Leica SL (Typ 601) - Mirrorless System Camera Without Compromise

[Paul J]

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The SL is an incredible design but one giant compromise at the moment and I have lost interest.

 

One slow, heavy, variable aperture zoom which is full of compromise and IMO, useless to pros. It's an f4 zoom the size of a truck.

Adapted M lenses won't have auto diaphragm. Shooting through stopped down lenses is far less than ideal, certainly not reliable.

We won't see the new Summilux until late 2016. Given the 007 and S CS lens late delivery, probably longer. Who knows for any other lenses.

 

I was very excited by this, it's a great design from the future. Usable, maybe, in the future.

[lct]

LCT, you are absolutely right. But, remember, the OM system was manual focus, and the lenses where smaller. AF lenses ad a lot of size to a basic design.

Any manual focus lens has a ratio of glass and mechanics of 80/20. 

AF lenses are more like 50/50.

 

Hi Ruben, sure AF adds some bulk to lenses but my AF Nikkors are still smaller than my R lenses and bodies can be kept smaller as Sony has proved it already. With some compromises of course but the SL601 is not free from compromises either...

[ravinj]

As a former subscriber (and possibly future one) I can suggest that learning the takeaway point or headline can be enough to encourage a subscription as well as deter one.  You may now know that M wides do not perform as well on the SL as on the M240, but you don't know whether the difference is significant or for which lenses it may matter, if any, or under what circumstances.  So someone may still subscribe to learn those details.

 

IMHO, I disagree and Sean would agree with me on this one and that's what matters - he does not want his summary or any detail of his reviews posted online and it should be respected. He (Sean) as the owner of his IP can publish the key headlines if he wants to in his newsletter or forum posts. I hope his note below included in his newsletters is sufficiently clear (emphasis mine):

 

"Most camera review sites are supported by a combination of advertising income and commissions from click-through sales of photography equipment. Reid Reviews is supported entirely by its subscribers. I want to thank you for your support and for not summarizing the information in reviews like this on forums and the like. I also know that some of you may be pressured by people who want to read the site without paying for it. Thanks for not caving into that. By making these choices, you are supporting an unusual, independent and -- I hope -- useful source of reviews for serious photographers."

 

 

All I care to know is whether SL can match M cameras when it comes to performance of M wide lenses. The answer is it does not. Whether his site is usable or he takes pictures of vegetables is a different story.  

[mjh]

Cine lenses are designed for a format like Super35... and it is very similar to APS-C.

 

It does not make much sense to develop a high resolution SL camera thinking on cinematographers. 

 

It would make much more sense a video-oriented T camera.

One would be tempted to think so but no, you cannot read out all of the sensor for 4K video, not with today’s sensors anyway. You need to cut down on the number of pixels which means that the usable area of an APS-C sensor would be considerably smaller than Super 35. Unless you employ a lower resolution sensor, which would render the camera unattractive for still photography. Some day it will be become possible to read out a high resolution sensor at high speed, but we aren’t there yet.

[lct]

IMHO, I disagree and Sean would agree with me on this one and that's what matters - he does not want his summary or any detail of his reviews posted online and it should be respected. He (Sean) as the owner of his IP can publish the key headlines if he wants to in his newsletter or forum posts. I hope his note below included in his newsletters is sufficiently clear (emphasis mine):

"Most camera review sites are supported by a combination of advertising income and commissions from click-through sales of photography equipment. Reid Reviews is supported entirely by its subscribers. I want to thank you for your support and for not summarizing the information in reviews like this on forums and the like. I also know that some of you may be pressured by people who want to read the site without paying for it. Thanks for not caving into that. By making these choices, you are supporting an unusual, independent and -- I hope -- useful source of reviews for serious photographers."

All I care to know is whether SL can match M cameras when it comes to performance of M wide lenses. The answer is it does not. Whether his site is usable or he takes pictures of vegetables is a different story.  

 

Well we all know that Sean Reid does not want do be quoted so i wonder if you are entitled to quote him extensively this way.

Anyway, as i said above, Sean is a kind guy but he can hardly change laws of copyright and summarizing others' works is allowed as far as i know in US law. Although i am a lawyer myself i am not specialized in this matter though so i agree to be proved wrong if need be.

