Ario Arioldi
Member
Sean Reid has just published his first review on side by side studio testing of the Leica SL and Leica M-240 using two fairly compact 35 mm rangefinder lenses: the Leica 35/2.0 M Summicron ASPH and the CV 35/2.5 Skopar.
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Leica SL (601) ..Oct 20th?
- Thread starter glenerrolrd
- Start date
Sorry, it just seemed to me that there was written more about the Sony 35/1.4, and how M lenses dont work all that well on the A7 than about the Leica SL.
Yes, Huff huffs and puffs with great enthusiasm, but his reviews are about as much use as a chocolate fireguard if you are tying to make informed decisions. He is a salesman, presumably earning his web income from affiliate sales (so everything has to be great) and advertising (everything being GREAT!!!!... generates traffic by those looking for someone to tell them its OK to spend their money). Its a fun place to hangout if you want to have fun playing with camera gear, but if your goal is to determine what's best for you to spend your money on, almost everywhere else is better.
Regarding the S vs A7 platform, its the one of the reasons why I invested in the 645Z. Getting great edge and corner performance out of the A7R is not hard with 50mm and longer lenses. 35mm is pretty good, but any wider and it gets much harder. That said, Zeiss is fixing that problem with their 21mm Loxia and 25mm Batis. The 645Z with 28-45mm is astounding and I have no doubt the S + Leica S wides is also a beautiful combination.
Regarding the S vs A7 platform, its the one of the reasons why I invested in the 645Z. Getting great edge and corner performance out of the A7R is not hard with 50mm and longer lenses. 35mm is pretty good, but any wider and it gets much harder. That said, Zeiss is fixing that problem with their 21mm Loxia and 25mm Batis. The 645Z with 28-45mm is astounding and I have no doubt the S + Leica S wides is also a beautiful combination.
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Vivek
Guest
Hi Stuart, The 75/2 is so much better on my Sony cams than it is on the MM. I use it for portraits and people shots (not restricted to center only focus, especially with live view and movable focus area, it is quite successful) and I do not see any issues.
I do not have the 75/1.4.
Photography is a very personal endeavor and choosing a Camera and/or Lenses is a very personal choice. What is best for one is not best for another and any reviewer is therefore inherently biased. One needs to be very good at reading between the lines and knowing where the reviews are coming from. I do believe Steve Huff is being honest with his comments and reviews. Yes, he does push a lot of camera accessories (bags, grips etc) but that is mainly because he likes them for real.
His initial bashing of the SL specs were mainly due to the price and the lack of IBIS and to a lesser degree looks, but mainly because of price. Like I mentioned before I believe Leicas make sense when you hold them and use them not when you just look at their spec sheet. In that arena the Sony's win. Plus Leicas have never been high value items. It is certainly not their forté.
jonoslack
Active member
Did I? I shouldn't have as I haven't a clue - they don't tell me figures. Hearsay tells me that the M, and especially the MM and Q all sell very well.
As for spirited support - I formalised my order for a camera and 24-90 today - can't say fairer than that.
Best lens - it's been my favorite for nearly 5 years now
Thats quite a commitment. I have not yet made up my mind what I want/need/want.Did I? I shouldn't have as I haven't a clue - they don't tell me figures. Hearsay tells me that the M, and especially the MM and Q all sell very well.
As for spirited support - I formalised my order for a camera and 24-90 today - can't say fairer than that.
Best lens - it's been my favorite for nearly 5 years now
But I guess using the camera for some months is a better basis for making a decision vs just reading some reports, even if those are good reports.
Yay, two down..Did I? I shouldn't have as I haven't a clue - they don't tell me figures. Hearsay tells me that the M, and especially the MM and Q all sell very well.
As for spirited support - I formalised my order for a camera and 24-90 today - can't say fairer than that.
Best lens - it's been my favorite for nearly 5 years now
Also the 75APO is one of my favourite lenses as well!
jonoslack
Active member
Reasons perhaps?
I had the SL for two separate periods of a month - the first time I had the 24-90, and the second time just the body (so I used it with my M and R lenses).
Most of the time I'm happy with manual focus, and my M240 is great . . . except if I want macro or telephoto.
Sometimes I do want AF (nearly always with a zoom) . . my E-M5ii with the Olympus pro zooms is great . . . . . but not perfect in that it isn't full frame.
So I was considering a full frame dSLR . . . but it won't use M or R lenses
. . and there are the Sony A7 series (great cameras) but they don't do well with M lenses (especially for landscapes)
The SL is great for macro / telephoto, fine with M or R lenses and the AF with the 24-90 zoom is good too.
So I guess it's a Jack of All trades . . . but sometimes that's the right answer . . especially when it's a master of some of them.
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It's great on the SL too MattI got the A7II just to hold my 75 Cron. That it works with some other lenses is a bonus!
