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Great article.thank you so much for all the info.one thing I noticed with the electronic shutter when I set it to always on my shutter button does not work.it works fine in off and extended.

Jesse, that is something we plan on doing in a future post, it just requires more testing than we had time for. The SL's auto focus has been improved with every major firmware update and 3.0 is no exception!

Thank you for this comment, I actually added a new section to the post about this change. Take a look!

Steve, to shoot a DNG only on the SL, you want to go to Photo File Format which is near the top of the Camera menu (one of the first settings you'll see when you bring up the menu). Then you can select DNG!

Josh Well done ! I am impressed that our discussions actually made it into this firmware release . No time to test it this week ..but soon I will give you some feedback onAF tracking ….

Devin, from my testing here I do not see a difference in the behavior of the spot metering function in Manual mode whether Exposure Preview is set to PAS or PASM. The only difference I see with Manual mode is that in PASM, if you set your exposure manually, the live view will reflect that exposure even without the shutter half pressed. More testing is needed!

Devin, I'll take a look at your awesome chart, thanks!

Steve, I'm not sure what you mean. On the SL, if you shoot DNG only (by selecting DNG in the Photo File Format menu), there is no JPEG file created at all. Are you seeing something different?

Josh, is there a way to turn off the joystick / focus point grid on the display other than a half press on the shutter?

Josh, exactly what is “extended mode” for the electronic shutter?

Josh, please disregard the joystick / AF focus point question. I just remembered how to turn it off.

Josh, on the right bottom corner of the live view screen there is a number which changes when the shutter button is half pressed. That number on my SL is 5K. When the shutter button is half pressed it changes to something that looks like L 33 . What are these numbers? I can't find any reference to this in the manual. The screen images in the manual are all 633 or 634.

Scott, a 64GB SD card would be SDXC. I've always found SDHC (cards 32GB or smaller) to be a bit faster, in general. Interesting about the electronic shutter being a bit faster. I'll have to check that here too!

There is no new firmware for the TL lenses in SL firmware 3.0, only for the SL 24-90mm and 90-280mm. And yes the lens firmware update does take quite a while!

Arthur, I cannot speak for other Leica stores but at Leica Store Miami we always offer to update the firmware of new SL's that our customers purchase before we deliver them if they so choose. In regards to the AF tracking for video, it has been improved but we usually use manual focus for our video production so we have not test the video AF improvements extensively yet.

Arthur, while you can of course acquire the SL anywhere you like, I do want to mention that when you shop with Leica Store Miami, that does support our efforts here at Red Dot Forum to do the kind of testing our readers appreciate. You are also welcome to email me anytime with additional questions at josh@leicastoremiami.com.

Les,

If you enter playback mode on the SL and cycle through the info display (lower right button), you'll see the picture's file name in the upper right corner. Ex – L1003310

Hope this helps.

Leica is delivering M10s, and has been since January. The issue is one of maximum production versus demand. The M10 is a hand-made product. It takes time to assemble, calibrate and test. As such, they can only make a limited amount per day. On the flip side, the demand is massive. Leica can't just make 50,000 cameras in one go. If history is a guide, meeting the initial M10 demand will most likely take another 6-8 months.

I appreciate that this post is 2 years old. I recently reactivated my membership here and was looking for information on lenses where the AF motor fail occurred. I have two lenses, one that failed and one that has not and is 4.5 years old. I am in Australia and repairs through the national distributor go to Wetzlar of course. I was considering the preemptive service, based on what I understood to be a new warranty period afterwards, as mentioned here.

My 70CS had the AF fail and was repaired free of charge, Six months later the central shutter failed. I had to pay for that repair and the advice from Wetzlar was that the warranty only covered the AF motor fault. It does not cover any other faults.
That makes paying for the preemptive fix much less attractive in my eyes

Amazed with your reviews, David!

Honestly, I just didn't think to use ISO 50. There is not much of a real-world quality difference between ISO 50 – 400. Some theorize that ISO 50 is actually a PULL setting and that the SL has a base ISO of 100. But…. I haven't received official confirmation of this.

Funny you should mention this…. I had the same thought, so repeated the test with the same setup, tripod, etc. with the 50 APO on the M10. Same result. Besides slight color differences between the SL and M10 files, the detail level was exactly the same.

Thanks for the link. Interesting stuff. I will need to ask the SL team at Leica about this next time we chat.

I agree that the 50 Summilux-SL is one of the best 50mm lenses Leica has ever produced, and would add that it's AF is infinitely better than the 50 APO-Summicron-M. 🙂

In all seriousness, though, I have also found the 50 SL's AF speed to be lacking, especially when compared to the lightening quick AF of the 24-90 and 90-280. It's not a fault of the SL's AF system. Rather, the fault lies in the massive glass elements inside the lens that take considerably more energy to move than the feather-light tiny focus elements in the zooms. The zooms were built for speed. The 50 SL? The priority was on absolute best image performance at a much wider aperture. Wider than the zooms. And wider than the 50 APO for the M. Take a look at the test shots and 100% crops. The 50 SL actually resolves more detail at f/1.4 than the 50 APO does at f/2. That is no small feat. One that, unfortunately, requires large and heavy lens elements to achieve.

While the speed isn't great, I have found the AF to be deadly accurate. And with razor-thin depth of field at f/1.4, I wouldn't call this level of accuracy and repeatability to be antiquated. Or the ability to select focus anywhere in the frame.

So, yes, the 50 SL represents a compromise. Are you willing to accept slower AF for higher optical quality? Some photographers will be. Others won't.

Karl,

I compared the 50 f/1.4 SL to the 50 f/1.4 M and the 50 f/2 APO. The 50 f/2 APO SL isn't available yet. It will certainly be interesting to see how the upcoming Summicron-SL will compare to the Summilux-SL.

The difference in quality with the 50 SL would be significant. The SL lenses are the best that Leica has ever produced.