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Size Matters


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The new SL appears to be a gorgeous camera in any spec. But…

My God the lens size are impressive. Where is the Leica M heritages? Even after seeing the impressive MTF graph this lens are beasts. Where is the SL size benefit over Leica S? It is a 24x36 mm sensor not a medium format.

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I am not making assumptions on visual impression. On numbers. The lens, not the camera are very, very big. Not bigger than competitors, but much bigger than M lenses. Are you hoping Leica following competitors mildly better or as always make a revolution, surprising anyone like did many time in the past?

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The SL is not an M. There's no reason to expect that its dedicated lenses are going to be M-sized.

It's an entirely different kind of camera, closer in specification and intent to the S system. 

 

Leica M lenses are made very small for their format coverage by taking advantage of the characteristics of a rangefinder body and film characteristics, which has caused a lot of problems in bringing the M to digital capture. Leica SL lenses are designed from scratch for high performance on digital sensors. 

 

It is what it is. :-)

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I am not making assumptions on visual impression. On numbers. The lens, not the camera are very, very big. Not bigger than competitors, but much bigger than M lenses. Are you hoping Leica following competitors mildly better or as always make a revolution, surprising anyone like did many time in the past?

 

The M lenses are made to be compact for the rangefinder.  

 

There was never any prospect that the SL lenses, made with AF for the larger L mount, and made without compromise, were ever going to be the size of M lenses.  They're very different things.

 

I don't think it was ever a reasonably expectation that Leica would make the AF lenses for the SL the same size as M lenses.

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Originally developed for SLR cameras in which, due to the mirror box, a long back focal distance is required for short focal lengths (the distance between the back lens element and the film plane must be considerably longer than the focal length), the lenses (retrofocus design) can be more compact and ideal for mirrorless thanks to their optimized ray path.

The prove is that lens as the Zeiss one, with a sturdy construction, autofocus, with excellent optical and mechanical performance can be very compact as seen on Sony full frame.

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The future Leica competitors are not DSLR as Canon or Nikon. These are already selling less than years ago. It will the upcoming mirrorless full frame as Sony which already a best seller. Look the size! Customers are leaving DSLR because want the same quality in a more compact size.

So dot compare with those. This is already not the target

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Umm - Technically, there is not much difference between EVIL and SLR lenses, provided one wants the camera to control the aperture. There is no real size constraint either as there cannot be any viewfinder blockage.

Thus we can expect the lenses to be in the same size range as SLR lenses - the SL lens is comparible to other SLR lenses of similar quality - and to the better R lenses.

 

The M range has always had much smaller lenses for the reasons above. It is surprising to be surprised at this long-established situation.

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Actually small lenses for FF mirrorless turned out to be a myth. The available small lenses are compromised, and the good quality lenses are not smaller than SLR lenses. Whether there is a mirror or not, the lens has to be at a certain minimal distance from the sensor to avoid oblique rays related issues. It is better that the camera body has some size/weight to counter balance the lenses, small light bodies with large heavy lenses do not mix well.

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For instance I was looking at telezooms for the Sony Alpha range, just to see if there would be a nice smallish backup lens to be used on the NEX. Forget it. They weigh in at 1500 grams more or less - and are not cheap.

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