Leica Unleashes a Monster

[Mike Farley]

I was up in London yesterday and took the opportunity to call in at Leica's Mayfait store to take a look at the SL. Yes, it is a large and fairly heavy camera, but maybe not quite as much as I had expected. In hand it balances nicely, but when I handed it back after holding it for a while I noticed that a chunk of weight had gone. No doubt Leica could have made the body smaller, but it does not look as though any of the lenses are going to be compact. The 24-90 lens, the only one available at the moment, is certainly large and the 50 f/1.4 will be on a similar scale and only a bit shorter. Leica seems to be taking a similar approach to Zeiss when it designed its Otus lenses and that's how large they need to be when optical quality os the top priority. The 90-280 zoom will be the largest in the range and putting any of the lenses on a compact body would make the whole assembly feel unbalanced. The body is the size which it needs to be.

The image on the Leica website showing the comparative sizes is too large to link to from here, so you will have to follow this link and scroll down a bit if you want to see for yourself: https://uk.leica-camera.com/Photography/Leica-SL.

The other really notable thing about the came was the EVF, which is very bright and clear. Conditions were not ideal to check it out fully, but on a limited acquaintance it is easily the best EVF I have seen. Leica has not stated the source of the EVF, but DPReview believes it comes from Epson which has recently announced that it is going into production with a similarly specified unit. That's good news for those of us whose budget and/or load bearing capacity do not extend to the SL as we will see it featuring in models to be announced during 2016.

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/796391 ... 1m-dot-lcd

[Mike Farley]

There might have been other reviews, but this from Amateur Photographer is the first which I have seen. The EVF comes in for especial praise. I believe it is manufactured by Epson so it should become available in less expensive mirrorless cameras at some stage.

http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/re ... 601-review

I had the opportunity to look at the new 90-280 zoom on Leica's stand at The Photography Show last weekend and it is huge. Like the 24-90, Leica claims that it offers prime lens quality at every focal length, which I can well believe. Maybe the lighting conditions in the hall did not help, or maybe it was a prototype, but AF did not seem to be quite as snappy as I remembered when I tried the 24-90 a while back.