The illusion of SL camera size

[Einst_Stein]

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Stupod, of course SL is much bigger than M10 and CL.

Really, let’s get the size and weight.

—M10: 139mm x 39mm x 80mm, 660g.

—SL : 147mm x 39mm x 104mm, 850g.

—CL : 131mm x 45mm x 78mm, 400g.

 

From the size dimension, they don't seem that much of difference. Especially if I realize the difference of 147mm and 139mm is only at the small EVF, not the whole height across the body, adding the external EVF actually offset that number and even ends up with smaller height on SL.

 

But why in my impression the SL is like a monster compared to M10?

 

In think it is slightly to do with the built-in grip, and largely due to the weight. But the most important is the SL lens size and weight.

 

On M10, I put on the external EVF, grip plate, and the put the M prime lens on SL.

Hmm, SL is no longer that clumsy. The weight is still significant heavier, but no worse than Sony A7II.

[gbealnz]

Good comparison, I didn't even consider the CL, as to me it's not apples with apples.

The M cameras I have had have always "appeared" smaller, and to be fair, they are, but not really significantly lighter to me, they are still "solid".

While I don't have, and am unlikely to ever have, the native SL lenses, I am finding the SL a wonderful digital back for my R lenses, and soon will try some M lenses, since they are smaller again.

Gary

[LD_50]

I’ve said much the same thing here and elsewhere.

 

If you look at the best features of the SL and engineer them into a camera body, you end up with something very similar to the SL itself.

 

- EVF- large VF size, large battery

- build quality- weight

- ergonomics- “large” size is needed for button placement

- Lens selection - “large” grip is needed for zooms and reference quality lenses

- weather sealing- size, weight

- dual cards- size

- GPS- larger battery, external antenna, size

 

The only real improvement I would look for with the SL body would be a slight chamfer on the sharp edges. This would reduce the dents the body picks up and improve comfort when shot without the RRS plate I use. Some would also prefer a grip shaped more like the Hasselblad X1D.

 

Adding an SL quality-EVF, larger battery, and a grip to the M makes it very similar in size to the SL.

 

Many have stated Leica should have made the SL the size of the Q. This eliminates the SL’s best features.

 

- EVF- Q is smaller but also not as good, big issue

- Build quality- similar so this would not be an issue

- Ergonomics- I prefer the SL so the Q size would be a downgrade, this is an issue

- Lens selection- the Q lens is recessed into the body so once you allow ILC, you lose the size advantage of the Q

- weather sealing- Q doesn’t have it so size and weight would have to increase.

- dual cards- Q doesn’t have it and doesn’t have space

- GPS- Q doesn’t have it and would need space for the external antenna

 

Comparing the Sony RX1 to the A7 with 35mm lens gives an idea of why the SL can’t be the Q.

Edited January 21, 2018 by LD_50

[Keith_W]

Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than me can answer these questions. 

 

1. The short flange distance of rangefinders and mirrorless cameras is supposed to eliminate the requirement for retrofocus in lenses, which is one reason why M lenses are so small. Why then are SL lenses and Sony Alpha lenses so large? 

 

2. The Summilux-SL 50mm is massively larger than the Summilux-M 50mm. Why the huge size difference if all it has over the M version is an AF motor? 

[mls1483]

Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than me can answer these questions. 

 

1. The short flange distance of rangefinders and mirrorless cameras is supposed to eliminate the requirement for retrofocus in lenses, which is one reason why M lenses are so small. Why then are SL lenses and Sony Alpha lenses so large? 

 

2. The Summilux-SL 50mm is massively larger than the Summilux-M 50mm. Why the huge size difference if all it has over the M version is an AF motor? 

 

1) In fact, the short back focal distance of mirrorless FF cameras results in a steep angle of incidence on the sensor. In addition, Sony A series has a thick filter stack on the sensor. This causes color fringing, corner smearing and additional vignetting. To resolve theses issues in lens dsign, retrofocal desings and large exit pupils are preferred.

The Leica M sensor has special (in case of the M10 elliptical) micro lenses on the sensor. Color fringing is elimineated in lens profiles (already in raw). So the Leica M sensor is designed to accomodate all (or better most) Leica M lenses from the past. It seems questionable, however, if a high resolution sensor in the future would also allow such small lens designs. By the way, some M lenses are indeed retrofocal designs, e.g. WATE, Zeiss Distagon 35mm f/1.4..

 

2)  Of course, AF adds size. But the Summilux-SL is also much better corrected, has less field curvature, less vignetting, etc. Better correction means more elements and groups (see OTUS), thus bulk and weight. Here an interesting review of the Summilux SL 50mm:

 

https://www.reddotforum.com/content/2017/03/leica-summilux-sl-50mm-f1-4-asph-review-a-new-standard/ 

[scott kirkpatrick]

Actually, all of the M-Summiluxes in the present product line are longer than their focal length, thus telecentric, and they get bigger the shorter that focal length.  I'm thinking of the 35, 28, 24 and 21 Summilux-M.  I would guess the 50 Summilux-M is also a bit on the telecentric side as well.  Yet all of them are small when set beside a current generation Otus, and they balance well on the SL.  The SL 50 Summilux seems to have taken the maximal character Otus-style design path to its Leica limit.  The new Summicron-SL series seems like a (welcome) return to the style of the APO-Summicron-M 50 in their design characteristics, as well as in weight and handling.

[LUF Admin]

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Removed some replies.

 

Please try to keep a constructive tone when commenting - thanks.

 

Andreas

[ramarren]

1. The short flange distance of rangefinders and mirrorless cameras is supposed to eliminate the requirement for retrofocus in lenses, which is one reason why M lenses are so small. Why then are SL lenses and Sony Alpha lenses so large? 

 

I think there's a small problem with causality in the bolded statement. A capsule history from my perceptions watching this industry and studying with fascination everything about it since 1965.:

 

The 35mm rangefinder camera was invented and whatever lens was available was used on it. At the time, most lenses were symmetric, low numbers of elements designs, and something like about a 35 mm lens was used, with a relatively small maximum aperture, that covered the format. Since there was nothing in the way between the film plane and the shutter, it didn't matter how deeply the lens went into the body cavity, so lens designers (after the notion of interchangeable lenses came to the format) simply concentrated on trying to produce the best performing lens they could as long as it fit. Most at first were small, mostly because they were still relatively slow in modern terms, but as time went on the designers saw the value of making them faster yet trying to keep them small to be consistent with the notion of the "leicht Kamera". (A beautiful example of this is the Summilux 35mm f/1.4 by Walter Mandler from the early '70s: it's just incredibly small yet very fast and very sharp, at least when stopped down to f/2.8 and beyond.)

 

Designers could get away with this because one characteristic of film that differs completely from digital sensors is that film is utter, totally insensitive to the direction of the light hitting it. A good part of the reason for this is that the thickest film emulsion is at least an order of magnitude thinner than even the thinnest digital imager sensor, and the photosensitive surface starts at the surface of the emulsion, not 90% of the way through the sensor stack (an assemblage of photosentive receptor, boxed energy well, focusing lens to reduce light loss, filter array, UV/IR cut filter, etc etc) full of refractive optics. 

 

Along the way (still in the film era), the 35mm single lens reflex was invented. This enabled the photographer to see through the taking lens and vastly increased the versatility of the 35mm camera. It complicated the body design by a hefty amount mechanically so it took basically from the first examples in the mid-1930s to the introduction of the Nikon F in 1959 to gain enough ground, become reliable, become affordable, and started to reduce size to compete with the "leicht Kamera" rangefinders and become popular, but once the benchmark of the Nikon F (and the Asahi Pentax, and the later Exakta, etc) was achieved, photographers flocked to the SLR because of its versatility.

