All material ©2026 Kirk Tuck and presented exclusively at www.visualsciencelab.blogspot.com If you are reading this on another site, without proper attribution, it is not an authorized use of the material. If you are reading this on unauthorized site DO NOT CLICK on any links in the body copy as it may infect your computer with serious viruses. Sorry to have to put this warning here but a recent search turned up dozens of similar infringements. Thanks for your authentic readership.
Here's the 411...
When I got my copy of the Leica 50mm APO Summicron SL I was delighted with just about every aspect of the lens. There was one glitch which seemed to show up most on my very recent SL2-S. When I used the lens I would look through the EVF or look at a preview image to judge the exposure of the frame I wanted to take. With everything looking perfect and the histogram right where it was supposed to be I would take the frame. When I reviewed the image I had just taken it was invariably about a stop lighter than what I saw on the LCD or the EVF. It was weird. And incredibly frustrating.
I reset the camera, checked each individual line item in the menu to see if I'd mis-set anything and started all over again. The engineering part of my brain suggested I change out lenses and see if the behavior changed. With a Leica 24-90mm Elmarit Zoom the issue didn't show up. I decided to switch out camera bodies. I put the 50mm lens on a Leica SL. I didn't see the same issue. But on both the SL2 cameras I was able to repeat the sequence and the problem I'd seen with the the SL2-S. A one stop overexposure when compared to the preview image.
I could have gone down three paths. Send the lens back to the seller with a note. Endlessly trouble-shoot the problem until I fried my own brain and frustration overwhelmed me. Or, I could just see if this was a widely reported problem, check the lens and camera firmware, and then see if Leica had delivered updated firmware for the camera and the lens.
Being lazy and largely unmotivated to work on problems that are someone else's ultimate responsibility I chose to begin with door #3. Check on firmware updates.
Bingo. The lens was at firmware 4.0. The Leica site showed new, updated firmware for all of the SL APO primes. From the 21mm all the way up to the 90mm. And all could be updated to the latest firmware, 4.1, at the same time from one .plf file. And the reason for the update? Leica discovered that the lenses were delivering final images that were one stop brighter than the original preview images. In other words, the lenses were at fault. The lenses were delivering inaccurate exposure information or aperture information to the cameras. Regardless if you were shooting in raw or Jpeg.
I downloaded the file and updated the new firmware (4.1) for the lenses. Now, if I use the 50 APO SL on any of my other cameras the new firmware will be resident in the lens and shared with the camera in use. Alternately, I could update the firmware in each camera body. I would probably find this a better solution if I had more than one APO SL lens.
Did I test it to see if the update worked? Naw. I took a nap, went for a walk, had coffee, watched TV, read a Sony camera user manual for six hours, and went to bed. Right.... As if....
Reality: I immediately tested the camera and the lens together and found the problem had vanished and everything is working just as it's supposed to. Phew.
I did update the camera firmware from 6.0 to 6.1 but I don't think it changes much. The info provided suggests that the only thing that changed is some boilerplate legal language about compatibility with legal information. Not a big enough deal to worry about. But deep in the notes it does suggest that updating the camera firmware will also, automatically, update the APO lens family firmware so maybe I took one step I really didn't need to.
But it sure is fun having the lens work with the camera perfectly instead of me having to come up with the arduous workaround of using my brain to calculate the difference in image brightnesses and then factor that into the final shot with exposure compensation controls... Not really what I bought a pricy camera and lens for.
Happy that Leica came through with a fix. Fix yours if you have em.
Kirk out.
All material ©2026 Kirk Tuck and presented exclusively at www.visualsciencelab.blogspot.com If you are reading this on another site, without proper attribution, it is not an authorized use of the material. If you are reading this on unauthorized site DO NOT CLICK on any links in the body copy as it may infect your computer with serious viruses. Sorry to have to put this warning here but a recent search turned up dozens of similar infringements. Thanks for your authentic readership.
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