Leica 90mm Elmar

This is a review of the Ernst Leitz (Leica) Elmar 9cm f/4 Collapsible lens. Hamish recently reviewed the huge and very fast TT Artisan 90mm 1.25. This is perhaps the antithesis of that lens. 

Leica is a polarising company and there’s a lot of polarising opinions circulating about their products. One of them is if you want to make full use of Leica camera bodies, you absolutely must use Leica lenses. It’s because they are “the world’s finest”. So good in fact that the folks at Leica have come up with trademarked names for them (Elmar, Summicron, Summilux, etc) in order to establish them as “the finest in their class”. At least that’s what Chuck Norris of lens reviews (you know who I’m talking about) says, before immediately contradicting himself saying that actually those names on their own are meaningless, like Kleenex or Tang. And then calling Oskar Barnack “The Prophet”, ironically or not I honestly have no idea. Ever the wordsmith and always so measured…