 

Lens designers now had a problem: Although the body cavity from lens flange to film surface was deeper, there was a swinging mirror in the way which limited symmetric lens designs to focal lengths from about 35mm and up. The easiest standard lens to design that remained reasonably small, reasonably priced, and very fast was the 50mm, so that became the new "normal" standard. Longer lenses became popular on the one hand. The popular aesthetics also started to shift to wider fields of view with shorter focal lengths at some point: lens designers started taking advantage of the inverted telephoto design notions that Zeiss had pioneered back in the 1800s (but were impractical because of the number of elements involved, the lack of antireflection coatings, the size/weight/speed, and the cost. Inverted telephoto (or retrofocus) designs had the property that the optical ray trace moved the nodal points forward in the physical lens such that the rear of the lens protruding into the body cavity could be reduced to allow the swinging mirror to operate without mechanical interference—remember that some of the early SLR ultrawides like the Nikkor-Q 21mm f/4 of early-mid 1960s fame were traditional semi-symmetric designs that required mirrors to be locked up, therefore denying one of the fundamental advantages of the SLR. The inverted telephoto design solved this problem and designers flocked to it: it sold well, despite the increased prices, customers loved them, and over time they became more compact, faster, and the many imaging quality issues were address through the advent of modern antireflection coatings, better lens design, and more critically accurate, lower variance manufacturing techniques. 

 

Leica was reluctant to move to the SLR because they'd already built up a huge following and a very highly regarded portfolio of rangefinder lenses, not to mention that to build a competitive SLR system was a vastly expensive engineering development effort that would take many years to execute. But they did, and once they did they went into it with gusto and concentrated most of their new development resources on the SLR lenses to achieve the same quality that the existing, easier to design RF lens line had. Unfortunately, they started late and at a time when the storm of SLR popularity had already hit; there was vastly more competition in the market place and Leica insisted on maintaining old world values in development, construction, and quality that caused their products to be much more expensive. Some buyers valued these things to make the new system popular enough to fund its development, but it was a difficult game to play against the competition from other, far larger companies with enormously greater resources. But the Reflex system proved popular enough to survive and was truly high quality, particularly with respect to the optics. 

 

NOW we get to the digital era, finally. One of the side effects of the use of inverted telephoto lens designs was that by moving the nodal points forward relative to the physical lens elements meant that the incident angle at the corners and edges of the recording media are more orthogonal ("straight on to the sensor surface"). Film was totally insensitive to this, but as I said before digital imagers prove to be very sensitive this way. So it came out naturally that using SLR lens designs worked better on digital imagers, and since the market wanted digital cameras increasingly more than film cameras, most of the initial generations of digital cameras were based on SLRs and used SLR lenses. It was conjectured in the early 2000s that it would never be possible to use the free-form lens designs intended for the shorter register, "nothing in the way" rangefinder cameras in a digital camera. This was a HUGE deal for Leica, since despite their best efforts get people enthused about their SLRs, the RF cameras had remained a big part of their reputation and profit base for all these years. Also, the Leica users had built up fantastic collections of Leica RF lenses that they were loathe to part with for many reasons, cost being a big part of it but also quality, imaging character, etc etc. They succeeded in doing so, finally, when the M8 came out in 2006, but they were late and even that took until 2009 to achieve full frame status (M9) and, in retrospect, the next generation in 2012 (the M typ 240) finally got back to many of the values that people prised in the film Ms: responsiveness, speed in handling, etc. But the body was larger, thicker, and people complained still. Moving that forward to the M10 which comes in at close to the last generation film M's thin-ness to restore the feel was an incremental development process that took another several years. Meanwhile, Leica M users were celebrating all the new lenses' capabilities and accepting that the standard M lens designs were becoming more inverted telephoto and a bit larger with each successive generation. 

 

But Time in the digital era moved FAR faster than it ever did in the film era. Happening simultaneously with the Leica M efforts: the staple income of the photographic industry (film and processing) were being replaced by a staple income of selling new, better, more efficient, more feature filled cameras in volume, so manufacturers were incited to develop more and faster, better generations of cameras with an enormously reduced time scale. So the sensors got better and better on an almost weekly basis, the prices came lower and lower, and finally the mix of an electronic camera that was as thin as a rangefinder at a price less than or competitive with a quality SLR appeared. The lens design basis for the new generation digital cameras had already happened and designers were pumping out more inverted telephoto, near-telecentric designs at better and better quality and lower and lower prices. The vastly reduced lens mount register compared to an SLR was key to making the bodies thinner as it allowed space behind it for the thick sensor assembly and all the other complex camera electronics while also allowing more space in front of the lens flange for all the additional elements and bits needed to achieve a more orthogonal light path, high quality, etc. 

