The Leica Tri-Elmar is Leica’s only wide angle three position zoom. Is it a zoom, well sort of… It is a lens with three distinct positions, and it only performs well at these specific focal length positions. We have a lens that covers 16mm, 18mm, and 21mm focal lengths. We are going to look at its strengths and weaknesses…

It is arguably one of the best wide angle lenses in the world, easily holding its own today. A few other wide angle primes are better, but they are primes, they’re supposed to be better. If you want a small unobtrusive wide angle lens then this maybe your ticket.

For this test I used my Leica 24 megapixel M240. The M240 only records an approximate aperture value. There is no electronic link with M lenses to the camera. Yes, there is a 6bit coding on the lens, but that only tells the camera what lens is attached. No aperture information is passed. When you examine the files you may see an aperture value, again it is only an approximation. I did record that actual aperture values used in this test independently.

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