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Arrival and Features of the CL2


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On 5/20/2020 at 11:45 AM, ramarren said:

If I needed a faster, autofocus prime lens for the CL, I'd buy an SL lens of the appropriate focal length and speed. There are 35, 50, 75, and 90mm Leica lenses with f/2 or faster in native mount, and there are offerings from Sigma as well and Panasonic as well. It's really that simple. 

Oh, you don't want to spend the money, or you want something smaller and lighter, or you want something ... different? To quote the old song, "You can't always get what you want."

Price considerations aside, the SL primes are super-heavy and would defeat the purpose of using the CL, at least for me. 

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If I put a SL Summicron next to my TL35 f1.4 I think I see what a 50mm 1.4 would look like in a TL lens. It'd shrink for the sensor and grow for the aperture and end up about the same size. Net result is a lens about the size of the 75mm SL lens and *maybe* a grand cheaper. If you can afford one you can probably afford the other as an option.

Gordon

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2 hours ago, robgo2 said:

Price considerations aside, the SL primes are super-heavy and would defeat the purpose of using the CL, at least for me. 

The TL35 isn't exactly small. And longer lenses are going to be bigger all other things being equal.

The wider SL lenses are bigger due to keeping the same body shape as a design thing. But a 50mm will be bigger than the 35 and a 60 bigger again.

Gordon

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20 minutes ago, FlashGordonPhotography said:

The TL35 isn't exactly small. And longer lenses are going to be bigger all other things being equal.

The wider SL lenses are bigger due to keeping the same body shape as a design thing. But a 50mm will be bigger than the 35 and a 60 bigger again.

Gordon

Weight comparison

APO-Summicron-SL 35/f2  26.46oz/750g

Summilux-TL 35/f1.4  15.1oz/428g

From personal experience, I know that carrying the CL with the TL 35 all day long is not uncomfortable or burdensome, and I'm not exactly young. I'm pretty sure that I would not feel the same about the SL 35 on the CL for a whole day, though others would probably not mind at all. More power to them.

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3 hours ago, robgo2 said:

Price considerations aside, the SL primes are super-heavy and would defeat the purpose of using the CL, at least for me. 

Hmm, not the SL primes. Let's take as example the APO-Summicron-SL 90mm f/2 and contrast it with the Leica Summicron-R 90mm f/2 on weight and size, another all-metal construction lens. 

Summicron-R 90mm f/2:
Dimensions (ø x L) - 70 x 62.5 mm  / 2.76 x 2.46 in 
Weight - 1.23 lb / 560 g 

APO-Summicron-SL 90mm f/2:
Dimensions (ø x L) - 2.87 x 4.02" / 73 x 102 mm
Weight - 1.54 lb / 700 g

So the SL lens is 33mm longer (kind of natural since the L-mount register is nearly 25mm shorter than the R-mount register) and about 4 ounces heavier. But perhaps that isn't compelling ... After all, the R lenses are all secondhand, you need adapters, etc etc. And you want autofocus 

What's should be more compelling is comparing the SL90 to the Fuji XF 90mm f/2 lens, which has more composite material in it than the Leica lenses and only covers APS-C:  

FUJIFILM XF 90mm F/2
Dimensions (ø x L) - 2.95 x 4.13" / 75 x 105 mm
Weight - 1.19 lb / 540 g

The Fuji lens, to cover APS-C only, is just a little lighter than the SL 90 which covers FF, and is otherwise in the same ballpark when it comes to size. 

Where these two autofocus, dedicated mount lenses differ most is that the Leica lens costs $5000+, where the Fuji lens costs $1000 (not considering performance or the FF+APS-C vs APS-C only issue). I simply can't believe that a few mm and 200g on a fast, 90mm lens will make all that big a difference, but I can easily believe that $4000+ will make a BIG difference. 

Would a Leica APS-C only TL 90mm f/2 lens be substantively smaller, lighter, and less expensive than the SL90? I doubt it would be significantly smaller and lighter, unless they went with a lot of composites like the Fuji lens, and it *might* be a little less expensive, but I doubt seriously it would compete against the Fuji's $1000 price by a couple of thousand dollars at least. 

How many of them do you think Leica would sell to recoup the development costs and generate a reasonable profit?

