R Vario (& tele) or Native SL Zoom

[Letin]

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Hi

 

I’m an M10 user and have been drooling over the SL for some time... 2 reasons:

 

1. I wanted to get the SL for videomaking but was kinda holding out for 10bit colour & fullframe (not s35) update in the future. Therefore reason #2 is more valid at this point.

 

2. I’m one of those who focuses faster with a manual lens. Just want to know if I were to buy the SL to complement my M10 and couple it with some decent R Vario and tele lenses, how do they compare with the native SL zooms? I’m not familiar with R lenses, any recommendation? Mostly for landscape, wildlife, events.

 

I also have some legacy and modern M glasses from 21 to 90. Beyond 90mm I’m hoping to depend on the SL

 

Any advice or recommendation? Thanks

[ramarren]

The SL90-280 lens is worth buying an SL for. It's a better lens than most of the R system lenses of similar focal length, there are only a couple that perform as well. Manual focusing with it on the SL is easy and fluid. Its image stabilization nets you a great deal more hand-holdability at longer exposures as well. 

 

I sold a huge lot of Leica R lenses and other Leica things to get it. No regrets whatever.

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[Letin]

Thanks, I have heard good things about the 90-280 and it doesn’t extend like the “compact” design on 24-90. I’d probably consider getting the 90-280 for most tele reach.

 

Since you’ve owned some R glass before, which one(s) was your favourite?

[ramarren]

Thanks, I have heard good things about the 90-280 and it doesn’t extend like the “compact” design on 24-90. I’d probably consider getting the 90-280 for most tele reach.

 

Since you’ve owned some R glass before, which one(s) was your favourite?

 

 

Still own a good bit... The Super-Elmar-R 15mm, the Elmarit-R 19mm v1, Summicron-R and Summilux-R 50, Macro-Elmarit-R 60mm, Summicron-R 90mm, Elmarit-R 135mm, and Elmar-R 180mm f/4. Also the Macro-Elmar-R 100mm with Focusing Bellows-R short mount. I'm fairly delighted with all of them; the only one that isn't quite as good a performer as I'd expected is the Elmarit-R 135mm. 

• The SER15 is one of my favorite lenses for the SL: I use it with the crop set to square for a simulated, digital Hasselblad SWC most of the time, it does a great job. 
• The Macro-Elmarit-R 60mm is pretty much my standard lens on the SL: It's what's always fitted unless I switch to another lens, backed up by the 'Lux 50. 
• The 'Cron-R 90 produces what, to my eye, is the most beautiful portraiture and short tele rendering of any lens I've owned. 
• The Elmar-R 180 is a nice option for when I want to travel light yet still want a bit of reach: It's a very compact, light tele at the limits of what I can hand-hold without stabilization easily and produces lovely results. It also works acceptably with the 2x Extender-R teleconverter as a small, light way to have a 360mm lens in the field, but I don't use it that way too often. 
• For macro and copy work, the 'Cron-R 50 for flat field work, and high magnification (up to 2.9:1), using the Focusing Bellows-R is an excellent performer. The Macro-Elmar-R 100mm on the same bellows nets a full range lens with focusing from infinity to 1:1 magnification. 
• For 'regular' ultrawide shooting on the SL, I love the old Mandler-designed Elmarit-19mm. It works just like so many of the lenses he designed, with a vast change in rendering qualities from wide open to stopped down, so you can pick your rendering to suit the subject. The later 19mm is a better performer, technically, but this old lens just does it for me. 

I don't really use many of my M lenses on the SL ... I don't like their ergonomics very much, they work better on the M series bodies. The exception to this is the Tri-Elmar-M 16-18-21 (WATE), which is actually sharper and contrastier corner to corner than either the SER15 or ER19, and much smaller too. But for aesthetic reasons, I prefer the SER15 and ER19 on the SL and use the WATE mostly on the M-D. 

 

I sold all my other long R lenses, a couple of others in the short range, and nearly all my Voigtländer lenses, a couple of unused spare R and M bodies, etc, as part of the deal that funded the SL90-280. 

