Telephoto performance at its best

The extremely high performance offered by the APO Elmar-S 180 mm f/3.5 makes it an exceptional lens, even when compared to other Leica S-System lenses. With its distinctive telephoto character and very fast initial aperture, it is an invaluable asset for portrait photography, and is also an ideal lens for close-up work, thanks to its close focusing limit of just 1.5 meters (~5 ft).

Distortion, vignetting or chromatic aberration will not be an issue with this lens, as a result of its elaborate design comprising nine lens elements in seven groups.Six of these nine lenses are manufactured from glasses with anomalous partial dispersion, and two of these also possess particularly low dispersion characteristics. Thanks to the incorporation of these lenses, Leica’s specialists have achieved apochromatic correction with a very well corrected secondary spectrum and almost negligible chromatic aberration. Internal focusing ensures not only that the exceptional imaging performance of this lens remains practically constant throughout its entire focusing range, but also guarantees ideal weight distribution and superior handling of this weather- and dust-sealed lens.

The imaging performance of the APO Elmar-S 180 mm f/3.5, and its extremely high, corner-to-corner contrast, sets entirely new standards, and not only in this camera class. At the same time, its performance remains absolutely constant at all apertures and distances – stopping down with this lens is only really necessary for exposure control and creating greater depth of field. As a result, this lens offers an almost countless range of creative opportunities.

This is the CS version of the lens, which has a central shutter, also known as a leaf shutter, built-in. The central shutter allows the S camera to sync with a flash unit at any shutter speed up to and including 1/1000th of a second. This provides the photographer with exceptional control when balancing ambient and strobe lighting.