Luminous Landscape Forum

Equipment & Techniques => Medium Format / Film / Digital Backs – and Large Sensor Photography => Topic started by: JKevinScott on January 12, 2017, 03:19:31 pm

Title: Leica S leaf shutter lenses
Post by: JKevinScott on January 12, 2017, 03:19:31 pm

I almost never shoot above 1/125th with flash and can't imagine too many scenarios where I would need high sync speed for my work.  Other than sync speed, any non-obvious reasons why one would want to buy leaf shutter (CS) variants of Leica S lenses.  For instance, are the CS versions of the lenses better made?  Are their AF motors less likely to fail?  Is their some unadvertised optical difference? 

Thanks in advance for any thoughts.

(P.S., I'm up to speed on the threads about rampant AF motor failures in general on the S lenses, and folks' bad experiences with Leica customer service.)

Title: Re: Leica S leaf shutter lenses
Post by: jacsin on January 13, 2017, 03:31:08 am

No optical difference afaik. 3 out of my 4 lenses (I owned 6...) with AF failure were CS versions - I guess it's the same AF motor in all S lenses.

Title: Re: Leica S leaf shutter lenses
Post by: hasselbladfan on January 17, 2017, 09:24:54 am

If you don't need it, don't buy them because ....

..... they are more expensive (about 1000 bucks per lens)

..... they are noticeably heavier !

Title: Re: Leica S leaf shutter lenses
Post by: JKevinScott on January 17, 2017, 03:45:57 pm

Quote from: hasselbladfan on January 17, 2017, 09:24:54 am

If you don't need it, don't buy them because ....

..... they are more expensive (about 1000 bucks per lens)

..... they are noticeably heavier !

Thanks!  Noticeably heavier is definitely not a good trade off for me for the possibility that high sync speed might be useful in the future.