 

A marriage of technologies made in heaven! Space for good lens designs in front, and the public were in general accepting of a bulkier lens, with space behind the lens mount focused on the much thicker sensor and electronics. These 'mirrorless' cameras took a small foothold and have fairly quickly come to be the hot frontrunner in sales to a certain (largish) segment of the market. Lens designers have learned how to take advantage of all that came before and apply those designs to advantage. Lens size has grown quite a bit, but because the performance and imaging qualities have also improved by a lot, most buyers go for the quality and performance and accept the size. 

 

But the Leica M community still wants the small size in the lenses, and Leica still wants to make sure that their M lenses work compatibly between both film and digital bodies—because Leica are traditionalists in a sense, and still produce film cameras, and Leica M owners still use their M film cameras. However, Leica is not without some vision: they cancelled the R line because it was obvious that they could not compete on that basis with the big gorillas in the manufacturing industry, they built their first digital SLR line completely fresh with a different format and outstanding lenses, and finally produced their own top of the line mirrorless camera, the SL. I suspect it was envisaged as a total replacement of the R system and indeed R system lenses work beautifully on it, excepting for the loss of some SL features. The SL lenses had to be designed and built to compete with the BEST of the competition, since that's Leica's reputation, so the designers took the liberty to do so and perhaps went a bit overboard in thinking that the users would appreciate the quality with acceptance of the size required. I think the feedback has been overwhelming and they've listened: the new primes are nicely sized, about equivalent to the R lenses with a bit more length to accommodate the shorter register and provide more room for the more complex optics required for a digital sensor. 

 

So ... "The short flange distance of rangefinders and mirrorless cameras is supposed to eliminate the requirement for retrofocus in lenses" was not really a design center or part of a set of requirements from which the products grew. It was simply a matter of engineers taking advantage of things that developed in the long, incremental history of camera equipment design and development. 

 

That's a spiel that's not necessarily always 100% accurate, my apologies, but I think the gist is there. It's how I've perceived all the incredible changes that have happened in photographic equipment over the course of my lifetime synthesized together for my gestalt. I hope it helps some of the younger, less obsessively-compelled to study everything in the universe and how it ticks a little bit...

 

"In order to understand how to get to where you want to go, it's often important to understand where you came from, and why you're there."

Edited January 22, 2018 by ramarren

[scott kirkpatrick]

That's a nice history.  My own starting point with serious cameras was late 1960s with used Nikon F and FTN's.  But I thought the Exakta came well before that.  (Does anyone remember the Miranda?) An interesting effect of the first wave of SLRs was that it made, for about a decade, used Leica M2 and M3s relatively inexpensive as PJs ditched them for the SLRs.  Since I wasn't photographing professionally when digital started to happen, my own entry was through some fairly capable and very small cameras, such as the Olympus C2020, Nikon Coolpix and Ricoh GR-D  series.  Those have evolved to today's fixed and interchangeable lens 1", M43 and APS-C cameras, with physically small lenses that were like today's pancakes. 

Edited January 22, 2018 by scott kirkpatrick

[ramarren]

The first 35mm Exakta 35mm camera was the Kine Exakta circa 1936, and by the mid-fifties there was a good range of reasonably "modern" Exakta SLRs available. My uncle Paul had Exactas, because they were ideal in that era to be used for Photomicroscopy (he was a pathologist). Many of the other 35mm SLRs copied the Zeiss Ikon and Exakta SLRs in basic form and were available in the 1950s as well

 

But it was the Nikon F and the Asahi Pentax that really caused the popularity of the SLR to soar, which is why I point to them as the starting point of the SLR inflection. All the others put together that came before didn't account for 10% of the first three years of Asahi Pentax and Nikon F sales, from what I read in the historical reviews of the different brands. All the others were there, and their sales boosted by the blooming popularity of the camera type, and many of them created the innovations that were synthesized and popularized in the Nikon F and Asahi Pentax (pentaprism viewfinder, auto-return mirror, and auto-diaphragm lenses being the big innovations that made SLRs so popular). The pentaprism viewfinder optics was so important that the Pentacon and Pentax were named for that feature and it became a part of their brand identity from the moment of introduction...! 

