Leica SLRs - why no love?

[Deleted member 88956]

Leica RFcameras set the standard for this kind of camera. Leica SLR cameras don't have any outstanding features to support higher prices than Nikon F series or other first class cameras.

True that Leica played catch up in SLR field. However finder in SL2 is in a class of its own, feature wise ... owners of R8/9 would argue that one too.

Problem was almost same as Minolta had always faced: Canon and Nikon had the pro market and never relinquished the lead to anyone, for better or worse.

All had great performing offerings and Leica logo itself was no argument to swing anyone, especially due to pricing and limited lens line. Economics were simple enough . When it became clear few had any interest in switching to Leica on a grand scale, money were not pouring in to continue development and better the offering. The allure of Leica M's lives on, The Leica SLR remains just a bleep. But worth a look. The R's to me are great handling cameras, shutter release lag being one sole strangeness.

 

[miha]

BIG SNIP shutter release lag being one sole strangeness.

Only true for R4-R7 and mostly age related when exaggerated. All Leicaflex models, R3 and R8/9 are super snappy. R3 only has 38 ms of shutter lag, which is the same as Nikon F6 or twice as fast as Leica M9! It really feels fast in operation as does the SL. The R4s2 camera I have does feel a bit sluggish in comparison to my SL, R3 MOT and R8 but only a bit. I can perhaps still find you a remedy for the lag as described by a member of the Leica Forum if you wish, however I think it's in German.

 

[Deleted member 88956]

Only true for R4-R7 and mostly age related when exaggerated. All Leicaflex models, R3 and R8/9 are super snappy. R3 only has 38 ms of shutter lag, which is the same as Nikon F6 or twice as fast as Leica M9! It really feels fast in operation as does the SL. The R4s2 camera I have does feel a bit sluggish in comparison to my SL, R3 MOT and R8 but only a bit. I can perhaps still find you a remedy for the lag as described by a member of the Leica Forum if you wish, however I think it's in German.

All R4-R7 have release lag unrelated to age, it's how Leica made it. I have an R5 that is basically new and it drives me nuts. Others have spoken the same way.

 

[miha]

All cameras have shutter release lag, however the older the R4-R7 cameras get the greater the lag. A proper service, which unfortunately doesnt exist for these types of Leicas any more, was able to minimize it. I did it myself. Your R5 can look basically new but its guts are around 30 years old.

 

[film_man]

I don't know about anything before the R8 but I had a couple of R8 bodies for a while and they were great cameras. They had a couple of annoying bits and I know the looks are love it or hate it but I loved them. The finder was amazing, the operation really smooth. I had the 35/2, 50/2 and 90/2 and they were all top glass. However at the end of the day those three lenses are probably the only ones that you can get without spending an arm and a leg. Anything faster, wider or longer makes the price go up quite a bit without actually buying that much more vs the equivalent Canikon offerings.

 

[Huss]

All R4-R7 have release lag unrelated to age, it's how Leica made it. I have an R5 that is basically new and it drives me nuts. Others have spoken the same way.

I have found using a soft release (shutter button screw in extension) really helps. I have them on my R-Es and R7. R8 and R9 do not need them.

 

[MarkS]

Apart from everything else, Leitz' distribution in the '70s and '80s was spotty at best. Any Leica gear was hard to find; the dealers kept little inventory, so it was take a trip to the big city or mail-order and wait.
You could walk into almost any camera store in the USA and try bodies and lenses from the Japanese firms, and go home with your purchase that day.
I remember that the 'luxury' camera store in my home town had a Leica R3 'Safari' w/50mm lens as their total Leica inventory for several years in the late '70s, and one other store had a CL on display. And that was in Rochester, a real 'photo city'. Hard to sell product when you don't have any!

 

[Paul Howell]

That's a good point, the only Leicaflex I ever saw at a Camera Shop was in Sacramento, late 70s, he had a couple, one new one used, his specialty was Alpa. Customers came from all over Northern California, most of his regulares were research scientist who had grants to buy the best, Alpa and Leica. If Leicaflex gets no love, well then there is Alpa.

 

[Angarian]

Leica rangefinders hold their value well over time, and even appreciate(!) but I see Leica SLRs for low prices, comparable to other brand SLRs. Are there valid reasons? Quality, parts availability? Inferior to RF models in some way?

No, there are no valid, objective reasons.
The Leica R SLRs are very good to excellent (some models being better than others, of course, that is normal for every camera line of any manufacturer).
The R bodies are still serviced by camera repair company Paepke in Germany.

The lenses are very good to outstanding: Some of the Leica R lenses belong to the best lenses ever designed, like the 2.8/19, 2.8/28, 1.4/35, 100mm Macro, the 2.0/90 APO, the 2.8/180 and 2.0/180 APO, the 4.0/280 APO and all the longer APO-Telyts withe the changeable heads. With the 4/80-200 and 4/105-280 two of the best zooms ever built are available, too. These two zooms have prime lens quality.
As the bodies are currently relatively cheap on the used market, this is a good time to buy. The prices will likely increase in the future due to the general film resurgence.

 

[Rob Skeoch]

Your's was the only North America newspaper I have ever heard that used Leica SLRs, a few in Germany, but really rare at least in the US. In the 60s a few JPs used Leica and Context SLR in the 60s covering Southwest Asia.

We bought our own gear and receivied a monthly equipment allowance. I was the only guy around using Leica, the rest had Canikon.

 

[Vincent Peri]

I had a couple of R-3's and about 8 or 9 lenses. The R-3 was much better than my former SL2's, which gave me no end of trouble in the brief time I owned them. And the lenses... best lenses I ever used! Around 1979 or 80, I sold it all and changed to Nikon. I've been with them ever since.

 

[George Mann]

I had a couple of R-3's and about 8 or 9 lenses. The R-3 was much better than my former SL2's, which gave me no end of trouble in the brief time I owned them. And the lenses... best lenses I ever used! Around 1979 or 80, I sold it all and changed to Nikon. I've been with them ever since.

I am surprised that you had so much trouble from an SL-2.

Still, if I were to buy one today, I would get an R3 because of it's affordability and reliability over the other R series.

Can you expand on why it is that you switched to Nikon?

 

[Sirius Glass]

Leica SLRs were too late to the part, added nothing, too expensive, too complex, and did not offer the range of lenses and options that less expensive cameras did.

 

[jjphoto]

Leica SLRs were too late to the part, added nothing, too expensive, too complex, and did not offer the range of lenses and options that less expensive cameras did.

A 'range of lenses' can be very important, especially to working professionals, but meaningless to others. As long as there are the lenses that suit your needs, and in some cases the R lenses were the best in the business, then I see no problem. They were good enough for Salgado, 'Workers' was shot with about three R lenses.

 

[George Mann]

Am I wrong in assuming that the biggest difference between the Leitz lenses and that of a professional grade Nikkor is in it's performance wide open?

I know that they render images in a way that I like stopped down, but are they really better technically, or just aesthetically in their optimum range of aperture?

 

[Paul Howell]

As I recall the reviews Nikon, Canon, Minolta, Konica and Pentax were all very good in the wide to shot tele, my take is where Leica really stood out as in their APO lens, and long teles. In daily use, at the news papers and wire service all you needed was lens good enough to make a 1/2 sheet on news print with off set printing, Lecia or Alpa quality was not needed. Leica also tested their lens with micro filch film, developed in high accuracy developers, most lens could resolve good enough for Trix or HP5 or God forbid GAF 500. My thinking is where a Leica lens would stand is shooting Kodachrome 64.

 

[jjphoto]

... but are they really better technically, or just aesthetically in their optimum range of aperture?

Define 'better'. IMHO, the solitary fact that Leica R focus in the correct direction (ie opposite Nikon, Fujinon, Pentax) makes them 'better'.

Everyone made at least some superb fast lenses, Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Konica, Minolta, Contax so I wouldn't suggest that Leica was the lone ranger in that field. I have seen it argued that Leica focused on optimum wide open performance instead of stopped down performance and that some makers made lenses with fast apertures as 'viewing aids' rather than as usable apertures but TBH I don't think those statements can be supported. It might be true in some isolated cases but it doesn't make it so for every other maker. Minolta, Konica and Canon (SSC Aspherical) F1.2 lenses were superb wide open in their day and they still are.

I still use a circa early 1980 Leica R 80 F1.4 lens regularly, almost exclusively wide open, because of its performance alone but I also use a Hexanon 1.2/57 for the same reason.

 

[George Mann]

Define 'better'.

Measurable technical superiority.

 

[jjphoto]

Measurable technical superiority.

I don't agree that it's as simple as that. Even if comparing 'technical superiority' alone there are many subjective or practical factors and I wasn't really joking about focus direction (depending on what you are used to) because it matters for certain photography where the subject moves fast and you need to react.

Who was it that said 'sharpness is over rated'? You can stop a lens down to its optimum aperture and most lenses will be in about the same ball park, technically, because most aberrations are controlled when stopped down. On the other hand it is the combination of aberrations that make some lenses way more desirable than others, but definitely 'horses for courses'. The lens I want to shoot people with is not the lens you'd use to reproduce art or for landscape. The Leica R 1.4/80 is terrible for architecture, landscape or general photography (IMHO) but superb for people at wide open or close to it, despite its technically inferior performance compared to modern 80/85mm lenses.

 

[beemermark]

I am surprised that you had so much trouble from an SL-2.

Still, if I were to buy one today, I would get an R3 because of it's affordability and reliability over the other R series.

Can you expand on why it is that you switched to Nikon?

The R3 is a very unreliable camera. I thought it was the best R body ever made but I had 3 or 4 that the electronics died (still have two in the junk bin). Went back to an Sl2. see
https://casualphotophile.com/2019/07/26/leica-slr-camera-buyers-guide-which-should-you-buy/

 

[Deleted member 88956]

I have found using a soft release (shutter button screw in extension) really helps. I have them on my R-Es and R7. R8 and R9 do not need them.

Does soft release completely address the late release or just feels like it? Since the problem is across R4-R7, including all mechanical R6, there does not seem to be a fix for the problem, more of getting-used-to-it thing. It sounds to me like shutter press lifts the mirror only to let shutter to operate with some delay, in other words like the shutter activation timing/delay is longer than in majority of SLR cameras. I don't want to say it is making camera usable, but it sure is hell of a difference from expected operation.

 

[locutus]

I think Leica R is better seen for what it is now, a manual focus SLR wasn't commercially competitive in the 90's, but nowadays you might pick one just for the sheer joy of use.

Personally i have 3 bodies, Leica R6/8/9 and a slew of R mount lenses. Quality wise i'd say the superwides aren't as good as Zeiss ZF's but the 28 and up hit a beautiful sweet spot of classic rendering with very good wide open contrast and reasonable sharpness. Haptics are of course excellent on everything.

The 35/50/90 Summicron set mentioned above is an excellent Leica gateway kit and doesn't leave much for wanting.

I think the 35mm Summicron-R E55, 80mm Summilux-R and 100mm APO-Macro-Elmarit are my all time favourite manual focus lenses ever.

None of this is cheap, but its far away from Leica M prices, which have just gone completely insane.

 

[Vincent Peri]

I am surprised that you had so much trouble from an SL-2.

Still, if I were to buy one today, I would get an R3 because of it's affordability and reliability over the other R series.

Can you expand on why it is that you switched to Nikon?

I switched to Nikon because it was a lot cheaper and a far superior offering of lenses (60 or so, I think). The lenses are great, too. I have had only one problem with one Nikkor out of the many dozens I have had over the years - that was my very first Micro-Nikkor 55mm AI lens. It had what looked like black paint flakes all over the inner elements. I returned it the day after I bought it for another one. Been happy ever since.

 

[Huss]

Does soft release completely address the late release or just feels like it?

It masks it because it changes the trigger point to a far higher position in the shutter release stroke. You no longer feel like you need to push the shutter button deep into the body!
Try one, you can get them dirt cheap. $5 or less.
I hated the shutter release feel on my R-Es and R7 until I added them. Interestingly Nikon offers one (I think it is called the AR-1?) for the F series (I use them on the F and F2) and it similarly improves the feel.

 

[Huss]

What I have noticed w/re to lenses, is that every Leica lens is superb. But while Nikon, Canon, Pentax etc makes/made superb lenses, they also have some junk thrown in the mix.
And I don't think I've taken a pic with any of my Japanese cameras, looked at the results, and wished I had used one of my Leicas instead.

For those who worship technical details, resolution charts etc - the slightest missfocus/subject movement/camera shake renders all that moot.