Two weeks ago we were in Sweden with my parents, brothers, sisters and the grandchildren. We don’t meet often as our family lives all across Europe. I knew my parents were looking forward to the reunion, so I had to bring a camera to take at least one group shot and lots of snapshots.
For the first time since I bought my first full frame camera (I think almost 15 years ago), I brought an APS-C camera as my only camera. After a few weeks of playing with the Leica CL I was pretty confident that this nifty camera was perfectly able to deliver the images I want. Also, the CL, combined with an auto focus lens, can be given to anyone with two hands and one eye to take some shots. Ideal for the setting.
I shot most of the images with the 23/2.0 Summicron: a perfect allround lens with excellent image quality. I brought a few other lenses (the 18/2.8, CV 15/4.5, 50/2.0 M, 75/2.5 M and Zeiss 35/2.8) but didn’t use them much, with exception of the CV15/4.5 which my wife used to take some shots for a bicycling magazine (a seperate post about that one).
Did I miss my M or SL? Not really. There were a few settings where I would have liked a slightly faster lens (which I could have brought of course) or a better ISO/noise performance. But in general, the CL performs very, very, very well for things like this. Being far less expensive, I’m less worried about leaving it on the kitchen table, even with kids running around.
All images shot with the Summicron-TL 23/2.0 ASPH, unless mentioned in the description.
Leica did a great job with the CL.