[tpf1952]

Beautiful, articulate and accurate. Stunning contribution to the forum.

[tpf1952]

That's a nice history.  My own starting point with serious cameras was late 1960s with used Nikon F and FTN's.  But I thought the Exakta came well before that.  (Does anyone remember the Miranda?) An interesting effect of the first wave of SLRs was that it made, for about a decade, used Leica M2 and M3s relatively inexpensive as PJs ditched them for the SLRs.  Since I wasn't photographing professionally when digital started to happen, my own entry was through some fairly capable and very small cameras, such as the Olympus C2020, Nikon Coolpix and Ricoh GR-D  series.  Those have evolved to today's fixed and interchangeable lens 1", M43 and APS-C cameras, with physically small lenses that were like today's pancakes. 

 

 

I do indeed remember the Miranda, having owned a model called the "Miranda G." Poor man's Nikon F, since it had an interchangeable prism. Not anywhere as deep or sturdy as Nikon, but at the time, all that I could afford.

 

Tom

[scott kirkpatrick]

Mine (in high school) was a Miranda T, but without a rapidwinder, or instant return mirror, it was only a drop in the bucket of SLR sales.

 

Godfrey, there's overlap between "retrofocus" and "telecentric."  I don't remember hearing "telecentric" before Olympus started talking up their 4/3 standards.  Do you?

Edited January 22, 2018 by scott kirkpatrick

[UliWer]

I fear we disgress.

 

The question was, why there was an „illusion of camera size“ caused by the SL when by simple measurement it was not much larger than the M.

 

One answer was that the SL appears much bulkier, because the lenses are huge compared to the lenses for the M.

 

But why are the lenses so huge - autofocus motors built into them can only be one reason, but giving no sufficient answer for the whole difference.

 

We learn that the distance between the rear element and the sensor is not the reason - the SL body beeing not deeper than an M.

Now how can you achieve a good performance of a lens on a full frame sensor without increasing the distance between the lenses rear element and the sensor to avoid the light hitting the sensor in bad angles?

 

The answer is: increase the diameter of the lenses exit pupil! Make it as large as possible to ensure that all rays hit the sensor in a right angle. When you ensure this the distance between the rear element and the sensor may be as short as possible. The SL bayonet mount is much larger than the M-mount to make possible the large exit pupil.

 

Therefore the SL-lenses are much fatter than their M-cousins (add the autofocus technique for extra bulkiness).

 

A lens element with larger diameter usually will also be thicker than a smaller one. This adds length.

 

Now after he pushed the boundaries of the small lens design, the lens designer gains freedom: he will not put up with 8 elements for a 50 Summilux (M) but will use 11 (SL). Looking at those results one gets the impression that they are someway intoxicated by adding more and more glass to achieve what they couldn‘t during the times of liliput lenses.

 

To stabilize the huge lenses the body - even when there is no technical necessity for this - should not give the impression of being tiny: add prounounced grip bulges etc.

 

The big illusion of the SL body is that it needs to be on steroids to cope with its lenses.

[scott kirkpatrick]

Does anyone know what impact the need for fast autofocus, achieved by moving fewer, lighter elements rather than the whole lens, has had? That seems to be a good reason to go to a design with additional elements.  If the question is why are modern AF lenses so big, one contributor to the answer is that autofocus doesn't just need room for a motor, but it encourages different designs.

[ramarren]

I do indeed remember the Miranda, having owned a model called the "Miranda G." Poor man's Nikon F, since it had an interchangeable prism. Not anywhere as deep or sturdy as Nikon, but at the time, all that I could afford.

