SUPER ELMAR R 15mm
An ultra-wide-angle lens manufactured by Zeiss.
A review and Photo example of the SUPER ELMAR R 15mm F3.5.
Table of contents
Gallery
Photo example used with Leica M
Review
1．Overview
The Super-Elmar 15mm is one of the widest-angle lenses in the Leica R mount, released in 1979. Only about 3,000 were produced.
The lens is made of 13 elements in 12 groups, with 5 aperture blades and a minimum focusing distance of 0.16m.
Filters cannot be attached to the front, but a dedicated front cap 14294 is available. The lens also has four built-in color filters.
The Super-Elmar mount is available in 3-CAM (order number: 11213) and ROM terminal (order number: 11325). I have never seen a ROM version on the second-hand market in Japan, but it is sometimes sold on eBay. It is not known whether an R-only CAM exists.
It is a fairly large lens, and I used it with a LEICA-M (Typ240)/Leica-SL (Typ601), but the camera and lens weighed about 1.5kg, which I remember as being heavy. The lens I owned was a 3-CAM lens, so I sold it when I bought another lens, but in 2023 I bought the scratched 3-CAM lens back.
2．Usage
The Super-Elmar 15mm is an ultra-wide-angle lens, so it is difficult to see the focus peak, and when shooting distant subjects, if you set it to F5.6, it will be in pan focus, and when shooting close-ups, I often narrowed the aperture and roughly adjusted the focus by eye, but with the mirrorless EVF, I can see the focus position in a magnified manner, so I have started to focus more precisely.
As mentioned in the overview, this lens has a complex lens configuration of 12 groups and 13 elements, and you can feel the difficulty of creating a focal length of 15mm with a normal lens that is not a fisheye.
Also, the focus ring of the lens I owned in the past was light and sparse, so it was stressful to operate, but the lens with a scratched front lens I obtained in 2023 has a moderate stickiness in the focus ring, and it seems that the lens I owned previously had a loose lens and was sparse.
The minimum shooting distance is 16 cm and the lens is about 9 cm long, so the distance between the subject and the front lens is about 7 cm, and when taking close-up photos of flowers, etc., you need to be careful because the front lens may touch another subject nearby if you are not careful.
When it comes to photography, if the sun is placed directly in front of the lens, it doesn’t produce any mysterious light, but if the sun is placed at an angle, flashy ghosts can appear, so care must be taken with the position of the sun. At full aperture, the corners may appear blurred (the edges may appear blurred because they are out of focus), but since it is an old ultra-wide-angle lens, I think this is within the acceptable range.
3．Add Info.
The Super-Elmar R 15mm is a lens made by Carl Zeiss.
Its successor, the Super-Elmarit R 15mm, is a lens made by Schneider.
This lens has several sibling lenses, including Yashica-CONTAX, PENTAX, and Rollei QBM.
Nikon also has a manual lens with the same specifications, but it is not the same because it has a lens configuration of 11 groups and 14 elements.
Leica R mount lenses are not manufactured in large numbers, but they are not rare lenses when other mount versions are included. Prices vary depending on the lens brand.
Even for 35mm format lenses, focal lengths of around 14mm are covered by zooms.
Nevertheless, prime 15mm lenses are on the market, and a well-known example is Carl Zeiss’ Milvus 2.8 / 15mm, which was released in 2017. SIGMA will release a large-aperture F1.4 lens in 2023 for 14mm, a focal length close to 15mm.
Although production of AF zoom lenses is uncertain, several small and medium-sized manufacturers have released prime lenses of 14mm and 15mm, so it is possible to purchase them new.
Specification
| Item | SUPER ELMAR | SUPER ELMARIT |
| focal length(mm) | 15 | 15 |
| Maximum aperture | 3.5 | 2.8 |
| Minimum aperture | 22 | 22 |
| Lens configuration | 12groups 13elements | 10groups 13elements |
| Leaf blade | 5 | 6 |
| Minimum distance(m) | 0.16 | 0.18 |
| Lens length(mm) | 92.5 | 85.3 |
| Lens max diameter(mm) | 83.5 | 83.5 |
| Filter diameter(mm) | – Filters cannot be attached to the front frame. The lens has four built-in filters. | ← |
| Weight(g) | 815 | 710 |
| Release date | Year 1979 | Year 2001 |
| Production number | 2980 | 420 |
Reference links
- The description of the SUPER ELMAR 15mm from Leica Wiki
- https://lens-db.com/carl-zeiss-distagon-t-15mm-f35-ae-1974/
- https://lens-db.com/asahi-smc-takumar-15mm-f35-1975/
- https://lens-db.com/carl-zeiss-distagon-hft-15mm-f35-1972/
- https://lens-db.com/nikon-ai-nikkor-15mm-f35-1978/
- https://www.sigma-global.com/jp/lenses/a023_14_14/specification.html
Update history
- 2025.1.7
- 2024.02.18
- 2022.06.11
Affiliate links
- Some external links are advertisements and clicking them may generate income for the site administrator.