G

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5 minutes ago, ramarren said:

Hmm, not the SL primes. Let's take as example the APO-Summicron-SL 90mm f/2 and contrast it with the Leica Summicron-R 90mm f/2 on weight and size, another all-metal construction lens. 

Summicron-R 90mm f/2:
Dimensions (ø x L) - 70 x 62.5 mm  / 2.76 x 2.46 in 
Weight - 1.23 lb / 560 g 

APO-Summicron-SL 90mm f/2:
Dimensions (ø x L) - 2.87 x 4.02" / 73 x 102 mm
Weight - 1.54 lb / 700 g

So the SL lens is 33mm longer (kind of natural since the L-mount register is nearly 25mm shorter than the R-mount register) and about 4 ounces heavier. But perhaps that isn't compelling ... After all, the R lenses are all secondhand, you need adapters, etc etc. And you want autofocus 

What's should be more compelling is comparing the SL90 to the Fuji XF 90mm f/2 lens, which has more composite material in it than the Leica lenses and only covers APS-C:  

FUJIFILM XF 90mm F/2
Dimensions (ø x L) - 2.95 x 4.13" / 75 x 105 mm
Weight - 1.19 lb / 540 g

The Fuji lens, to cover APS-C only, is just a little lighter than the SL 90 which covers FF, and is otherwise in the same ballpark when it comes to size. 

Where these two autofocus, dedicated mount lenses differ most is that the Leica lens costs $5000+, where the Fuji lens costs $1000 (not considering performance or the FF+APS-C vs APS-C only issue). I simply can't believe that a few mm and 200g on a fast, 90mm lens will make all that big a difference, but I can easily believe that $4000+ will make a BIG difference. 

Would a Leica APS-C only TL 90mm f/2 lens be substantively smaller, lighter, and less expensive than the SL90? I doubt it would be significantly smaller and lighter, unless they went with a lot of composites like the Fuji lens, and it *might* be a little less expensive, but I doubt seriously it would compete against the Fuji's $1000 price by a couple of thousand dollars at least. 

How many of them do you think Leica would sell to recoup the development costs and generate a reasonable profit?

G

I'm not sure why you're talking about 90mm prime lenses, which are equivalent to 135mm focal length on the CL. Not a big demand for that focal length these days. As I recall, you were the one who raised the idea of buying an SL prime to use on the CL. Of course, if Leica makes lenses for APS-C sensors, they will be smaller and lighter than comparable lenses for FF sensors, and that would be attributable to materials as well as size. Some TL lenses are optically superb, but the build quality is not up to that of SL lenses.

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25 minutes ago, robgo2 said:

I'm not sure why you're talking about 90mm prime lenses, which are equivalent to 135mm focal length on the CL. Not a big demand for that focal length these days. As I recall, you were the one who raised the idea of buying an SL prime to use on the CL. Of course, if Leica makes lenses for APS-C sensors, they will be smaller and lighter than comparable lenses for FF sensors, and that would be attributable to materials as well as size. Some TL lenses are optically superb, but the build quality is not up to that of SL lenses.

I used that as an example. I could easily use a 50, a 35, etc.

Having owned plenty of full APS-C only systems, as well as Micro-FourThirds systems, as well as the SL, the differences are NOT all that great on size and weight. The SL zooms are enormous, I agree, but they're zooms .. and the TL zooms are smaller MOSTLY because they're slower, and also because zooms for small formats are generally significantly smaller than the same speed zooms for larger formats, for several reasons but coverage requirements are the most of them.

It makes good sense to buy TL zooms and SL primes for a full-fledged, all Leica, all autofocus-capable CL system that nets the best total performance and is the most compact. It's just expensive, that's all, and even buying just TL lenses is expensive anyway. At least with SL lenses, you have an upgrade path to a larger format, higher end camera built in—that fulfills the goal I'd have in buying something as a 'entry level' product, although I consider the term actually absurd when it comes to $3000 camera bodies and nearly the same money again for each lens. 

G

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Nearly the same money for each lens? The majority of TL lenses cost well below 2000 Euro, for instance the 18-56 and 55-135 about 1500 and the 18 a few hundred less, with only the 35 and 60 more expensive. 