 

 

I also had a Miranda to use, the Miranda Sensorex ca 1970 or so, which was quite a nice camera. The Photo Staff I belonged to at my high school had that and I commandeered it as "my" camera before I had my own Nikon F Photomic FTn. The Photo Staff also had a Beseler Topcon Super D, which was another quite nice 35mm SLR of that time, but I used the Miranda more. 

 

I remember also the introduction of the Leicaflex SL (ca 1968) and the Alpa 10d (same time). The camera shop that I walked past every day on the way to the bus to school had them in the store one day. I went in and begged the salesman to let me play with them. (Remember that I was about 14 ... It was obvious that he wasn't going to sell one of these cameras to me, and I was just a kid at the time...) He did and I fell in love with both, but particularly the Leicaflex SL. But no way could I afford anything like that ... for the next three-four decades! I finally acquired a Leicaflex SL and a couple of lenses in 2012-2013 when the demise of the R system had caused all the used prices to plunge to ridiculously low levels—essentially, I paid $400 each for three lovely R lenses and the black '71 issue Leicaflex SL body was thrown in for nothing. That's still one of my two personal favorite SLR cameras of all time ... the Olympus E-1 of 2003 is the other. Still have both, can't bring myself to part with them.

 

Ah, memories! 

[ramarren]

Does anyone know what impact the need for fast autofocus, achieved by moving fewer, lighter elements rather than the whole lens, has had? That seems to be a good reason to go to a design with additional elements.  If the question is why are modern AF lenses so big, one contributor to the answer is that autofocus doesn't just need room for a motor, but it encourages different designs.

 

To achieve the same focus range AND imaging performance, and lighten all the necessary moving elements of the lens required for focusing to the minimum, and have space for strong barrels and supporting structure for this elements, and the electronics to operate the diaphragm, provide body feedback, etc etc ... AND increase the exit pupil size for more even, consistent performance across the entire FoV on a digital sensor .... Yeah, there's a system of linear equations in that which would likely prove the need for far more complex lens designs with a lot more elements, etc. All of which take up a lot more space, never mind the Bauhaus Style design aesthetics as well.  

[UliWer]

It's no novelty that different lens designs matter:

 

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                    IIIf with Summarit 1:1.5/5cm;                                                  Contax IIa with Sonnar 1:1.5/50mm;                               M2 with Summilux 1:1.4/50mm.

 

Perhaps the comparison is not really fair, for the Sonnar doesn't need a focussing mount as this is built into the body of the Contax - nonetheless: with equal focal length and comparable opening the Sonnar-design was much smaller and lighter allowing the less "bulky" lens.

 

 

[ramarren]

I fear we disgress.

 

The question was, why there was an „illusion of camera size“ caused by the SL when by simple measurement it was not much larger than the M.

...

 

I think the impression that the SL body is huge is mostly an effect of the lenses being very large, but the body and lens mount are definitely designed more ruggedly and with more structure to support a larger range of large lenses. In fact, when I compare the SL with my Leicaflex SL, they come out to be pretty much the same size in the hand and to weigh similarly, and the SL lenses are about at the larger end of the R lens spectrum. The Leicaflex SL, the rest of the R system cameras, and its lenses were always somewhat larger in fact and in feel than the M system cameras with some exceptions (R4, if I recall, was actually smaller in most dimensions). 

 

The other things that influence the perception of size is that there is a popular expectation that mirrorless cameras ought to be small, and it seems to me that many Leica users today really think the M stands for Leica as their prime product—they were, without realizing it, thinking that the SL was going to be the new, all digital viewfinder M. Other elements like the centrally located viewfinder in an SLR-like prism hump, the big grip, and yes just the styling, all together increase the impression of size. 

 

Of course, the first DPReview photographs of the SL at its announcement ... cell phone snaps taken too close with a smallish woman holding it fitted with the SL24-90 lens ... helped to increase the perceptions of the camera as an obese deadweight ...! 

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[UliWer]

On Saturday I saw the SL on display next to a Hasselblad X1D - the Hasselblad is smaller... Though the SL seemed to convey much more confidence that you can use it - but I have to confess that I am in no way familiar with both cameras.