Edited January 30, 2018 by ramarren

[Letin]

What an incredible and extensive summary of R lenses and their usage on the SL body, I will use this as a guide after getting the SL. Do you find yourself shooting more with an SL or M body more these days?

 

How do you compare the image quality and characteristics between the M & R glasses?

 

My only experience is limited to a few M film bodies and my first digital Leica is the M10.

 

The reason why I really wanted an SL mainly due to certain limitations with the M10. Mostly with landscape and wildlife, and product shots which require more accurate framing and previsulization.

[ramarren]

My photography has been in a bit of a lull the past year and some as I reassess what I'm doing with it. (I retired in October of 2016 and have been putting a lot of energy into other things that I now finally have time for in this past year... ) As a result of that, I've been using my M-D with 50 and 35 mm lenses almost exclusively for the past year, aside from the occasional moments when the SL and one of my more "technical" needs comes up where the SL's framing accuracy and capabilities with longer or close focus lenses allows me to get some particular photograph. 

 

This will flip over again: I have plans for the coming year that are going to require the SL and all of its capabilities be brought into play most of the time for some of my shooting. The M-D, however, is my more general purpose 'grab and go' simply because of its size and weight, the ease of carrying it. The SL requires a bit more commitment to take places; it's not a casual a thing to just drag along for the heck of it. For landscape, wildlife, and product shots, the SL is without a doubt the more proficient camera. The M-D excels at many things, but for me street, people, and travel are very high on the list. The SL is much more versatile. 

 

I don't really compare the image quality between M and R (and SL) lenses very much. They're all terrific performers, that's a given, and the differences are more nuances and the specific rendering qualities of the individual lenses in my kit. Many of my lenses, particularly the R but including the M, are quite old ... I've curated my once way-over-large lens kit down to those specific lenses that I really like a lot. There are still too many to really enjoy them all very frequently, a few get much more use than others, but I'm loathe to let go of any more of these lenses because finding replacements, should the need ever arise, is both difficult and expensive. 

[Letin]

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Ramarren, How do you like the M-D? it was the first camera I considered before purchasing the M10, for the smaller body "despite" the screen. Your extensive experience on these M & SL bodies reassure my confidence in exploring a different type of Leica gear, it opens a new realm of photography from tele zoom to several interesting vario as well as macro R lenses. I'm very thankful for your insights.

 

I totally agree with you that buying Leica gear should not be a hasty decision, it'd be very expensive for a change of mind. So far I've found no regrets with the 4 legacy and 4 modern M lenses purchase so far, like you said, it's hard to find a Leica lens (German & Canadian made) that is inferior.

[ramarren]

The M-D is, for me, the absolute best digital Leica M.

 

Without a screen on the typ 262 body, it is barely over 1mm thicker where my hands hold it than an M10. The lack of screen and buttons (since it has no menus or other features that need a control interface other than to set the clock and perform a firmware update) leaves much more grippable surface such that it feels slimmer and more like my M4-2. I prefer its basic controls to the M10 as well: the ISO setting is natural and perfectly suited to my hands, etc. 

 

I compared the M-D and M10 at the Leica Store, took home exposures from both with the same (my) lens too. At any ISO up to 3200, there was no difference that I could detect in the quality of the raw files; the gains of the M10 were at "stratospheric" ISO settings above that, which I only rarely use. Shot to shot performance seemed on par. The biggest gain in the M10 are the new viewfinder optics ... If Leica put those into the M-D body, that alone might be enough to update from my M-D, but I doubt they ever will. I imagine that they'll do a M-D-like variant of the M10 instead, which is less attractive to me due to the different control layout. 

 

I'm so thoroughly delighted with the M-D, and the SL, that the "equipment buy and sell" hobby of former years is gone: there's no motivation to do that at all anymore. Now I have to actually concentrate on making photographs—Heavens, the thought of that!

 

 

Well, it's not THAT difficult when you have a nice model to work with, eh? LOL! 

Edited February 4, 2018 by ramarren