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9 hours ago, robgo2 said:

Weight comparison

APO-Summicron-SL 35/f2  26.46oz/750g

Summilux-TL 35/f1.4  15.1oz/428g

From personal experience, I know that carrying the CL with the TL 35 all day long is not uncomfortable or burdensome, and I'm not exactly young. I'm pretty sure that I would not feel the same about the SL 35 on the CL for a whole day, though others would probably not mind at all. More power to them.

Yes, I get this. I have carried the SL90 with my CL and I didn't mind it but you are correct, the CL35 is more manageable. And it's fabulous. But 35's and 50's are the smallest. Lenses get bigger when they move away from the centre.

Do you think a 50 or 60mm f1.4 in TL mount would be the same weight as the 35 if it were built to the same standards? Or a 16mm? I think those lenses would approach the size and weight of their SL equivalents (except the equivalent to the 16 duh.. :) ). The TL 60mm macro is 384g and it'd need a stop and a half added.

I said in another post that a set of Summicrons was logical (redo the 23. It's good but not great but it is tiny.). Mostly I was saying what was needed to get a TL lens to output an image that looked like the SL Summicrons. I totally agree that a set of TL Summicrons would be smaller and lighter.

I think the 35 and 50 SL Summicrons are anomalies because they would be smaller if Leica hadn't done the whole same lens barrel thing. That skews the comparison you made. I think that without that constraint the SL50 f2 would be much smaller.

Gordon

 

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7 hours ago, jaapv said:

Nearly the same money for each lens? The majority of TL lenses cost well below 2000 Euro, for instance the 18-56 and 55-135 about 1500 and the 18 a few hundred less, with only the 35 and 60 more expensive. 

Here are the prices on the CL body and TL lenses drawn directly from the B&H Photo website in the USA this morning: 

Leica CL body $3100
18/2.8 $1500
18-56/3.5-5.6 $1900
23/2 $2100
11-23/3.5-4.5 $2100
35/1.4 $2800
55-135/$2100
60/2.8 Macro $3300

"Nearly the same money" might be a little hyperbole, but isn't too far from the truth. 

In general, in my experience, people seeking an "entry level system" want the camera and two lenses total to cost about what the median price of that set of bits is. :)

G

Edited by ramarren
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41 minutes ago, ramarren said:

Here are the prices on the CL body and TL lenses drawn directly from the B&H Photo website in the USA this morning: 

Leica CL body $3100
18/2.8 $1500
18-56/3.5-5.6 $1900
23/2 $2100
11-23/3.5-4.5 $2100
35/1.4 $2800
55-135/$2100
60/2.8 Macro $3300

"Nearly the same money" might be a little hyperbole, but isn't too far from the truth. 

In general, in my experience, people seeking an "entry level system" want the camera and two lenses total to cost about what the median price of that set of bits is. :)

G

In Euro:

18 mm  1210,--

55-135  1499,--

18-156  1580,--

11-23  1780-,--

35.     1899,--

60.    2440,--

 

Body:

2530, special offer 1899,--

 

https://www.cameranu.nl/nl/b7775/leica-cl-kopen

 

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19 minutes ago, jaapv said:

In Euro:

18 mm  1210,--

55-135  1499,--

18-156  1580,--

11-23  1780-,--

35.     1899,--

60.    2440,--

 

Body:

2530, special offer 1899,--

 

https://www.cameranu.nl/nl/b7775/leica-cl-kopen

 

A bargain. LOL! Still very expensive regardless. 

G

Edited by ramarren
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  • 3 weeks later...

Well as a new user of a CL it seems to be doing everything I want or expected of it.

More in fact.

I wouldn`t change a thing.

I`ve even tried using it as a sports camera (I do a lot of horse stuff) in badly light indoor arena and it coped reasonably well even using manual focus M lenses.

Clearly that's not what it was designed for so I`ll still use my A7R2 or Canon system in those situations .

If I wasn`t doing sports though  …. yes the CL would meet most (all) of my photographic needs and those it didn`t I wouldn`t worry about.

I`m 70 this year and using a light weight quality system is a blessing rather than having to lug around a 400 prime ect ,ect .

You`re always going to find deficiencies in any system ….. just live with what they can do.

 

 

 

 

Edited by Michael Markey
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