The Leica R8
Meet the Leica R8. A blast from the past, the 90s to be specific, a rather over looked and over priced bit of kit that Leica brought out at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. So, now that we got the bad bits out of the way, let’s see what it is!
I came upon the R8 in 2014 in a round about way. I actually started with the lens, a 50mm Summicron-R (which in Leica-speak is an f/2 lens and I’ll abbreviate to 50R from now on). At the time I had a Canon EOS 3 and was looking for a slightly more interesting 50 than the usual Canon options. Someone suggested a 50R. One was found, a Leitax adapter bought and off we went.
I spent a few months using the 50R and I have to say I grew really fond of the look and rendering of the lens — sharp but gentle, very nice contrast and a a bit of an old school look, if that makes sense.
Eventually though, I got tired of having to use the lens in stop down mode (with the adapter you have to open the aperture, focus, then close the aperture to whatever setting you want prior to shooting). It effectively made me shoot everything at f/2 or f/2.8 as I just could not be bothered. So I started thinking if I should just get the right camera for the lens.
