It’s a new twist on the old megapixels vs. glass reach conundrum I’ve been vacillating on for years. Using the E 70-350mm G, a crop sensor lens, on the a7cII, I prefer critter images I get over those from the a6700. Fine detail is clearly more evident when using the a7cII, even at 14 megapixels. And, strangely enough, the issue doesn’t appear to exist on other subject matter.

Maybe it’s all in my head. But once the a7V comes out next year, the a6700’ll likely be history.

After cautioning myself against heading out with the SL2 the other day for fear of becoming overly nostalgic, I did it anyway, for the past couple of days. Conclusion: the controls are still the best I’ve used for manual focus lenses. But the a7cII is great with manual glass as well, and it weighs almost a pound less than the SL2. Weight and AF ability make it first choice.

Which reminds me: I read something the other day about a Sigma event to celebrate the fp L in late October. No new camera was mentioned, but one can always hope. And they have two chances to make a solid seller: either an updated fp L with a proper EVF, or an APS-C L-mount body. Well, as long as they don’t use any form of the current fp L sensor.

I haven’t given up hope that Leica may come up with a body that suits my usage. But seeing that there’s already a firmware update for the new Q model doesn’t inspire much optimism. It’s starting to look as though the SL2 and -S may have been their last stable digital cameras.

The 50mm Summilux-SL is officially in the outbox for offloading. No, not the weight. No, not the native barrel distortion, almost unforgivable for a 50mm lens, let alone such an expensive one. Problem is, while out shooting city lights at night a while back, I noticed that colors from LCD lights were hideously unsaturated, a characteristic of cheap lenses. It made me wonder what else might be cooked into raw files shot with this lens.

For better or worse, it’s starting to look as though the latter part of the Mandler era through the end of the Kölsch era was Leica’s golden age for lenses. Time to head into the field, so I’ll leave it at that.

SL2/80mm Summilux-R . . .