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Leica Rumors recently shared a video of the moon shot with a Leica APO-Telyt-R 400mm F2.8 lens. It’s not a recent video, but it’s worth checking out. It’s a cool – and pricey – super telephoto lens.
The video below was shot by photographer Markus Stark in 2015 while he was camping nearly 1,000′ (290m) above sea level in Germany. He attached the Leica 400mm F2.8 lens to his Panasonic GH4 using a 1.4x, 2x, and 2x Leica APO focus module extenders (more on those later).
The Leica APO-TELYT-R 400mm F2.8 is quite the lens. You can purchase a used version from B&H right now for $15,000 USD. The manual focus lens features apochromatic correction, which is unusual for a super telephoto lens. In total, the lens has 10 elements across 8 groups. It’s a heavy, large lens. It weighs 13 lbs (5.9kg) and is 1.2′ (36.6cm) in length. The lens has a built-in telescoping lens hood and is as you can see, includes a tripod foot. At its widest, the lens is 6.2″ (15.75cm) in diameter. This is the Leica Head 400/560/800 and the 1.4x Leica Focus Module.
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The lens was first released in 1996 as part of Leica’s APO-Telyt Module system. The APO-Telyt-R Module lenses are all manual focus and were designed for Leica-R SLR cameras. What sets the lenses apart is that APO-Telyt system is modular. In total, there are three focusing units and two heads available, which can be combined to create different focal length and aperture combinations. In total, the lenses you can configure are: 280mm F2.8, 400mm F2.8, 400mm F4, 560mm F4, 560mm F5.6 and 800mm F5.6. In addition to the modular lenses, Leica also made Leica Focus Modules in 1x, 1.4x and 2x options, which act as teleconverters.
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| The Leica APO-Telyt-R Module System. The system includes two Leica Heads and three Leica Focus Modules, which can be combined to create six different manual focus super telephoto prime lenses. The larger head, Leica Head 400/560/800 is what’s used in the video above. This lens can be combined with the three different focus modules to build 400mm F2.8, 560mm F4 and 800mm F5.6 lenses. (Apologies for the low-quality of this image, I have tried to make it legible enough). |
The APO-Telyt-R Module System was in production from 1996 to 2009. As Leica wrapped up production, customers could purchase the entire modular system for € 32,630, which is nearly $39,000 USD.
You can learn much more about the system by visiting Apotelyt.com. You can also learn more about the Leica 400mm F2.8 head and focus module combination by clicking here.
Author:
Jeremy Gray
Source: Dpreview
