Leica Vario Elmar R 80 200mm F4

[LeicaRcine]

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Any love for this lens? Please share your experience with this lens and image or videos.

I will start with mine

 

[jaapv]

Any love? It is a superb lens - the only problem is that they tend to suffer from haze, which lowers contrast. Give them a CLA and you will be hard pushed to find a better zoom in this range.

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[LeicaRcine]

Agree man. It's a superb lens and I am surprised that a lens created so long ago could rival its modern counterparts. But then again most Leica R quality stood through time.

[davidmknoble]

I love the 80-200 f/4 - compact and crisp.  I also love the APO 70-180 f/2.8, but it isn’t compact for traveling and carrying.

[cpclee]

I have one and this is my second copy.  It is an excellent lens and is hard to beat especially for the price and is really only edged out by the most exotic zooms (70-180, 90-280 SL) or APO glass.  However I do gripe about its ergonomics a bit.  I'd prefer the focus ring to be the closer of the two rings which would have made the lens more stable to focus.

[Reddy]

Great lens with good balance of zoom range, image quality, size and weight. You can just have a wide angle lens and pack this in the bag then go for traveling. 

[wlaidlaw]

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The other common fault is that the link to the focus damper comes unhooked. This leaves the focus ring rather slack and vague. I think Jaap also had this fault. At his recommendation, I sent my 80-200/4 to Will van Manen for service repair and cleaning. Great lens but I am more of a wide angle user than tele, so mine does not get a whole lot of use. In contrast my 21-35 is near permanently mounted on my R9. 

The previous owner had obviously been a very heavy smoker, as the lens stank like an overfilled ashtray. Luckily he had not made much use of the leather case as that was pretty smell free on the outside and only somewhat smelly on the inside from contact with the lens. After the cleaned, smell free and properly focusing lens was returned, I used an old trick for removing cigarette/dog/rug rat vomit smells from the inside of a car. You put some freshly cut grass in a large bowl and then leave on the back seat of the car out in the sun for a couple of days. Instead of a bowl, I used one of those pierced bags that salad comes in to contain the grass cuttings inside the leather case. After a couple of days sitting in the sun, the stale tobacco smell had completely gone from the case. 

Below is a photo taken with my M240 and the 80-200 of the southern Indian city of Madurai at night from the terrace of the President Hotel. 

Wilson

 

 

 

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Edited February 18, 2022 by wlaidlaw

[dkCambridgeshire]

Leica R 80-200/4 is a Solmes design first released in 1996; lens was manufactured by Kyocera in Japan. 

 

[wlaidlaw]

Kyocera had a lot of experience making top class zoom lenses, as they made all the Zeiss designed lenses for the CX/Y series Contax cameras. I use the 28-85 Vario-Sonnar on my M10-R with a Novoflex adapter. I would prefer the Leica 28-90, which has similar performance to the Vario Sonnar, so it would also fit on my R cameras but they cost around 5 times as much as the Contax lens. I bought my Vario Sonnar as new old stock a few years ago for less than £500. 

Wilson

[George Derugin]

I am curious as to how it compares to modern glass solely in terms of image quality and sharpness. I’m shooting on an S1R and the affordable options that jump out at me are the R 80-200, 180 3.4, and Panasonic S pro 70-200 f4. So far I see nothing but beautiful images from the 80-200.

[wlaidlaw]

I would say it is close to as good as my Panasonic 70-200 L mount, in static image quality but for moving objects, the focus tracking on my SL together with the very fast AF on the Panasonic lens, makes for sharper focus. 

Wilson

[davidmknoble]

Not at my computer, but this is with the Leica SL2-S and theLeica R 80-200 f/4.  No editing just SOC. I’ll try to get time to post a few exported with a larger size. This lens is smaller and lighter than the Leica R APO 70-180 f/2.8 which I love as well 

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[edstock]

It's a great lens and produces awesome photos. I've had mine for a number of years and I pair it with my 35-70 F4. At 78 I'm not looking to lug around a heavy speedy lens, been there done that.

[Nikolaj]

Hi everybody - i struggle to find any info on this: Is the lens parfocal?
I want to use it for cinematography, but i need a parfocal zoom :)

[wlaidlaw]

It is not very par-focal but some are better than others.Mine is OK but not perfect. If this is a requirement, you might be better off with the Zeiss Contax 100-300 f4.5 in Contax-Yashica mount. The par-focal is generally very good on these lenses and can also be adjusted by a competent lens repairer by means of screws to adjust the relative positions of the focus and zoom helicoid sleeves. It uses a trombone zoom/focus single control compared with Leica's two ring control. They are generally quite a bit cheaper than the Leica. The optical quality is possibly marginally better than the 80-200. 

Wilson

[PetersPhotoChannel]

I can add here what Erwin Puts wrote about the Vario-Elmar-R 80-200mm f4:

“The optical performance wide open is excellent. At the shortest focal length the quality is a bit less than at the longer focal lengths, where really good imagery can be expected. In fact the quality profile favours the midrange (around 140 mm) with the short and long focal lengths a bit less good. This choice of the way of correcting the lens is a sensible one. Leica lenses at the fixed focal length of 135 mm have vanished for a long time, but it still is a very interesting focal length where exacting performance may be required. And around 200 mm current prime lenses are outstandingly good and it is reasonable that the photographer expects the same type of performance of the vario lens at this focal length of 180 mm to 200 mm.”

Stopping down to 1:5.6 brings a visible improvement at the 80mm setting and a slight improvement at the other settings (140mm and 200 mm). Overall the image quality is now quite even at all apertures and focal lengths. Pictures made with the LEICA VARIO-ELMAR-R 80-200 mm f/4.0 offer a high contrast, crisp definition of very fine detail and the clarity of colours and gradation that are the hallmarks of a well corrected design. You will notice, when studying the MTF graphs that there is a widening of the gap between the sagittal and tangential lines at the higher frequencies.”

And

“The LEICA VARIO-ELMAR-R 80-200 mm f/4.0 is a worthy complement to the VARIO-ELMAR-R 35-70 mm f/4.0. With these two lenses you can cover a focal range from 1:5.7. The quality of the VARIO-ELMAR-R 80-200 mm f/4.0 is excellent over the whole range of focal lengths and apertures and distances. The lens can be used in a wide range of situations and subjects, but if you are looking for more limited but dedicated imagery of a very high order, the fixed focal lengths of 100 mm and 180 mm might be the first choice. The near focus limit of 1.1 meter is a big improvement over the 1.7 meter limit that the VARIO-APOELMARIT-R 70-180 mm f/2.8 offers. As usual it is best to stop down to 1:8 or smaller when working that close.

This is advisable not only for the performance improvement, but mainly for the increased depth of field. As the little brother of the redoubtable LEICA VARIO-APO-ELMARIT-R 70-180 mm f/2.8, the lens stands a bit in its shadow, but the reduction in aperture brings a welcome reduction in weight from 1.87 kg to 1.02 kg.”

I bought my copy just this week at eBay, a 2002 ROM lens in MINT conditions,, for just € 642. A real bargain - click here for more details.

Peter

PetersPhotoChannel.com