Review 1 of 8
Price Paid:
$0.00 Summary:
This lens is one of Leica's most remarkable optical "greats" and was well lauded by Erwin Puts as being one of the most outstanding 24mm lenses ever built and certainly one of the finest performers in the Leica-M stable.
As a user I have to agree with every positive comment made about the Elmarit-M 24mm lens.
It is superbly built with super smoot controls of focus and aperture. The latter has nice positive click stops and the former makes pin sharp accurate focusing a breeze. It comes with a neat but not optically corrected 24mm accessory viewfinder. One can take a bit of use to get accustomed to having to use the finder (unles your M body has a 0.58x viewfinder in which the outermost frame is a fairly accurate estimate of the AOV. Of course only the accessory viewfinder gives a user a "real" perspective of the "stretch" factor a 24mm lens provides.
Physically the lens is a dream to use and comnes with a neat clip on rectangular hood that allows one filter to be fitted before the filter depth prevents the hood from fitting onto the lens barrel.
F2.8 is e very reasonalble if not "fast" widest aperture for such a lens. Any wider would upset the brilliant aberration corrections and the nice size and balance of the lens.
The lens is so well corrected for distortion the field of view is nearly perfectly flat - remarkably so.
It resiste flare brilliantly, shoed no sign of astigmatism nor any coma etc etc. It is one of the best corrected lenses avalable. Clour tone is typically superb tonality from Leica.
Wide angle enthusiats will just love this lens. While I'm not such a wide angle enthusiast I really enjoyed using this lens.
I have not been able to fault its performance in anyway. Of course superb optics come at a price and this lens comes with a hefty price tag, but a very well deserved one at that. Strengths:
Optical correction of all aberrations. Superbly flat field of view - super low distortion. Very flare resistant which is not common among very wide angle lenses.
Excellent superfine detail resolution even wide open that changes very little out to the edges. At F4 it's performance is probably optimal - a great design achievement.
Build quality - quality of design, build and fininsh.
Beautifully balanced in the hand.
Most lens design involves trade-offs; it's hard to see where there was any trade-off with this lens' design! Weaknesses:
No performance weaknesses.
It's just a bit sad that souch great quality must come with a relatively high price tag. But, if you buy only one lens wider than 35mm in a Leica M mount, this IMHO is the optimal choice. Similar Products Used:
Voigtlander M/screw mount 25mm; Canon 20 and 24mm; Olympus Zuiko OM 21 and 24 mm. Customer Service:
None required. But with another Leica product I found the factory in Germany very responsive.
| 
Sample Images
More Products from Leica
Link to this page
5 of 5
4 of 5
