SL90mm vs M90mm APO

[howiebrou]

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Folks,

 

Not sure which forum this should go in since it seems to sits astride a number. Moderators please feel free to move it to the appropriate location.

 

I am in a quandry and hopefully someone here has had the same issue. I currently possess nothing longer than a 50mm and want to get a 90mm for portraiture and the like. I use a MP-240, M 246 and recently a SL. All of my lenses are M lenses. The recent acquisition of a SL has opened up the possibilities of a SL AF lens. Without the SL i would not hesitate to get a used M90mm APO Summicron.

 

The M version makes sense in allowing me to use both M and SL bodies. The SL lens allows me to use AF (which could be welcome but not 100% essential) but is limited to SL use and is much bigger than the M version. Reviews i have read say the SL version is even sharper than the M Apo version.

 

So which to get? I know many will ask me which bodies I use more but since my SL is only a week old, i couldn’t honestly say although the SL EVF makes life a lot easier. May be i should make it even easier and get the SL lens but my original raison d’être for moving to Leica was the compactness. An SL with a M lens just about falls into that category, a SL with SL lens, not so much...

 

So in summary

SL 90mm: Pros; AF, IQ Cons: Size, limited to SL

M 90mm: Pros; Size, both M & SL Cons; MF, perhaps lower IQ, doesn’t fully utilize SL body

 

Thoughts welcome especially if you had faced something similar...

Edited October 4, 2018 by howiebrou

[Kim Dahl]

+1

[Chuck Albertson]

I owned a 90AA for several years, and it produces great pictures on both the M (film and digital) and the SL. I swapped it towards a 90SL when that lens became available, and to my eye the 90SL has better image quality than the 90AA, which I had long considered the state of the art. I can't use the 90SL on any of the M's, but the principal reason I got it is the autofocus. It was becoming a real hassle to consistently focus the 90AA on my M's (between the small framelines for the 90 and my deteriorating eyesight), and the 90SL takes care of that; in particular, the face/eye recognition autofocus mode on the SL is quite good, especially with the SL's viewfinder. The 90SL is much heavier than the 90AA, which itself is quite a handful for a M lens, but it balances well and is not as much of a burden as I thought it would be. The 90SL is quite expensive, as it's new and somewhat hard to find. Good used copies of the 90AA are easier to find and cheaper to buy.

If you're going to shoot a lot of portraits, the 90SL is a good bet, but be aware that it is utterly unforgiving of any wrinkle, skin discoloration, or other "flaw" in your subject's skin. That can lead to awkward silence (at best) when he or she reviews the picture. Of course it's great for any other picture for which a medium telephoto works.

It's your money.