LEICA Fisheye Elmarit R 16mm

The only diagonal fisheye lens from Leica

A review and photo examples of Fisheye Elmarit 16mm F2.8.

Gallery

The sample photos were taken with the LEICA SL Typ601 (mirrorless digital camera).

The sample photos were taken with the HASSELBLAD X2D.

Review

Overview
Usage
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1．Overview

The Fisheye Elmarit 16mm is a Leica R-mount fisheye lens released in 1974, and about 3,000 were manufactured in the five years until production ended in 1979.

Made in Japan, the optical system is said to be the same as Minolta’s MC Fisheye Rokkor 16mm f2.8.

This lens has four built-in color filters, just like the SUPER ELMAR 15mm, SUPER ELMART 15mm, and ELMARIT 19mm (2-inch). These filters have become almost useless in the digital age.

The hood is flower-shaped and protrudes slightly forward from the lens barrel, cutting out excess light when shooting in 35mm format. The shadow of this hood can be seen on the medium-format digital sensor described below, so it seems to work in 35mm format. Even when the sun is in the backlight, there are no suspicious ghosts, so it has excellent backlight resistance.

Since it is not possible to attach a filter to the front of the lens, the lens can be protected by attaching a lens cap (14089, 14089M).

2．Usage

Fisheye lenses are not used very often because they intentionally leave distortion in the image, and I think it’s best to use them casually as a break from shooting, but close-up shots that take advantage of the minimum focusing distance of 0.3m are interesting.

The price of the lens is undeniably high, even including the cost of the Leica brand, as Russian-made fisheye lenses are sold for around 20,000 yen. What’s interesting is that the used price of the MC Fisheye Rokkor 16mm f2.8, which is said to have the same design, is also more expensive than other Minolta MC lenses, which I think is due to the influence of hearsay that it is used by the Leica brand.

The price of a Russian-made fisheye lens starts at around 20,000 yen, so even including the cost of the Leica brand, it is undeniably expensive.

This particular lens is a modified lens with a ROM terminal, and when Leica released the film cameras Leica R8/R9, they modified the lenses of conventional cameras to add a ROM terminal for a fee. Fisheye lenses with ROM terminals are quite rare, and are hard to find on eBay.

3．Mount adapter

For LEICA SL typ601, LEICA T series, and LEICA CL, if you use the Leica genuine mount adapter, Leica R-Adapter L (16076), you can transfer lens information to the camera if the lens has a ROM terminal. The information is recorded in the EXIF of the shooting results, so it is easier to organize the shooting results compared to using lenses before the R cam.

When shooting with a CANON EOS-1Ds MKIII, an error 20 (Err20) occurs every time you take a picture. As far as I can tell from my own cameras, this error occurs most often with wide-angle lenses, such as ELMARIT-R 19mm-II, SUPER ANGULON-R 21mmF4, VARIO ELMAR-R 21-35mm, ELMARIT-R 28mm(I), ELMARIT-R 24mm, and SUMMILUX-R 35mm F1.4. I haven’t attached it to check, but it’s likely that both the 15mm SUPER ELMARIT and SUPER ELMAR cannot be used.

When used with the HASSELBLAD X2D, there is absolutely no room in the image circle for anything more than a 35mm full-frame sensor, and approximately 76% of the area of a 35mm full-frame sensor is usable. The black areas in the photo below are areas where data is missing, and the shadow of the hood is also reflected above and below. To remove the shadow of the hood, it would be necessary to physically scrape it off, which is difficult to do, as the hood is fixed.

The result of extracting the usable parts

Specification

Item	Value	note
focal length(mm)	16
Maximum aperture	2.8
Minimum aperture	16
Lens configuration	11elements 8groups
Minimum distance(m)	0.3
Lens length(mm)	60
Lens max diameter(mm)	71
Filter diameter(mm)	–	Filters cannot be attached because the hood is integrated into the front of the lens. Three color filters for film cameras are built in.
Weight(g)	470
Release date	1974 *2
Production Number	2,950 *2