SL body with dx sensor

[tom0511]

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In case anyone cares, the 35 Summilux-TL has tons of purple fringing wide open, the 50 Summilux-SL almost none. The TL and its lenses are made for consumers no matter how good the sensor gets.

 

I can confirm that the 35 TL wide open shows more purple fringing, it is still a very good lens. It would be a little much to expect a 2k lens to beat the latest reference 5k standard lens. But I dont believe a lens has to be as goos as the Summilux SL to allow professional use?

[LD_50]

$2000 is a lot for an APSC prime. That's expected with Leica but so is high performance. I have no experience with the lens but does it perform well compared to other 35mm primes like the various Fuji APSC lenses?

 

Any lens can be used professionally as that simply implies shooting for income, not any level of optical performance.

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[tom0511]

$2000 is a lot for an APSC prime. That's expected with Leica but so is high performance. I have no experience with the lens but does it perform well compared to other 35mm primes like the various Fuji APSC lenses?

 

Any lens can be used professionally as that simply implies shooting for income, not any level of optical performance.

 

IMO the  35TL is a very good lens. Its allways a combination of different factors. Sharpness, color, bokeh, and other factors. I also own the 50SL which I consider more "perfect", but IMO the 35/1.4 is still an excellent lens.

Edited September 6, 2017 by tom0511

[Chaemono]

$2000 is a lot for an APSC prime. That's expected with Leica but so is high performance. I have no experience with the lens but does it perform well compared to other 35mm primes like the various Fuji APSC lenses?

 

The Fuji 35 f/1.4 XF is one fourth the price. It's no match in terms of build quality to the 35 Summilux-TL, it's softer in the corners. The Leica is sharp corner to corner wide open. But the Fuji has lots of character. Absolutely loved this lens.

[IkarusJohn]

I can confirm that the 35 TL wide open shows more purple fringing, it is still a very good lens. It would be a little much to expect a 2k lens to beat the latest reference 5k standard lens. But I dont believe a lens has to be as goos as the Summilux SL to allow professional use?

The Noctilux on the M9 and M(240) also had purple fringing - I recall Ian Watts photographing a Jaguar parked in the sunshine outside the Leica Boutique in Mayfair - it was covered with purple fringing all over the car. Conversely, the Noctilux on the SL is almost free of fringing.

 

In any event, that tends to be the price of fast lenses used in strong sunlight or where there is a high contrast edge (snow and rock or leaves against bright clouds). Can you share any images showing the transition from in focus to out of focus and out of focus treatment?

 

I've seen some good images so far; perhaps not as good as the Noctilux or the 50 Summilux-SL, but still good.

 

Thanks

John

Edited September 6, 2017 by IkarusJohn

[thighslapper]

.... err ... might have been me ......  

 

 

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[LocalHero1953]

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.... err ... might have been me ......  

 

 L1004867.jpg

Nice shot! It's got the Leica glow and that 3D ping and that ...... (complete to taste).

Clearly a consumer lens designed for non-pro non-enthusiasts.

Edited September 6, 2017 by LocalHero1953

[IkarusJohn]

.... err ... might have been me ......  

 

 L1004867.jpg

 

 

Sorry, ThighSlapper - getting befuddled in my middle age ... where's that pinot.

[lx1713]

An SL body with a dx sensor is helpful to draw in the professionals who work mostly in the 1.5X crop factor. So it might expand the Leica's market somewhat and connect these pros to the Leica universe.

 

An SL body with a Super 35mm crop for video built for as a video centric camera could be sufficiently different for many pros who don't really need 1.5X crop for stills, to consider it as a 2nd body.

 

An SL body that can integrate an iPhone as the a monitor and network communications device can turn it into necessary documentary and news gathering tool. The TL2 seems a better fit but an SL body sells at a higher profit  

 

Nikon and Canon, good as their DSLRs are, they would be in trouble. Leica will be in the APSC, Super 35mm, 35mm, medium format, large format (Sinar belongs to Leica) space as the professionals' choice for videos and stills.

[lx1713]

The Leica M of today wasn't built in a decade or even 2. It took them a long time to define the rangefinder experience. What would be the Leica professional camera experience in 20 years be depends on their vision. So I do think a APSC version of the SL is necessary but I'm likely to be wrong 

[lx1713]

If anything, if Leica is prized by professionals, the public will price it accordingly

[wattsy]

.... err ... might have been me ......  

 

 L1004867.jpg

 

 

Indeed, not me.

 

Interesting, I did own the Noctilux for a period (at the time in 2011 when you could sell it for more than it cost RRP) and I don't remember it being that susceptible to purple fringing but maybe I didn't take enough photos of Jags in Mayfair?

Edited September 7, 2017 by wattsy

[thighslapper]

Indeed, not me.

 

Interesting, I did own the Noctilux for a period (at the time in 2011 when you could sell it for more than it cost RRP) and I don't remember it being that susceptible to purple fringing but maybe I didn't take enough photos of Jags in Mayfair?

