![]() As such, a shooter holding an SL2 would be hard-pressed to put his finger on anything not made of brass or some other alloy, and if featherweight users will be turned off by the camera’s heaviness, an equal number (or more) will accept this heft in order to use such a strong, all-mechanical, all-metal camera. The materials selection department at Leitz in 1974 had not yet been seduced by the siren song of plastics. For those shooters there are certainly better SLRs to choose.īut the substantial (and somewhat excessive) weight is a natural product of the camera’s old-world construction. Shooters who travel, or the adventurous among us may be put off when packing an SL2 and a couple or three lenses in a bag. Like the Minolta XK, which was found to be a technically incredible camera with a major failing in the weight department, the SL2 will be undeniably too heavy for some users. As with all cameras, there are some minor annoyances, chief of which is the sheer heft of the machine. This purposeful and timeless aesthetic carries through to the camera’s feel in the hand – mostly. Like all the best machines in the world, there’s an economy of form that those in-the-know will recognize as the brass ring of design. Top plate controls are reminiscent of fine machine tools and built and deployed with a nod to symmetry. The pentaprism is squat and compact, the body muscular with stoic angles. Though fans of Leica’s more famous M and that machine’s bauhaus simplicity might find the SL2 downright inelegant, as a professional SLR, this thing is quintessentially classic, with a profile and silhouette that’s timeless and utilitarian. ![]() ![]() ![]() Aesthetically speaking, the SL2 is everything I want in a camera. The first handshake with any camera is made with the eyes, and this camera grasps with a hand that inspires confidence. The SL2’s all-mechanical construction, advanced technical abilities, exceptional lenses, and sheer durability make it an heirloom machine that’s as capable today as it was back then, and today, the SL2 is the mechanical Leica SLR to own.Ī bold statement, for sure. And that’s because the book on this entirely mechanical camera is still being written more than four decades after the final example rolled out of the factory. The result is that after just two years, an incredibly short lifespan in the world of professional SLR systems, SL2 production would cease.īut even this isn’t the full story. In the era in which the SL2 debuted, Leica was in dire financial straits, and every Leicaflex the company sold reportedly sold at a loss – not a good business position. ![]() If all this sounds like the first chapter in what would become a runaway success and subsequent dynasty of SLR dominance, that’s because we’re only telling half the story. Naturally, the camera was extremely, almost cripplingly expensive (double the price of the comparable Nikon pro-spec SLR against which it was directly competing), but it was also remarkably beautiful, built to exacting standards, and was the first truly complete system SLR from Leica. This new camera, named with the wild abandon so typified by the Germans as the Leicaflex SL2, was designed and built under an uncommon-in-business ethos in which no expense was spared. In 1974 Leitz introduced an evolutionary camera to build on the foundation laid by the first and second Leica SLRs, the Leicaflex and Leicaflex SL. ![]()
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