24-90 - reaching f4 fast

[IkarusJohn]

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I am not suggesting that this would be an optimal solution (the lens will remain what it is), but giving an option of limiting the lens to max aperture of 4.0 across the range should be easily done in a modern digital camera firmware. There is no physical ring that would create confusion or even prohibit this after all.

 

I'm actually surprised I have never seen this obvious feature. For most people this would, of course, be utterly useless and seen as compromising the performance, but those folks would be free to ignore the feature. Ten seconds of thinking would even solve the issue of overriding the setting on the fly in a customizable UI such as the one in SL.

 

(I'll add that anyone suggesting you don't just use a larger aperture than 4.0 is missing the point.)

 

Isnt it called Aperture Priority?

[-Lss-]

Isnt it called Aperture Priority?

 

Nope.

 

This is just a feature that makes things easier under high-stress situations. Allows you to work flexibly for example when doing flash photography. But like said, it is an utterly useless feature for many people.

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[mjh]

To quickly fill out the lens portfolio, I wonder why Leica doesn't just take the R optical formulas and turn them into electronic SL lenses.

For lots of reasons, the most obvious being AF. Contrast-based AF works best when the mass to be moved during focusing is small and the SL lenses are designed with this in mind – with the 24–90mm zoom there is just one rather small and light element to be moved. R lenses are not.

Edited October 25, 2015 by mjh

[mjh]

I am not suggesting that this would be an optimal solution (the lens will remain what it is), but giving an option of limiting the lens to max aperture of 4.0 across the range should be easily done in a modern digital camera firmware. There is no physical ring that would create confusion or even prohibit this after all.

There have been a couple of compact cameras like the Nikon Coolpix 8700 (2004) optionally offering a constant aperture by stopping down when zooming towards the fast end but the idea didn’t catch on.

[-Lss-]

There have been a couple of compact cameras like the Nikon Coolpix 8700 (2004) optionally offering a constant aperture by stopping down when zooming towards the fast end but the idea didn’t catch on.

Thanks for the info. Interesting to hear this was done in compacts. I have never tried this model, but I think it was one of the high-end compacts of its time.