[Jeff S]

Sean won't mind being quoted here...  https://luminous-landscape.com/some-thoughts-on-the-leica-sl/

 

Jeff

[lct]

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[...] All I care to know is whether SL can match M cameras when it comes to performance of M wide lenses. The answer is it does not. [...]

 

Do you mean that it is Sean Reid's answer? Beware there is perhaps a trap in my question.

[ravinj]

Do you mean that it is Sean Reid's answer? Beware there is perhaps a trap in my question.

 

Well it is MY answer. I am NOT a lawyer, but I agree to be proved wrong if need be.

 

>Well we all know that Sean Reid does not want do be quoted so i wonder if you are entitled to quote him extensively this way.

Yes, Sean is fine with me quoting him on public forums to not take his paid site content and post it on public forums, lawyers and copyright laws not withstanding.

[lct]

Fine! Then how do you know that the SL cannot match M cameras when it comes to performance of M wide lenses? Don't tell me that you quoted me... Although it seems that i wrote something like that somewhere. I'll try to retrieve that just in case you owe me some royalties.

[lct]

I wish i were wrong but i can hardly see how a sensor designed for T or whatever lenses can give as good results with M lenses as a sensor designed for the latters, especially with wides. There remains the hope that the Leica's sensor will be better than the Sony's but there is no free lunch as i said sorry...

 

Hey! i was sure i wrote something like that. And it was before Sean Reid's article so i think it is him i will ask some royalties.

[ravinj]

Fine! Then how do you know that the SL cannot match M cameras when it comes to performance of M wide lenses? Don't tell me that you quoted me... Although it seems that i wrote something like that somewhere. I'll try to retrieve that just in case you owe me some royalties.

 

BTW, did you write that somewhere on your paid site that uses flash and vegetables?!!!!!!!!!!  If so, please let me know and I will subscribe. Jokes aside, while I do not like Sean's flash and vegetables, I do appreciate the fact that he is a one-man show making money by creating content, hence my earlier notes.

 

Now on to the SL: Body seems to be built to last a century. The question is how long before the electronics fail and/or sensor corrosion occurs?

[otto.f]

I am very glad with the introduction of the Leica SL. 

The R people have a new home now, which is not a mobile home like the M240 was, but a real home in which you can settle for long. 

Now the M people can start to clean up their house and get back to the way they lived before: a pure optical RF without compromises and as small and lightweight as possible. 

[pico]

Sean has requested that his reviews are not broadcast for the benefit of non-subscribers.

I suggest that he speak for himself, and wear his internet-proof vest.

[pico]

Now on to the SL: Body seems to be built to last a century. The question is how long before the electronics fail and/or sensor corrosion occurs?

Purchase Chicken Little fate insurance and be happy.

[fotofool]

I've been thinking too much about this.  But, I n my view the SL is a missed opportunity.  I would have liked to see it (in the same form factor) with an S sized sensor and a new lens mount wide enough to cover a medium format sensor but at a mirrorless flange distance.  It seems this should allow:

 

• Medium format lenses sized like the new SL lenses
• Backwards compatibility with existing S lenses as well as M, R and even T lenses (all in crop mode).
• A manual focus assist mode that looks and feels like the M rangefinder, a split-prism SLR focus screen type mode and conventional focus peaking mode, all based on user preference.
• 8K video

 

Over time, such a system should be able to replace every major professional camera currently on the market from Canikon up to Phase One/Hasselblad.  The only missing pieces would be integration of phase detection elements into an imaging sensor good enough to do SLR type motion tracking (for sports photographers using Canikon) and an EVF good enough to replace legacy optical viewfinders for die-hard viewfinder enthusiasts.  The SL appears to be close on both of those fronts and in a few years an SL mark 2 might very well have been there plus some.

 

I think such a system would have again made Leica the innovator brand in the industry to which most pros and enthusiasts aspired.

 

But, for me, the T sized mount is the Achilles heel of this system.  It limits future SL's to small format sensors and lenses.  And that market segment is over saturated with outstanding SLR cameras and lenses in a similar form factor.

