Working with the Leica 90mm Summicron L

[MikelM10]

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I mentioned earlier in this thread that I'd received a defective SL90.  It was wisely suggested I hold judgement and await Leica's response.  Here it is: they have a rep flying to Germany for the event later this week.  He will take the lens with him, and Leica will repair and return it with the rep, who will then send it to me.  When I pushed back, they offered a refund.  The odd thing is that they can obtain no replacement lens due to non-availability.

 

What is your read on this course of action.  Would you be comfortable with a lens that shipped defective, and then went back to the factory for repairs before being returned to you as new?  Not my preference, but the alternative is no lens for the foreseeable future.  Any insights or similar experience outcomes would be helpful and appreciated.

Frankly I would be very annoyed just as you are in the first instance, mainly because of the frustration of having waited a significant time for a lens to be available and having built up a certain expectation of it only to have your expectations dashed by a defective lens - especially from Leica!

 

That said, after that initial disappointment - it seems to me that they are at least going out of their way to get it remedied as quickly as possible. Ideally you would want the satisfaction of an immediate replacement but given that is not possible ( not entirely convinced they couldn't get you a lens as a matter of priority ) I would run with their offer. You could take the view that your lens will get at least the best attention by going back to the factory and maybe even closer attention to final QA than normal given the circumstances.

 

If this is a UK purchase, there are legal obligations where an item is not of 'merchantable quality' and a lens that doesn't produce sharp images would obviously not qualify as of sufficient quality. That's a long road for you if the retailer concerned does not recognise their responsibilities under UK law and therefore refund you where they cannot provide a suitable replacement, but you could try that approach if there is no other course available.

 

I hope it get s fixed quickly for you......

Mike

[mmradman]

With new product announcements today it seems there are new opportunities on the horizon; if Leica can't offer to replace faulty lens they may be able to offer a wrist watch instead.

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[lldd]

Thanks everyone for the feedback.  While I'm not interested in a watch, one does wonder why a company who can't keep existing products in stock is adding to their overall catalog of products.

[wizard]

I'd go for it (the repair that is, not the watch). My experience with Leica is that they will give special attention to a lens (or camera) in a situation like yours, and will make sure the lens is fully up to or even exceeding spec in every way.

 

Andy

[lldd]

Latest update.  The store I bought the lens from had someone going to Germany last week, so sent the lens with him.  It was delivered to the Leica techs, rebuilt, and now I'm waiting for the store employee to fly back with the lens.  Won't be until near the weekend, and I won't have the lens until next week.  Why on earth they can't overnight the lens from Germany to my home is beyond me.  I have to wait until the store rep is done in Germany (doing what, a vacation, a beer tour?), flies home, then packages the lens and ships it to me.  The rep kept telling me that the lens was "hand delivered to Leica".  This matters because why?  So far not a single apology, no sense of urgency, and certainly not spending one extra penny on shipping the lens instead of routing it through someone who was already making the trip.  Color me not only unimpressed, but frankly pissed at this point.  I was also given the "it has two motors so it sounds different than other lenses" speech.  If I was buying from Sony, or Canon, or whoever, I'd have a new lens by now.  I'm highly impressed with the SL, but if it's this hard to get product, even months after release, it may be time to rethink the entire system.

[lx1713]

 Color me not only unimpressed, but frankly pissed at this point.  I was also given the "it has two motors so it sounds different than other lenses" speech.  If I was buying from Sony, or Canon, or whoever, I'd have a new lens by now.  I'm highly impressed with the SL, but if it's this hard to get product, even months after release, it may be time to rethink the entire system.

 

 

I have a theory about Canon's excellent service which I enjoy very much  In the past, my Canons 1D series and others had persistent quality issues, there were piles of cameras at the repair center whenever I was there but Canon and their very admirably patient service staff always tried their best. Most of their staff have decades of service. It's that beginning where they started to take share from Nikon and didn't give up on their service standard despite frankly their lower quality standard of manufacturing. They just got better at repair and improving their engineering designs at the same time. Being a mass manufacturer means more practice at servicing and resources available. 

Leica is too small to match that level of service but I do want it to be better too.

[trickness]

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Gotta say, this thread is making me rethink any purchases of native SL lenses. Maybe I'll just stick to M glass, no motors and you can actually get the damn things.

Edited June 20, 2018 by trickness

[thighslapper]

Gotta say, this thread is making me rethink any purchases of native SL lenses. Maybe I'll just stick to M glass, no motors and you can actually get the damn things.

 

I suggest you search for threads on defective SL's and SL lenses.......

 

Considering the camera is 2.5 years old and the the zooms have been around almost as long you will find surprisingly few reports of malfunctions and repairs ....... in contrast to M lenses and M bodies that are frequently in need of re-adjustment and attention. 

 

From my personal experience and reports here and elsewhere I would be inclined to think the SL system is as reliable, if not more reliable, than most .......

[Guest VVJ]

If I was buying from Sony, or Canon, or whoever, I'd have a new lens by now. 

 

Perhaps... but I had an early adopter Fuji X-T1 with mushy buttons, Leica USA (contrary to other countries) never acknowledged the problem and never offered a fix, not even against payment, one of the reasons I don't shoot Fuji anymore even though product wise I was very pleased...

 

That being said, I certainly understand (and share) your frustration with certain elements of Leica's corporate culture...

