Those who asserted that the Sony A7R is not suited to be used in combination with Leica wide angle M lenses propably arrived at a too vague conclusion. In fact it depends on the particular lens design. Lenses with an extremely compact and symmetric design may produce problems with color shift and edge smearing even on the sensor of the A7R with shifted microlenses whereas lenses with a more telecentric design like the Leica WATE perform perfectly fine without color shift and without edge smearing on the A7R.
There will be additional comparison tests soon with other lenses like the Voigtlander Ultron 21mm f/1.8 ASPH, the Leica Super Elmar 18mm f/3.8 and 21mm f/3.4, so please stay tuned!
If the first results convinced you already and you started craving for used samples, let me add, that you do not need the additional 16-18-21mm finder (\"Frankenfinder\") when you put this lens on the Sony A7 / A7R. But even then you may be shocked by the prices of this lens. Perhaps it helps to put into perspective that this lens covers the whole range from 16mm to 21mm with a quality perfect like the best wide angle primes from Leica when stopped down to f/8 and even at f/4 almost on par with them. Compared to the price of a Leica M 240 or Monochrom body, you\'ll get the WATE almost for free on top of the A7R... ;-)
There may be left some used copies at reasonably prices at the moment but I expect rising prices...
I have the WATE and love it.
Works fine on NEX-5N, used to work great on NEX-7 until I updated the firmware.
If I am not mistaken there now seems to be another update for the NEX-7 firmware.
Will update again and find out whether it works fine again.
Indeed that reference about A7R and WATE is very good news.
I hope it gets confirmed through more in depth testing.
Nov 01, 2013 at 09:52 AM
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