 

 There was a very long and acrimonious argument about what 'purple fringing' actually is on the forum ....... terminated when 'CheshireCat'  ..... who was absolutely adamant it was Chromatic Aberration and nothing else .... finally vanished having irritated the rest of us to breaking point.... Personally I think the sort pictured above is partly generated by the sensor ..... which does fit with the fact that it varies from camera to camera.

 

If I recall correctly this was Lord Something or Other's chauffeur waiting whilst he collected his Leicas after their yearly service (I kid you not). 

Edited September 7, 2017 by thighslapper

[LD_50]

An SL body with a dx sensor is helpful to draw in the professionals who work mostly in the 1.5X crop factor. So it might expand the Leica's market somewhat and connect these pros to the Leica universe.

 

An SL body with a Super 35mm crop for video built for as a video centric camera could be sufficiently different for many pros who don't really need 1.5X crop for stills, to consider it as a 2nd body.

 

An SL body that can integrate an iPhone as the a monitor and network communications device can turn it into necessary documentary and news gathering tool. The TL2 seems a better fit but an SL body sells at a higher profit

 

Nikon and Canon, good as their DSLRs are, they would be in trouble. Leica will be in the APSC, Super 35mm, 35mm, medium format, large format (Sinar belongs to Leica) space as the professionals' choice for videos and stills.

Leica will not be the "professionals' choice for video and stills" so long as price remains so far above the competition, availability of new and rental equipment remains so limited, native lens selection remains so limited, and worldwide professional support remains so far behind the competition.

 

IQ is not a big differentiator, nor is the emotional response to the quality of the tool. I would perhaps still continue to shoot an M and SL for personal use.

 

If I required my camera equipment to generate income, I would be shooting Nikon, Canon, or maybe Sony for stills. If I required limited video it would be Canon or Sony.

Edited September 7, 2017 by LD_50

[lx1713]

Leica will not be the "professionals' choice for video and stills" so long as price remains so far above the competition, availability of new and rental equipment remains so limited, native lens selection remains so limited, and worldwide professional support remains so far behind the competition.

 

IQ is not a big differentiator, nor is the emotional response to the quality of the tool. I would perhaps still continue to shoot an M and SL for personal use.

 

If I required my camera equipment to generate income, I would be shooting Nikon, Canon, or maybe Sony for stills. If I required limited video it would be Canon or Sony.

 

 

Every one of your point is spot on, Leica is definitely not the go-to-professional choice at the moment.

 

However they may be building for that future. The fact that so much of their entire ranges of lenses (M, TL, SL, Cine)  can be used on the SL would mean a great deal to me as a long term investment. It means that if I purchase a lens I really like, it stays with me 10-20 years. 

 

Without profits and a sufficient market size to drive growth, they cannot offer professional level support and they need to beat Canon, Nikon and Sony who are in it big time. So it's not a walk in the park. Nonetheless, it's tougher to be Nikon and Canon at the moment then Leica. They need to build and sell at volume. A large part of Canon highly capable service departments depend on broadcast and news outlets and honed under Olympic Games conditions. If those ever shrink in market relevance then the standards for pro service will be different because the dollars will go away. So Leica should not want to reproduce the professional support workflow of Canon or Nikon if possible but give us something better.

 

And then it depends on what degree of support is needed. I used a Sinar for 12 years without having to send it for maintenance or repair and a Sinar is never the choice of the dilettante photographer. So Sinar owned by Leica tells me something of their ambitions. If they want to revive a Leica legend then long term reliability may be a key selling point. But if we're thinking Canon 24 hours turnaround, very unlikely. I remember my early days as a Canon user we used to tell one another to remember to send our brand new cameras and lenses for calibration before testing it   And flash was a joke. My press mates had Nikon flashes on their Canon cameras and ulcers. So Canon's service department is extremely well trained. It took them 15+ years before I could trust them fully.

 

Your points on IQ and emotional response to the SL points are spot on at the client pleasing end but it's nice that I finally have a zoom lens I don't have to worry about macro sharpness or poor quality at certain focal lengths. So I do value and will pay for a good tool if it means delivering quality over it's entire range.  And there are times when quality is critical, I just don't like to feel lucky that the picture looked good. I also like the fact that I can switch from shooting short video clips to 24mp stills with a touch of the switch in just a couple of seconds. It's a nicely versatile tool that removes a fair amount of uncertainty over my deliverable quality.

 

My SL done a decent job for the last 6 months. No complains from my clients. Plenty from myself    but it's par for the course for anything new. Got a small boatload of good advice from Gordon. Measure for measure, my Canons will deliver the moment better than the SL but the SL image quality is better. Time will tell if I can capture the moment as well.

 

So with the SL, I think Leica has a decent chance as the go to choice in the pro market in 20 years.