Edited June 21, 2018 by JorisV

[lldd]

Update: The lens suddenly showed up today, which was earlier than promised.  Opened it, mounted it to the camera, sounds exactly the same.  I can hold the camera at arms length and easily hear it when it focuses, and feel a bit of vibration in the camera at the same time.  Called the dealer, got the two motor speech again.  They will let me return it, but trying to assess the issue before doing so.

 

Can anyone who has this lens (or the 75) speak to how your lens sounds when focusing?  Especially when it hunts, and is moving through the full focus range?  I've never had a lens make this kind of noise when focusing, and I thought one of the features was that it is supposed to be relatively quiet (not silent).

 

Thanks for any insight anyone can provide.

[Fedro]

I did try both the 90 and 75 extensively.

 

That version of the 90 that I tried also sounded like a truck when it was hunting (and it did hunt a lot, in low light for example). It would vibrate too, like yours

 

The 75 - which I picked in the end - is not perfectly silent when hunting, but a lot less noisy than the 90 I tried and it also seems faster when focusing which helps limit noise. It does not vibrate noticeably 

 

All in all I don't think that AF on either is as fast and quiet as the 24-90 - at least the two lenses I tried - but in my experience the 75 had better AF

[thighslapper]

In order of noise ...... 24-90=90-280<16-35<50/1.4<75/2

 

The 50/1.4 was noticeably noisier than the zooms initially but this improved significantly with the last firmware upgrade. 

 

The 75/2 is 'noisy' in comparison to the zooms and the 50/1.4, but the lens groups clearly move much further between the nearest focus distance and infinity than the other lenses. There is some slight vibration and 'roughness' compared to the others, but until you mentioned it I really wouldn't have paid any attention to it ..... I've used plenty of AF lenses which are noisier. Although the user might notice it, I doubt if the subject would. It is only really noticeable when moving from subjects with a big disparity in distance ..... minor movements are fast and almost silent. 

 

OK, so it's not silent ...... I personally don't care and the image quality from it is unsurpassed ..... 

 

The Sigma 135/2 with the Nikon Novoflex AF adapter feels and sounds like it is going to rattle itself to bits when focussing .... but again the image quality is so good I am happy to put up with it. I suspect a lot has to do with the fine tuning of the AF algorithm, and like the 50/1.4, the 90 & 75 may improve in future ......

Edited June 21, 2018 by thighslapper

[leica5]

I did not notice any unusual noise when operating 90/2 SL,lens; Operation was smooth and i could hear  faint;internal lens movements so slightly when being focused.

 

I did attend a leica SL workshop last month and i used instructors lens for shoot,again no issues whatsoever and that prompted me to buy the lens.I received the lens from leica store last week.

 

Sami

[caissa]

The SL 90 is neither as fast nor as quiet as the SL 90-280 (the perfect lens for me).

But it is quieter than the shutter noise - so probably not to be perceived by a subject/model. And maybe it gets optimized with progressing firmware like the SL 50.

[jrp]

Well I finally got hold of one. Some first impressions:

 

* feels compact relative to the zooms, but bulkier than other lenses of similar focal lengths in other systems

* amazing how much difference the IS makes on the zooms when looking through the viewfinder. (I’d forgotten I had it on.)

* so the f2 of the summicron is for depth of field only, rather than keeping the shutter speed up to avoid shake

* I have not yet examined the images in detail, but the sharpness falloff does seem to be a bit faster than the zooms

* I am assuming that there is no CA, a weakness of the otherwise stunning likes of the Zeiss Planar / Milveus 100mm f2 or M-Summicron. (But that lens focuses closer and the software was not as good at removing it as it is now when I last used the lens.)

* AF speed seems OK. Not the fastest I have experienced, but not noticeably sluggish, like the 50mm. I haven’t yet tried on what this lens was designed for: portraits

* pretty much silent

* eyewateringly expensive

 

So get this lens for ergonomic reasons, if you need a compact AF lens, rather than a more compact still manual lens that might focus even closer. If you need to blur out the background in a pleasing way, this is the way to go, although the zooms are not at all bad.

 

The zooms are obviously much more flexible (so even if they don’t perform quite as well in theory, in practise you may be able to get a better result by not having to crop, or not be able to notice the difference at 24Mpx). The IS buys you several stops. The zoom also focuses closer.

 

So, the missing ingredient in this note is an assessment image quality ... which takes a bit more time to experience and characterise.

[hofo100]

So, the missing ingredient in this note is an assessment image quality ... which takes a bit more time to experience and characterise.

 

 

I posted this link to a page created with Adobe Spark already in the SL image thread, but since folks interested in the 90SL summicron might follow this thread - Did a photowalk along the river Rhine in Cologne lwith my daughter as model last week - all pics are with the 90SL at open aperture. 

 

Regards, Holger

[jrp]

Well you have a beautiful daughter. Congratulations. The Adobe Spark seems to compress the hell out of your images, making them look rather grungy, which may not have been your intention. At least to my eye it doesn’t suit the subject matter.

[hofo100]

 The Adobe Spark seems to compress the hell out of your images, making them look rather grungy, which may not have been your intention.

 

 

Not sure what the issue is - I sometimes realize that the spark page quality is depending on the bandwidth, as if they would stream.

[AZach]

The AF of my 90/2 SL is quick and sound subdued, images leave nothing to desire.

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[Donzo98]

The AF of my 90/2 SL is quick and sound subdued, images leave nothing to desire.

 

Mine too...