 

The SL inspires in me no desire to move away from my current solution:  an M for most things and a Canon 5D for sports and long telephoto with a vague desire to get a Phase One when they finally offer a smaller mirrorless version.

 

[Philinflash]

I do not understand the headline of this thread with the "No Compromise" catch-phrase.  I am incredulous to the implicit notion that there were no trade-offs made in the design brief of the SL product.  Is any product launch immune from this discipline?  Is it possibly true that no cost/benefit trade-offs were considered?  Were there no bigger/smaller. lighter/heavier, faster/slower, decisions to be made in the product specifications? Somehow, that seems as incredible as the possibility of the cameras being constructed in a zero-gravity environment.  

 

The real question  for the prospective purchaser of this model is whether or not the particular set of compromises in the SL product meets his or her requirements.  The question for Leica Camera is whether or not this set of compromises meets the requirements of enough prospective purchases to deem the product a success.  We shall see. 

 

But in my experience, Life is full of compromises and I fail to see the SL's exemption.

[Winedemonium]

I'm looking forward to trying one, and hope some demo kit arrives before the stock launch date next month. 

 

My main disappointment is lack of IBIS. This would be of real benefit for longer MF lenses, especially R lenses. But that's me. Leica has put OIS in the lenses, so they have - for those building an SL system - covered that off.

 

Second, like fotofool, I can't help but feel that given the size of the lenses that this isn't a 'pro format' sensor camera -- i.e., a mirrorless S. But then again, those two zooms would be even bigger, and in any case, the S range can still evolve into mirrorless regardless of the SL range.

 

I'm glad that the SL will include an adaptor for S lenses, as well as the others. Although the place of S lenses is on an S camera, there may be instances where travelling with just the SL, a particular S lens in the bag might have a purpose (especially while the SL 'range' is one lens!) - the 2/100 for example, might work very well on the SL.

 

R lenses of course can work from day 1 if you have both the R-M and M-T adaptors. This stack does work on the T so no reason why it wouldn't also work on the SL. Of course, the R-L adaptor will be a better solution when it arrives.

 

I still love the M - my favourite way to take pictures, but only via the rangefinder/viewfinder, and so really only 28-50 in range, 75 at a pinch. I find 90 tricky. Wider, or longer I use live view or that ridiculous EVF. I've also used the M with other adapted lenses - F, CY, etc. It all works but in the most awkward kind of way.

 

So the SL (or an alternative such as A7II or A7RII) could find a place for me, especially for very wide or long lenses. For long lenses especially, I'm glad the body is not smaller than it is. For me, that is a plus over the Sony because with a long heavy R lens, the whole thing has to feel comfortable.

 

That brings me to my second (potential) complaint. I love the very ergonomic grip of the S. Why not have that on the SL? I'm worried that it will be uncomfortable for longer periods of shooting. 

 

One of the biggest factors in favour of the camera - for me - is that viewfinder. It looks like it will be good enough, big enough, and quick enough (both lag and blackout) to not be annoying (compared to the natural benefit of optical viewfinders in M and S), and bring all the benefits EVFs do, like DOF, focus peaking, level, etc, when you need it.

 

I wish Leica well with this new range. I do think the camera looks impressive (if not especially pretty).

[ravinj]

Purchase Chicken Little fate insurance and be happy.

 

If you were twice as smart you will still be......I mean who but Chicken Little would fall from a bike and break his M9?

[fotofool]

The 24-90 SL is 20% wider and 46% longer (by my math) than the 24-70 F4 Zeiss for Somy E-mount which also has AF and OIS.  Granted it has a little more reach...  But it seems Leica have designed SLR sized lenses despite the smaller register of the mirrorless mount.  I simply can't understand this.  And it's why I speculate they could make similar sized medium format lenses for a mirrorless mount if they really wanted to.  That would have been compelling and disruptive for the industry.  This... Not so much.

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica L-Mount

[40mm f/2]

Maybe its all about sensor design. the Leica SL sensor may be quite conventional and needs a more telecentric design. Back illuminated sensors (like recent Sony A7RII) allow for wider angles and therefore smaller lenses.