[Jared]

I think the "Clooney" camera may say a lot about Leica's direction for the next few years.  It is clear that Leica thinks their chances of attracting new customers lie in the "L" format.  It is being used for two wildly different cameras, the SL and the TL2 (albeit with different imaging circles).  One camera is intended to give Leica some credibility with professional photographers or at least mainstream advanced amateurs.  The other is aimed at well-heeled iPhone owners looking to expand their capabilities beyond the 28mm point of view.  The Clooney will apparently be somewhere in between.  But will it be a scaled-down SL or a scaled-up TL2?  Which UI will be adopted?  Which form factor?

 

My guess is that it will be a scaled-up TL2, essentially a TL2 with a moderate resolution EVF embedded.  I think Leica has a strong belief in the iPhone style interface being the future of photography for amateurs and professionals alike.  You see it even in the simplification of the S and SL control layout--no labels on the buttons for the SL.  I think they want to get away from dedicated controls for each function even for advanced amateurs and professional photographers, and, frankly, I suspect they are correct.  While I may be used to and enjoy aperture rings and dedicated ISO buttons, I doubt those who grew up using the iPhone as their primary camera see things that way.  To them most modern cameras probably appear cumbersome, clunky, and needlessly complex.  Isn't the TL2 more in line with "Das Wesentliche"?  The only controls on the camera are those required for your particular picture taking situation.  Everything else is hidden.  You don't need to learn where a control is located since they are all on the touch screen.  Elegent, yes?

 

Frankly, this could turn out to be Leica's biggest competitive advantage when going after new markets.  Industrial design is one of their strengths at the moment.  I think they will want to leverage that further.  I predict the Clooney will be just a TL2 with an embedded viewfinder because that would have a much more obvious market, in my view, than an SL with a 24mp APS-C chip.  

[Chaemono]

Frankly, this could turn out to be Leica's biggest competitive advantage when going after new markets.  Industrial design is one of their strengths at the moment.  I think they will want to leverage that further.  I predict the Clooney will be just a TL2 with an embedded viewfinder because that would have a much more obvious market, in my view, than an SL with a 24mp APS-C chip.  

 

Don't forget, it's not just new users (Fuji X-Pro2, for example) the Clooney will be aimed at. It will give M and Q users what they have been clamouring for, a compact body with a 24MP sensor to shoot M lenses with an EVF, sort of like a mini SL. Except, of course, it won't be FF otherwise it would cannibalise the M, SL and Q sales. Very clever.

[IkarusJohn]

You seem very confident what this is ...

 

What we do know is that the M is the biggest money spinner (representing the majority of turnover, apparently), but I agree with Jared that the L mount is where future R&D and investment is going to go.  When Blackstone invested in Leica, Dr Kaufmann commented that they wanted to achieve 1% of market share.  I wonder how that is going?  Certainly Leica seems to be one of the more profitable camera producers (since the M9).

 

I think it was either Dr Kaufmann or Stefan Daniel who said that the TL is a very important camera for the company.  I guess that is evident by the fact that the experts here wrote it off, yet Leica rebranded it as the TL (presumably limited cost) and they have now released the TL2.  Not sure it is fair to describe it as aimed at "well-healed iPhone owners" - I think there's more to it than that.

 

We've been discussing and hoping for, and others dreading, an M sized system camera with built in EVF for many years now (the X-Vario "mini-M" has come and gone in that time).  Whatever the next camera is, I think we can rest assured it will have an L mount, and presumably an EVF built in - whether it has an APS-C sensor (cementing the TL lens line) or a full frame sensor (relying on the SL lenses) is anyone's guess, surely.  It is unlikely, I would have thought, that Leica can pull off the Houdini trick of getting the SL EVF into such a camera - it's just too big.

 

What we do know is that Leica is committed to the L mount and to providing the best image quality with the best lenses.  Whether that's "professional" or rich amateurs or iPhone users doesn't particularly concern me.  I think we know that the core requirement for buying anything Leica is having a thick skin for high prices.  That tends to go with more than a passing interest in good photography.

Edited September 7, 2017 by IkarusJohn

[earleygallery]

Leica have a history of releasing underwhelming products - think 'mini M' which was the X Vario and the TL2 which was just a mild makeover.

 

But sometimes they surprise us - S & SL - so maybe Clooney will be an exciting product and not just a TL2 with permanently stuck EVF.

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[IkarusJohn]

Leica have a history of releasing underwhelming products - think 'mini M' which was the X Vario and the TL2 which was just a mild makeover.

 

But sometimes they surprise us - S & SL - so maybe Clooney will be an exciting product and not just a TL2 with permanently stuck EVF.

 

 

Hi James,

Why do you say the TL2 is "just a mild makeover"?

 

I can understand you saying that about the TL - I think the only thing they changed there was the name - but having had the T and now the TL2, my experience is that they are chalk and cheese.  I can't recall - do you or have you owned either?

 

Cheers

John