My new, standard, normal 50mm equivalent for the CL and TL2.

This image is an outlier. It was taken with the 17mm f1.4 TTArtisan lens.

One Stumbling block I've had in integrating the cropped frame Leicas into my operational comfort zone has been finding a very good, standard 50mm equivalent normal lens for the systems. I tried the TTArtisan 35mm f1.4 but while it's very, very good for the price one gives away all the niceties of modernity. You give up auto exposure in the modes other than "A". You give up in camera lens corrections for geometric distortion, vignetting and some other under the hood fixes. You give up exif info. You give up auto-focus and you also walk around in stark disbelief that a $75 lens can be so good...

I read a lot about a lens Leica sold especially for the CL/TL2 systems which was the 35mm f1.4 Summilux and just about everything I came across gushed about the outstanding optical performance of the lens. But of course it turned out to be big, heavy and painfully expensive. I thought $2,000K+ was a bit over the top for a lens I could only really use well on what is now a discontinued system family. 

After working with the Sigma i-Series 35mm f2.0 I was impressed by its performance on full frame cameras. It showed sharp chops and nice colors everywhere in the frame. But would it stand up to the increased pixel density of the cropped frame, 24 megapixel sensors of the mini-Leicas? That's what today's test was all about. 

I worked the lens at apertures from f2.0 to f11 and I was not disappointed at any part of the aperture range.  The sharpness didn't vary by much, only the depth of field. The lens is not too big on the camera and actually feels more compact and lighter than the "made for APS-C" Leica 35mm f1.4. The final plus for me is that I can use it on all of the L mount, full frame cameras as well as the cropped frame orphans.

Final verdict? Sure. It's absolutely fine. A very decent choice for a normal point of view on a couple of pixie sized cameras. And we already own it. Bonus.

Exhaustive and rigorous testing under treacherous conditions with a scary model.

 Bokeh anyone?