Leica Elmarit-M 90mm f2.8 and a History Photo Walk

The featured image shows the lens on my Sony A7Riii body. Technical details about the lens can be found here, and Hamish Gill wrote about it here. The lens followed the Tele-Elmarit M (smaller, lighter and nearly as good optically and, as it’s name implies, a telephoto lens) and before that the Elmarit (reviewed by Wyatt Ryan here). Both the Elmars are simply ‘long’ lenses not ‘telephoto’ lenses.

This is a lens I’ve had for a long time (20 years?) and used very little. I guess on M cameras what I realised was the most important thing for me is compactness, good ergonomics, and good quality. The Tele-Elmarit suited me better but both fall short on ergonomics – focussing accuracy on rangefinders is greater for shorter rather than longer focal lengths – the most appropriate camera is the M3 (larger viewfinder frame and higher rangefinder magnification) and even then unless the body and lens are perfectly calibrated focus will not be accurate. So the lens sat unused until I recently decided to give it a go on the Sony.

Brussels has an old town centre formerly surrounded by a 4km (2.5mi) long city wall built in the early 13th century (CE) – more than a 1000 years after London’s city wall – and a second outer city wall (8km long) enclosing the rapidly expanding city built in the late 14th century. Little of the first wall remains, largely demolished to reuse as building materials, and none of the second wall remains apart from one of the seven gates to the city, albeit remaining in a form tarted up in the 19th century to a neo-gothic style. The wall was demolished (‘improvements’ in military technology making defensive walls largely irrelevant) and was replaced by wide tree lined boulevards following the path of the demolished wall. These were later widened to accommodate motorised traffic and the increasing traffic flow to become 4-lane highways with car parking spaces, two cycle lanes, footpaths either side and with metro lines running down the middle in some places.

Images were taken on a well but evenly lit day and are un-processed in-camera jpegs on Sony’s neutral setting.

What did I think after using the lens on the Sony? I thought the lens suits the Sony body in terms of weight and balance better than the Ms, of course giving more accurate and reliable focussing, and looks a lot less intimidating than Sony’s 85mm lens. On balance I agree wish Hamish’s comment – new Leica lenses are overpriced and offer little if any improvement in image quality over other lenses such a Zeiss or Sony’s own lenses. As a second-hand purchase the price is competitive and the lens is better looking (if that matters to you) than most AF lenses for digital cameras as long as you are comfortable with manual focussing.

Share this post: