Leica Digital CL with adapted lenses?

[William Lewis]

I was pondering today if the digial CL would work well with old LTM lenses via stacked adaptors? LTM -> M -> L ?

Anyone tried this? I'm still trying to find a digital equal to my old IIIf and Summitar. I love my Nikons but miss a certain something about Leica.

 

[MoonMind]

I was pondering today if the digial CL would work well with old LTM lenses via stacked adaptors? LTM -> M -> L ?

Anyone tried this? I'm still trying to find a digital equal to my old IIIf and Summitar. I love my Nikons but miss a certain something about Leica.

I've done this with my Sony A6000, with M mount and LTM glass; I don't see why it shouldn't work with the CL with its much better EVF and controls. YMMV, though - *if* you acquire a CL, I'd get some native lenses, too, because while adapting can be fun, it's frustrating not to be able to explore what the camera can do. If Leica lens prices scare you off that thought, the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 is available in L mount now - it's a great lens for the price, and its 16mm and 56mm siblings are even better by most accounts (the 16mm being rather big, though).

That said, the APS-C body I'd adapt M mount or LTM lenses to nowadays would be the Fuji X-E3 ... You could get four of them for the price of one CL, too. And native X mount glass, while not cheap, is certainly more affordable than Leica glass.

M.

 

[William Lewis]

I have a soft spot for screw mount Leica lenses so that's my main driver.

 

[MoonMind]

I see ... but that begs the question, why the CL? It's about the most expensive way to get decent 24MP images off an APS-C sensor, with no added benefits (like access to quite good and very compact native lenses - for the most part).

That said, I understand the lure of the CL - just not exactly for the purpose you state. Almost any APS-C body would do fine; I actually quite like shooting the Sony A6000 with manual lenses, and IQ is still competitive after all these years (except for high ISO above 1600 ...).

M.

 

[serhan]

I don't see problem using LTM lenses on CL. From Jono review he said CL works better with M lenses than Fuji cameras due to its sensor stack... Also you can choose a similar Leica M profile with CL to correct some of the lens problems. However APSC cuts most of the problem areas of the older lenses anyway... But still higher MP pushes the older lenses eg CV 35mm f2 lens was much better than Contax g 35mm f2 wide open on CL... But the difference might not be that much when the lenses stopped down...

 

[rayvonn]

I don't see problem using LTM lenses on CL. From Jono review he said CL works better with M lenses than Fuji cameras due to its sensor stack... Also you can choose a similar Leica M profile with CL to correct some of the lens problems. However APSC cuts most of the problem areas of the older lenses anyway... But still higher MP pushes the older lenses eg CV 35mm f2 lens was much better than Contax g 35mm f2 wide open on CL... But the difference might not be that much when the lenses stopped down...

That’s interesting to know because as Matt alludes, whilst I do like the look of the CL and have thought about it in the context of perhaps utilising my M lenses, I’ve always had the nagging thought that even if one invested in the CL and all it’s native lenses, I’d still be wondering to myself why the hell didn’t I just invest in a Fuji system. A FF CL would surely set it apart in that regard.

 

[William Lewis]

What I really want, I guess is a digital Barnack and the CL seemed like an actual Leica branded way to do it, perhaps better than the E-PL1 I have now for that purpose. It looks like this isn't really the best way to approach it.

So, the search continues ... APS-C, built in VF, cheap and higher rez than the 12mp I currently have

 

[mike3996]

Nothing wrong with Leica CL. Yes it is costlier than what Fuji offers in the same feature/size space but you get a Bayer sensor and the beautiful Leica processing that is very rich in color.

Nonetheless, Fuji X-Pro2/3 is a very worthy contender not least because of the optical viewfinder and direct dials.

Before Fuji X-Pro3 came out, used Leica CLs were actually pretty close to the price of used Fuji X-Pro2s!

Leica TL2 is even more affordable but the external Visoflex offsets the price.


I'm going with internet facts here but both cameras CL and Fuji are great with JPEG stuff, here you have to really consider which color science you prefer. Fuji is of course the king of JPEG as they say but then again many people just prefer the German take on color. X-Pro3 would be a killer JPEG machine because you could be shooting RAW+JPEG and in case you need to adjust a pic you can run the Fuji raw through the camera to produce a 16-bit TIFF file. In contrast, Leica produces Lightroom-friendlier raw files and the jpegs aren't bad at all either.

I also understand that CL sports a very big EVF, way better than what's on Fuji X-E3 or X-Pro2 possibly.

 

[ph.]

Even a cheap but dimensionally correct adapter will do, at least that is my expericance with the Summicron 50 version IV- on a somewhat similar TL. The ancient Leica lenses can do without automatic correction of design shortcomings , so coding can be skipped. also, the DNG rawfiles are easy to process both in "Photoshop" and in the "Rawtherapee" program. A Minolta CLE 28mm also did well. I have not tried my wide R-optics, since I do not yet have a suitable adapter, but is expecting that both the crypto-Leitz 16mm and the 21-35Zoom will do well on the small sensor. Terrible TL-controls,however. apart from ability to set aperture and distance on the lens, he fumbling with a screen comes nowhere near the exact setting opportunities of my old M.-6

p.