Field experience and some snaps.

Having spent quite a bit of time tuning the SL2-S to my way of working in Part II, meaning simplifying things to the point that it is more like a Leica M10 to operate with all extraneous noise/buttons/settings eliminated, I set about taking the camera for a spin. I brought with me the Voigtländer 21mm Aspherical Color-Skopar and 75mm Ultron, along with the Light Lens Lab 35mm 8 element Summicron clone. For the two lenses stashed in my pockets each is attached to a Leica Lens Coupling ring for safe interchange. All three are properly 6-bit coded for correct focal length recognition in the SL2-S.

The Good:

• Beautiful color rendering SOOC using DNG/RAW.
• Exceptional ability to recover burned out highlights.
• Intuitive handling. The great mass of the beast is somewhat mitigated by the small and light M lenses and the absence of dozens of buttons and controls makes for easy use, even with gloves. In this regard the body is close to the best ‘glove handling’ body ever, the Leicaflex SL.
• Drop dead phenomenal manual focus when using the magnifier feature. I took over 5 dozen images mostly at or near full aperture and each was critically sharp where I focused. The best MF experience ever, especially with longer focal lengths at large apertures where the focus point is truly binary. Either right or wrong.
• Exceptional EVF – once tailored for color and brightness it’s fast and responsive. I completely declutter the view so that only the shutter speed and exposure compensation are disclosed in very small font size when the first pressure on the shutter release is applied.
• Lovely quiet shutter sound. Just a joy to perceive.
• Effective IBIS.
• The inexpensive aftermarket battery – $39 not the $240 Leica asks – works fine.
• Framing is perfect. What you see is what you get. Not something that can be said of the M10.
• I made maybe 15 lens changes on this outing and found the process safe, easy and speedy using the Leica M to L adapter. Just like using an M10 in this regard with a large, easily accessed lens lock release button.
• Flattery. When using the M10 on the street I get the question from passersby “Is that a film camera?” surprisingly often, to which I lie, replying insouciantly “But of course. I would never use anything else”. Today, with the ugly hulk of the SL2-S slung around my neck, I got “Nice camera”!

The Bad:

• Though it’s shown correctly on the camera files, in Lightroom Classic EXIF data display a time stamp 2 hours ahead of what is correct. This may be a Leica FOTOS anomaly. I will research it more.
• Exposure (using Multi Field) is constantly 1/4 stop over in all lighting conditions. I simply amended my Lightroom Classic import preset to adjust for this.
• The level horizon indicator is poor, often being incorrect. I have removed it from the EVF display.
• Battery life is mediocre. I chewed through 25% in one hour, albeit with the awful Geotagging link to FOTOS on my iPhone running (or not) all the time which probably did not help. See below. I never turned the camera off, but did have the EVF set to sleep after 2 minutes of inactivity. No LCD chimping.
• The Leica camera strap will have to go. The fact that it is rubberized on one side but slippery on the other does not encourage confidence and I dislike the loud LEICA letters emblazoned on it. It does do a good job of spreading the load, though.

The Ugly:

• The camera constantly drops the link to FOTOS running on my iPhone 12 Pro Max. It tells you the link has been lost and subsequent images retain the last known good GPS data, which are incorrect. I will revert to using this technique for proper GPS recording.

Some snaps – a few treated in Silver Efex or Color Efex from the NIK collection:

Snaps from a first outing.