--Matt
This is exactly the same as my experience. I was quite unhappy with the performance of my 75 Summicron on the A7rII, and much happier with that of the Summilux. In fact, I thought my Summicron must be faulty until I checked it again on the camera it was meant for , the M. Similarly, the 90 Elmarit M performs outstandingly on the Sony, whereas the 90 Macro-Elmar while good is not as outstanding on the Sony but much better on the M's than the Elmarit M. I'll have to re-evaluate all my lenses on the Sony.
Speedgraphic
Member
http://www.dpreview.com/articles/9955093579/leica-sl-typ601-in-depth-camera-review/2
Doesn't look so good in comparison to pretty much anything of this generation, especially at ISO 3200 & 6400. Surprised at how well the A7II did in comparison.
In answer to an earlier question someone asked, I was specifically told by the folks working the Leica booth that leaf shutter functionality from the CS S lenses will NOT be added to the SL via firmware.
Doesn't look so good in comparison to pretty much anything of this generation, especially at ISO 3200 & 6400. Surprised at how well the A7II did in comparison.
In answer to an earlier question someone asked, I was specifically told by the folks working the Leica booth that leaf shutter functionality from the CS S lenses will NOT be added to the SL via firmware.
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Vivek
Guest
It is good to keep in mind that we are discussing about lenses that were made for film.
Yes we are, but once we have the evidence from shots on sensors, that becomes irrelevant. Look at the output, and judge on that basis.It is good to keep in mind that we are discussing about lenses that were made for film.
ptomsu
Workshop Member
Right, the reviews from dpreviw do not look too exciting. I myself downloaded lot of the RAW studio samples, imported in LR and compared to other cameras and I was not amused. Definitely all the other 24MP cameras hold pretty nicely up to the SL, sometimes look even sharper. If this is a result of the different sensors or also a negative impact coming from the 24-90 zoom I cannot say.
Once comparing to samples from D810, 5DSR or A7RII, the differences become of course even more obvious, as with their higher resolution sensors these cameras offer much more detail - at least in lower ISO ranges. The optimum IQ seems to come from the A7RII, followed by the D810 (although they are pretty much on par) and then the 5DSR.
If looking at the dpreview real world SL samples (also downloaded RAWs and imported in LR) most of the samples look definitely impressive IMHO, maybe resulting from the fact that there is no direct comparison possible. So overall my conclusion from that is, the SL seems to be a pretty capable camera, but definitely not better than most of the competition and definitely with disadvantages in overall resolution compared to the higher MP-models, but with a much higher price than all the others - well no wonder about that, as it is a Leica and also should have the overall qualities to justify that higher price.
What remains then is the fact that the SL seems to be a great tool for using M, R and S glass and I have no doubts with the availability of native SL lenses, especially primes, it will excel. But these SL lenses are more than 1 year out, so if there is no immediate need to bring the other M, R, S glass to life, then the steep price of the SL seems to be hard to justify - at least for me and at least for now.
But the overall move of Leica to develop such a FF mirrorless camera is definitely a bold move and sure enough this is a great camera, if one can make the right use of it (see my concerns above). And hopefully this will finally wake up the CaNikon's1
Actually, I thought that in that particular group of products the SL came out looking very good. I was looking at RAW output only, as the jpegs are uninteresting to me and I would never use them.
The Leica Q output looked essentially the same as that of the SL (surprise, surprise!) while the Nikon 750 output also looked the same overall and in some cases minutely better and the A7II output looked definitely worse in this comparison. A very good showing by the SL in this test.
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Vivek
Guest
Fair enough. But, do keep in mind that it is easy and cost effective to change the sensor glass thickness in a Sony cam. The old M lenses are not exactly designed for the modern digital M cams (Jono gives a percent fit for some of these lenses on M, stock A7II and the SL- there is no 100% satisfaction on any!). That is what I was alluding to.
Jorgen Udvang
Subscriber Member
Photos with the SL are taken with a zoom lens at maximum extension, stopped down one stop from wide open. Photos from the other three cameras are taken with primes lenses stopped down more than three stops from wide open. If this didn't lead to differences in resolution, I should throw away my prime lenses.
As for high ISO, the D750 stands out from the crowd. The differences between the others are hardly relevant in real life, and I would probably not be able to tell who is who if I saw them with 5 minutes between them. If anything, the Sony shows slightly more noise than the SL at ISO 6400.
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I am totally confused by these comparisons between the Sl and the A7R or A7II.Why not compare to the latest available Sony the A7RII? If you say because it is 42 versus the SL's 24 MP, then I cannot buy a new camera that has 24MP when other new cameras now are offering resolution in the 36-50MP. Even the FF Pentax is rumored to be 36MP minimum.
Jorgen Udvang
Subscriber Member
Of course you can, but that doesn't change the fact that the Leica zoom will always struggle against the Zeiss prime, particularly at the far end of the zoom register. The least they could do was to mount Leica prime corresponding to the Zeiss when doing this test, and then re-do it once the native prime is available.