canon FD 35 is one of the better behaved ones, in part because of the longer focal length.

I have the WATE right now as well as the Leica/Zeiss Hologon 15/8. The latter is useable (barely) but hardly up to modern standards. I had the 18/4 Distagon for a number of years but finally sold it as the WATE at 18mm is essentially as good, is more compact and more versatile. I've had the first Voigtlander 15/4.5 since it came out, and it was and is quite decent, and except for the vignetting very useable on a Monochrom. Likewise the first 12/5.6. I still use both my M10M. I also tried the VC 15/4.5 v.III but gave up after the 3rd try; all had serious decentering or tilt. I had the 10/5.6 for a while, but when the Laowa 9/5.6 came out I got that; it's much better than the VC 10mm in my experience. So: hard to say what may be 'best'. None are 'APO' quality, most are bulkier than I would like and of course, if you haven't used extremely wide lenses before they do take some getting used to. If you have good 21 right now, you might consider a 15mm Voigtlander. If you don't plan to use it on a colour capable digital M, I would suggest the first version of the 15, as it's tiny, inexpensive especially on the used market and has as it's main downside on a Monochrom no rangefinder coupling. But then, it's a 15! Scale focussing a 15/4.5 is about as easy as it gets My next wide-angle foray is likely to be Laowa's 12-24/5.6 zoom, which apparently is quite decent and not at all like the 10-18, which is definitely not worthwhile.

Will Leica Miami be allowed to carry this?

True, but they have this incredible buffering time (or whatever) every 36 to 38 exposures. Very disconcerting, and has certainly cost me lots of good shots over the decades.

When the M4-2 came out, I swiftly traded in my M5 which couldn't accept Fuji film (among other issues) and also got a new Summicron 35. About a month later we were driving down to California by way of Crater Lake in Oregon, and while I was clambering around on the lip of the crater the camera fell. Seems the strap eyelet had left the housing. A couple of bounces on harsh old lava and it came to rest. Lens and camera were not happy, but definitely impressed, each in a couple of places. When I got back to Vancouver Leica gave me a new lens and wanted to give me a new camera, but I got my money back and bought another M4 to go along with my other 2. The M4-2 had a couple of other issues as well, and I knew that I would never fully trust it again. I've dropped and/or banged up other equipment over the many years of photography, but that was probably the worst result.

...and making absolutely sure that the camera+lens falls correctly, making first contact with the lens hood. Direction, speed, orientation and angular momentum have to be correctly accounted for, so take your time. Have your calculator out (but don't drop it)!

i'm quite sure Monsieur N. Niepce did his most famous work wide open 😁. Intentionally, not that he had a diaphragm available on his lens.

In the 80's I once took a bin of filters(used, and with permission :-)) home from a camera store and tested them for quality. Mainly for planar parallelism and to a small degree, reflections. As expected, filter with poor or no coatings, which were quite common in that batch of about 50, caused extra flare and reflections to some degree or other. The surprising thing was that in that batch over 50% of the filters did not have perfectly parallel surfaces. This is fairly easy to check by putting them on a dark surface and shining a small or point source at the from about 45 degrees and turning them while watching the reflection. If the reflections from the front and the back surfaces move with respect to each other, the surfaces are not parallel. Those filter should be tossed out immediately. The worst ones were naturally older ones and Tiffen and Harrison & Harrison were the worst. I don't think any of the latter passed. Fortunately the company seems to have gone but they did supply many movie companies. Very wide angle and long telephoto lenses fared the worst with bad filters, while 50-90mm lenses weren't affected too much. That applies both to filters with poor coatings and to ones with geometric problems. Current filters are a lot better, and I rarely see bad filters, but I have come across some in the last 10 years. Watch out. In practice I use lens hoods but no filters, unless for a specific reason. Extra dusty, sandy, salty or other airborne environmental conditions always need filters, an of course occasional CPL, ND and such get used as well. At present one of the cameras I have is the M10M, and I find that the spectral response is very close to that of Tri-X with a medium yellow filter, so I usually don't use a filter on that camera. Only orange, red and sometimes yellow-green. I have been shooting since the 50's and Leicas since the 60's. Lots of other systems and formats and professionally. I have never damaged a front element in any way.

At the moment I happen to have one 50 for each (common) maximum aperture, or close to it: a 50/1 Noctilux, 50/1.4 ASPH, 50/2 Apo-Lanthar, 50/2.8 Elmar-M and 50/3.5 Nickel Elmar from 1931. I've had about 15 or 20 other 50's and used a lot of others since 1962. All have their place. And I mostly shoot an M10M right now. Overall, the best technical performance and the most versatile lens with great technical performance is the f/1.4 ASPH. Good in so many ways, and not overly large for what it is. I've tried the 50 APO, and in practice it and the Apo-Lanthar are pretty much the same, and both are sharp from wide open and give a clarity to the files that the 1.4 ASPH never quite achieves, although from f/2.8 on it is quite close. The others are obviously out of the running in this regard, although they certainly have their place. I also am not too happy with the size and appearance of the Apo-Lanthar, but I often use it looking past it as it were. I put a 49 to 46 step down ring on it and then an inexpensive 46mm vented hood, gluing it to the step down ring in place so the vents are in the proper alignment. This causes the least viewfinder intrusion with good protection/shading but hardly improves the looks. But again, the files are worth it, when clarity over the whole field is desired. I doubt I'll ever get the 50 APO. That kind of expenditure I'll save for the 35 APO ASPH which I'll get when they're a bit more common in the wild. And then I go home, exchange it for the Noctilux, and I look for something completely different....

Although not a big 28mm shooter, I've had a few. A Summaron in the 60's as well as a Hector for a short while, then an Elmarit v2. When the M8 came out I got a Summicron ASPH (v1 of course) and I tried out the cv f/1.9 and first version f/2. The f/1.9 was quite good but not outstanding, whereas the first Ultron f/2 was definitely unfortunate, as it had severe focus shift and was not better than the f/1.9 otherwise. I consider it one of the few duds in the CV line. The Elmarit ASPH was decent, but seemed rather harsh. The Summilux is great optically, but a lot bigger than I am willing to put up with for a 28. So I still have the Summicron ASPH, but will probably exchange it sometime for the current CV Ultron f/2, which is outstanding in most regards that I'm interested in, except for the stronger vignetting than the Summicron. In most regards it outperforms the Summicron, even the v2 noticeably and is a lot smaller. My use at this time is mostly on an M10M, a little bit on an M240 and also a bit on some film M's.