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Would you buy a Leica SL 300mm 2:8


Jeffry Abt

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A 300mm f2.8 IMO is overkill, also in terms of weight & size. I still have the Zeiss 300mm f2.8 APO-Tessar which is a monster, it weighs over 3kgs.

The Leica would be even bigger & heavier as it would have to accommodate AF motors etc.

A 300mm f4 Leica SL plus a 1.4X & 2X TC, along the lines of the Canon 300mm f4 USM Do ll which I have & love, would be ideal. Then there's the eye-watering 🥲 cost of such a lens & of course that would be an entirely different  discussion..... 😰 

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30 minutes ago, Jeffry Abt said:

Would you buy a Leica SL 300mm 2:8 Lens? I would.

It would more likely be a 280mm 2.8, if Leica was to make it😄.

Wouldn’t really interest me. I did have a 300/2.8 back in the film days and loved that lens. There was a time and place for a 300/2.8, before IBIS/OIS and high ISO cameras. It was a lens of choice for sports, action and PJ. It was used by a lot of wildlife photographers, but often a little short for that. It seems to have become an even more specialized lens with time. I’m good with having this focal length as a 300/4 prime or included in zoom lens. If I was in the market for a big prime lens ( which I am not) something like a 400/4, 500/4 or maybe a 400/2.8 would interest me more.  I like the builtin TC feature that Nikon, Olympus and Canon have done recently.

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18 minutes ago, michali said:

A 300mm f2.8 IMO is overkill, also in terms of weight & size. I still have the Zeiss 300mm f2.8 APO-Tessar which is a monster, it weighs over 3kgs.

The Leica would be even bigger & heavier as it would have to accommodate AF motors etc.

A 300mm f4 Leica SL plus a 1.4X & 2X TC, along the lines of the Canon 300mm f4 USM Do ll which I have & love, would be ideal. Then there's the eye-watering 🥲 cost of such a lens & of course that would be an entirely different  discussion..... 😰 

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Hey, very cool! I used to have the zeiss 300/2.8 when I still had my contax. Don’t see that lens too often.

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Why I say, "Yes" ... in my photojournalism days the Nikon 300mm 2:8 came in very handy. Handy especially in sports but not just in sports. I used it often, even off the sidelines. It was considered an all-around workhorse PRO lens. It was used by pros that never shot sport at all. 300mm has a good reach and 2:8 is relatively fast. I realize that Leica does not want to compete in the area of sports photography and that is fine and good. But twenty years ago Nikon autofocus and image tracking would not (by today's standards) be very quick, but it worked adequately.  Surely today Leica could match the Nikon 300mm 2:8 of twenty years ago. If a pro using the SL system had a Leica prime @ 300mm 2:8, even if was slow by today's standards, he could turn his back on Nikon and Canon forever. Leica could market it as a pro photojournalism lens. 

I may be over confident in Leica's engineering prowess. But the SL APO primes are not overly large for mirrorless lenses. In fact, they are, in my view, somewhat compact. I would love to see what Leica came up with. 

Edited by Jeffry Abt
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I still have a Canon 300/2.8 IS which holds up well.

That said, if Leica can make a 300/2.8 or 400/4 with IS that weighs less than 4lbs and can take 1.4x and 2.0x tele extenders while maintaining good resolution for a 50-60MP sensor wide open and cost less than $10k USD. I would consider it.

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400mm f4 could be of interest.

Presently - and for quite some time - I am (very) happy with Leica 280mm f4 APO-TELYT-R and Canon 400mm f4 DO v2. Both are handholdable, and both are very, very sharp. I also have the non-modular Leica 400mm f2.8 APO-TELYT-R. Again very, very sharp. But monsterous large & heavy.

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Nikon has just released a 2.8/400 for mirrorless with a weight of 3 kg. (Even including a 1.4x extender).

So it is possible to build a compact AF lens. The problem is that extenders are required to make such a lens cost effective. AFAIK Leica does not want to offer extenders.

So I would not buy such a lens from Leica. (Only a lens without extenders makes no sense.)

Btw the cost is 13995$ for the Nikon.

The price for the Leica 2.8/280 (without extender) maybe 10k ? Who knows ?

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1 hour ago, caissa said:

Nikon has just released a 2.8/400 for mirrorless with a weight of 3 kg. (Even including a 1.4x extender).

So it is possible to build a compact AF lens. The problem is that extenders are required to make such a lens cost effective. AFAIK Leica does not want to offer extenders.

So I would not buy such a lens from Leica. (Only a lens without extenders makes no sense.)

Btw the cost is 13995$ for the Nikon.

The price for the Leica 2.8/280 (without extender) maybe 10k ? Who knows ?

Just checked.. it’s a built-in extender though… that’s a whopping hefty price!! 

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6 hours ago, caissa said:

Nikon has just released a 2.8/400 for mirrorless with a weight of 3 kg. (Even including a 1.4x extender).

So it is possible to build a compact AF lens. The problem is that extenders are required to make such a lens cost effective. AFAIK Leica does not want to offer extenders.

So I would not buy such a lens from Leica. (Only a lens without extenders makes no sense.)

Btw the cost is 13995$ for the Nikon.

The price for the Leica 2.8/280 (without extender) maybe 10k ? Who knows ?

That's not so bad  😂  I paid $13, 000- back in 1997 for the Zeiss 300mm f2.8 

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in the meantime we continue to use Sigma's wonderful 150-600 DG DN Sports!

😀

 

 

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2 hours ago, MediaFotografie said:

in the meantime we continue to use Sigma's wonderful 150-600 DG DN Sports!

😀

 

 

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Sweet looking combo. Hiow is the power management?

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