I decided to put away all Canon mount equipment and keep only an RF camera. I will occasionally miss the long end of my 70-200. Since Leica will be making an adapter for R lenses to use on M, I am becoming curious about the Leica R 200+mm teles, which I always ignored. Are any of them worth looking at?

Well, if 180mm is close enough for you, the Apo-Telyt-R 180/3.4 is very nice.

What's your budget?

APO Telyt 280/4, probably the finest Leica R tele, if you can find a copy.

jcolwell wrote:
Well, if 180mm is close enough for you, the Apo-Telyt-R 180/3.4 is very nice.

What's your budget?

+1

Ajay C wrote:
APO Telyt 280/4, probably the finest Leica R tele, if you can find a copy.

Is that the lens that was designed for naval reconissance? There is an R tele in that range that people here are always looking for, but I can't remember which one it is.

The regular 180 F4 is very cheap/common/light with decent IQ and can be found for $2-400. The 180 2.8 v1 is a very heavy lens for it's size and runs $5-600. I sold both because I was not super impressed with IQ and found myself using my 200 1.8L or my 135L w/ teleconverter instead. Seems like if you are going for it, get the best lens you can afford (eg the 180 apo 3.4 vs the older 180 f4 etc). Disclaimer that I have not shot the newer 180, but by all accounts I have read it is much better than the old and still reasonably affordable.

Saneproduction, AFAIK it was actually the shorter APO Telyt 180/3.4 that was used for naval recce. It is optimized for infinity and was one of the highest resolving lenses at the time and was used to identify Soviet/Russian warships on the basis of the rivets in the hull...
Ships were sometimes repainted and renamed to mask/hide nuclear carrying ships but the rivets in the hull were like a fingerprint.

It did not require a longer telephoto lens for that type of shots.

That was the story as I heard it, don't take my word for it.

jcolwell wrote:
Well, if 180mm is close enough for you, the Apo-Telyt-R 180/3.4 is very nice.

What's your budget?

Thanks, I will try to find some samples from the 180. Longer would be tempting, but much longer than 200mm w/o stabilizer is probably a bad idea. I noticed that there are some 250mm Telyts, are these any good?

Budget? Under 2k.

I had the earlier 250/4, which was okay, not more, and quite heavy.

Ajay C wrote:
APO Telyt 280/4, probably the finest Leica R tele, if you can find a copy.

Thanks for the tip. I looked at some samples on Flickr and the images look great. I guess I should not get too excited about it, though. It is already rare and once the M and the adapters start selling, the price will skyrocket.

Lloyd Chambers says nice words about 180mm f/2.8 APO-Elmarit-R. Any owners here?

I have the 180/2 APO-Summicron-R, and it is a fantastic lens, really amazing. The Elmarit is better at f/2.8 up to some higher aperture, I don't know, maybe f/5.6. It is maybe the best lens in that focal length and aperture combination. It is very expensive though.

Mirek Elsner wrote:
Thanks for the tip. I looked at some samples on Flickr and the images look great. I guess I should not get too excited about it, though. It is already rare and once the M and the adapters start selling, the price will skyrocket.


i wouldn't worry too much about that, it's worked fine on any dslr for forever and it already costs nearly as much as a noctilux.

I have the 180/2.8 APO.
It is super sharp right from f2.8.
Has excellent bokeh too which I like much better than 280/4 APO.
It is light enough for me to take hiking too.
It has a nice focus ring which has little resistance to moving.
This was done for fast manual focusing.
It does amazingly well with APO 2x extender too.

I am desperately looking for that lens....

sebboh wrote:

i wouldn't worry too much about that, it's worked fine on any dslr for forever and it already costs nearly as much as a noctilux.

That's unfortunate, then. Perhaps one of the RF lens manufacturers comes with a tele with reasonable price in the future.

wayne seltzer wrote:
I have the 180/2.8 APO.
It is super sharp right from f2.8.
Has excellent bokeh too which I like much better than 280/4 APO.
It is light enough for me to take hiking too.
It has a nice focus ring which has little resistance to moving.
This was done for fast manual focusing.
It does amazingly well with APO 2x extender too.


Thanks Wayne, it sounds interesting. How big and heavy is it? Say, compared to the ZE 100 Makro-Planar or Canon 100-200mm lenses?

Paul Yi wrote:
I am desperately looking for that lens....


When I looked earlier today on eBay, there were two.

Saneproduction, AFAIK it was actually the shorter APO Telyt 180/3.4 that was used for naval recce. It is optimized for infinity and was one of the highest resolving lenses at the time and was used to identify Soviet/Russian warships on the basis of the rivets in the hull...
Ships were sometimes repainted and renamed to mask/hide nuclear carrying ships but the rivets in the hull were like a fingerprint.

That's a great story!

I wonder why Leica had several 180mm lenses. Are they from different era?

carstenw wrote:
I have the 180/2 APO-Summicron-R, and it is a fantastic lens, really amazing. The Elmarit is better at f/2.8 up to some higher aperture, I don't know, maybe f/5.6. It is maybe the best lens in that focal length and aperture combination. It is very expensive though.

The auction site has one in great condition for $750.

Mirek Elsner wrote:
carstenw wrote:
I have the 180/2 APO-Summicron-R, and it is a fantastic lens, really amazing. The Elmarit is better at f/2.8 up to some higher aperture, I don't know, maybe f/5.6. It is maybe the best lens in that focal length and aperture combination. It is very expensive though.

The auction site has one in great condition for $750.

the apo version?