Month: January 2016

I have always had a soft spot for the Olympus Pen series.  The limitation for me has always been the lack of a viewfinder, well this has finally been fixed.

Its a little pricey and I am not sure about the art filter selection control on the front but apart from that it looks good and I look forward to testing one out.

Techart have released some demo videos of an adapter that allows you to attach your Leica M glass to your Sony E mount camera and have autofocus.  Could be an interesting solution for Sony users with M glass.

I keep hearing that the ‘Insert Latest Mirrorless Camera Name Here’ will be the death of the Leica M and that the M needs to drop the optical viewfinder to stay relevant.

Now that Leica have the new SL many are saying that this also will be the death of the Leica M.  It seems that too few people understand the strengths of the rangefinder and its limitations.

The biggest draw to Leica is of course the Leica glass and many use that glass on their Sony’s, their Olympus/Panasonic’s and their Fuji’s.

Because of the design of a rangefinder lens the ultra wides generally give colour shifts and odd corner artefacts on any camera that is not designed for rangefinder lens, so if your interested in using lens wider then 35mm you need to either use a Leica M or the Ricoh’s A12 M-Mount module for the GXR.  Even the Leica SL and T have these issues with wide rangefinder lens.

The key feature of a rangefinder is its optical viewfinder, being able to see more of the scene then you will photograph, if you shoot reactively, and with wide lens, then a rangefinder maybe for you, and an EVF unsuitable for you.  If however you shoot more planned and carefully such as landscape, portraits and architecture, need to see precisely what you are shooting then the EVF or traditional SLR is better for you.  Certainly if you commonly shoot 50mm or above then a modern mirrorless or SLR is a better choice.

So will these cameras be the death of the Leica M rangefinder, no.  But I will say to make the M more flexible I would like to see a hybrid viewfinder like in the Fuji cameras, the best of both worlds.  Until them many people like me who shoot many styles then we will sometimes carry our Leica M and sometimes our SLR.

If your after a small compact autofocus lens to use on the Leica SL then You are looking at lens that were created for the Leica T.

The SL with these lens will give you a DX (1.5) crop factor.

It should be noted though that you will need a firmware on the lens to allow functionality.

First there was the Fuji X100 with its optical and electronic viewfinder.  Then Fuji really stirred things up with the rangefinder styled interchangeable lens X1-Pro with a growing system of lens.  Since then we have quite a few bodies some styled like a rangefinder and others like a full blown SLR.

A number of professionals are now shooting with them and Fuji have been keeping them relevant by constant firmware upgrades.  The original X1-Pro finally gets replaced with the the X2-Pro and it looks to be a stunning camera.  If it was not for the X Trans sensor I would be very tempted.

• Leica Summicron-M 35mm f/2 ASPH
• Leica Summicron-M 28mm f/2 ASPH
• Leica Elmarit-M 28mm f/2.8 ASPH

A few of the recent special addition cameras have had new version of the M 35mm Summicron so its no surprise that this week Leica announce new M len.

Of these three its the Elmarit 28mm that interests me the most, its a very small compact lens and I can see a number of uses for this.  This lens for a Leica lens is very good value and can be picked up for just £1650 from the end of January.