LEICA MACRO ELMAR M 90mm

Review and Photo example of the MACRO ELMAR M 90mm F4.

Gallery

LEICA MACRO-ELMAR-M 90mm/F4 Photo example

Review

The Macro Elmar 90mm is the only M mount lens with the “Macro” name.
A lens and adapter were sold as a set to enable macro photography with a rangefinder camera.
The adapter with glasses, “MACRO-ADAPTER-M 14409 *eyes” version, is exclusively for Macro Elmar 90mm, and allows macro photography with rangefinder M cameras, including film cameras.

The lens itself has a simple lens configuration with a focal length of 90mm, maximum aperture value of F4, and 4 elements in 4 groups, allowing you to obtain clear photos without distortion even at maximum aperture. All examples are taken at wide open aperture.
For a 90mm medium-telephoto lens, the maximum aperture is a little over F4, so if you’re not careful when shooting, you’ll end up with a lot of shaky photos. Be careful with ISO100 film, etc., and you must hold the camera firmly while shooting. With digital cameras, you can increase the ISO sensitivity and increase the shutter speed, which greatly reduces the problem of camera shake.

I think you can be satisfied with the Macro Elmar M 90mm as a standalone lens, but it’s even more fun to use it with a macro adapter. When using a macro adapter, you can obtain sufficient bokeh with a wide open aperture of F4 for close-up shots, and take advantage of the 90mm focal length to create close-up shots of your subject.

However, when shooting with a macro adapter, it goes without saying that the closer you get to the subject,the greater the difference between the viewfinder appearance and the photographic result (parallax) due to the positional relationship between the viewfinder and lens, making it less practical. With a digital camera, you can get the results you want by checking the preview while shooting, but it feels like a roundabout way.However, if you want to shoot with live view, you won’t need an adapter with glasses, which is quite a hassle.

This adapter is originally an item used with film cameras, but as mentioned above, the parallax problem is difficult to overcome, so I only used this lens once with an M6 TTL loaded with 36-shot film at ISO 100, but the macro adapter I gave up on using it after only taking a few shooting.

When attaching the adapter with glasses “MACRO-ADAPTER-M 14409 eyes version” to the camera, first rotate the lens 180° circumferentially, attach it to the adapter, and then attach it to the camera.
The Macro Elmar 90mm has the depth memory and focus range for normal use engraved on the top of the lens, and the depth memory and focus range for use with the macro adapter on the back. Normal lenses only have the country of manufacture written on the bottom of the lens barrel, so it feels a little new.

The Macro Elmar 90mm barrel is available in black or silver for lenses manufactured between 2003 and 2013. The macro adapter is only available in black, and silver lenses also use black adapters. Since 2014, it has been available only in black, and the lens barrel has been changed to a lens barrel called a big top with a larger diameter aperture ring.

As a successor to the “MACRO-ADAPTER-M 14409 eyes version”, the “14652 universal version” has been released, which removes the glasses from the adapter, but this is only an EVF-only extension ring.

Note: DR-SUMMICRON allows close-up photography when worn with glasses, but the name is Dual Reange and not “macro”.

Specification

Item	Value	note
focal length(mm)	90
Maximum aperture	4
Minimum aperture	22
Lens configuration	4 elements 4groups
Shooting range(m)	∞〜0.77	Camera distance meter linked to all areas
Shooting range with Macro-adapter	0.76〜0.5	Camera distance meter linked to all areas
Lens length(mm)	59	41mm when the lens is sunken
Lens max diameter(mm)	52
Filter diameter(mm)	39
Weight(g)	230(Black-color)	320(Silver-color)
Macro-adapter weight(g)	96