The Lenses To Come...

The lenses to come have already come. You have a box of them stashed in your photographic locker right now...

The new Leica SL mirror less camera carries it's title from the German phrase "spiegel los" or "mirror-free". Which has caused me to puzzle about the naming of the old Leicaflex SL1 and 2 which definitely had mirrors in them. But be that as it may, there is still a connection - as there is with the Leica M and Leica S series of cameras - the lenses.

Last Thursday's showcase of the new Leica SL camera and the equally new 24-90mm f:2.8 zoom lens also featured the news that Leica will be making their own precision adaptors to allow older Leica lenses to work on the camera. M, series bayonets, R series lenses , SL series lenses, S series medium format lenses...all the way to the lenses currently fitted to the Leica T.

Essentially, if you own something that looks like glass and says Leica somewhere on it you can eventually clap it onto the SL. We're not guaranteeing that this will apply to binoculars and microscopes but by the same token they do stay up late in Wetzlar and who knows?

The glorious joy of this will be that lenses you may never have considered for closeup or other work - lenses that lived their lives on the front of rangefinders and had their raison d'etre in specialised fields can now join general purpose lenses...and you get to see the world on a magnificent EVF screen.

A case in point was seen on Thursday with Kristian Dowling and the new SL. He took the new 24-90 f:2.8 out into the street in the strange glare of the yellow street lights - and the red Leica sign on the side of the building - and took clean and clear portrait shots of the lovely model. Then he grabbed on of the 0.95 Noctilux lenses and adapted it to the camera - the night got brighter, the focus got easier, and the out of focus areas became soft and dreamy.

That new Leica SL is just waiting to meet your entire collection of Leica lenses. Do the polite thing and effect an introduction - there's a good fellow...