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Let's get something out of the way right from the start: Leica's are not cheap. Leica cameras and lenses live in a class of their own, and that includes price. Leica's are an investment and the new Leica full frame SL2 mirrorless camera is no exception. You want the red dot, you pay for it.
The question is what do you get aside from the logo?
In the case of SL2 the answer is a lot. You get a fantastic 47-megapixel full-frame sensor capable of incredibly sharp, wonderfully saturated images, and some of the best support for high end video you'll find in a mirrorless camera system.
You'll also get support for nearly every lens Leica has ever made, some native, some adapted, but all with that legendary Leica quality. And that, finally, is why you buy a Leica—for the lenses.
###Meet the SL2
The Leica SL2 is the successor to the SL, which arrived back in 2015. The SL2 is a full-frame mirrorless SLR-style camera, not a rangerfinder-style camera that Leica is perhaps best known for. The SL2 uses Leica's L mount lenses. Since the SL launched a few years ago, Leica, Panasonic, and Sigma have all released L mount lenses, giving you a wide selection of native lenses to chose from. There's also an M mount adapter for using other Leica lenses with the SL2. More on that in a minute.
The first thing that jumps out at you when you pick up the SL2 is how solid it it is—it's downright heavy, but not in a bad way, rather in a solidly built way. It's a tank of a camera. It feels good in the hand though, and balanced nicely with the 90mm f/2 lens that Leica sent along for testing.
It's definitely bigger and heavier than any of the Sony A7 series cameras I've used, possibly even heavier than the Panasonic S1R, a very similar camera body.
Shooting with the Leica is an absolute pleasure. This is one of the best designed, ergonomically well-thought out cameras I've ever used.
The body is made of machined magnesium, with machined aluminum top and bottom caps. There is no plastic anywhere to be found (there is a bit rubber in the flap that covers the ports, which feels a little out of place, but does it's job). The SL2 looks solid and it is solid.
As you would expect from Leica, the attention to detail is fantastic. My favorite part about shooting with it is the slight scallop on the inside of the grip where your fingers wrap around and grab hold. It makes holding it much nicer than holding my Sony A7II.
The rear of the camera strikes a nice balance between minimalist aesthetics and actually useful tools. There are three buttons near the LCD (the 3.2-inch LCD does not move, but does pack 2.1 million dots onto the screen for a very sharp display). Then there's a joystick style nub for navigating menus, changing focus point, and so on. I've been a huge fan of the nub since I first used it on a [Fujifilm X-Pro2](https://www.wired.com/2016/03/review-fujifilm-x-pro2/) and I wish more camera makers would use it.
Another thing other camera makers could take from Leica is the wonderful menu system. Leica has put some serious thought into the menu system, especially the way Photo and Video-related features are separated out, yet both easy to access and change. Activate the menu and you'll see all the items for whichever mode you're in, and near the top of the screen buttons for "photo" and "video" to switch between settings.
It rarely takes more than two taps to get where you want in this menu system. It's efficient and fast. To be fair, most of my experience is with Sony cameras, which have perhaps the labyrinthian menu systems out there, but even next to Panasonic's reasonably simple menus, the Leica SL2 really shines. This is the way menus should be done.
The Leica has also taken a welcome agnostic approach to buttons. The understated styling does not have a ton of buttons, but nearly all the buttons it does have are unlabeled and fully customizable. There are eight buttons total and six of those can be customized to your liking. One thing I really like, for those familiar with the original SL, there are now two function buttons on the front of the camera and they're designed so you can tell them apart by feel.
There's also a DSLR-style mini screen on top of the SL2 to see the current settings at a glance—shooting mode, ISO, shutter speed, battery status, and more.
###The Results
Nearly everything you would expect in a camera of this caliber is here. Reasonably fast autofocus, which is to say, autofocus is fast, though not stunningly so. There's phase detect focusing, face detect, and various ways to tweak and optimize the auto-focus defaults. Also present is 5-axis stabilization, which is a first for the SL line. There's also a very big, bright, sharp viewfinder, dual memory card slots, HDMI, USB-C, 3.5mm microphone, and 3.5mm headphone ports.
All of that is nice, but what about the images? Well, with a 47-megapixel sensor, as you would expect, the Leica SL2 turns out some stunningly sharp, crisp images. The Leica shoots both JPG and DNG format RAW files. The use of DNG is noteworthy since it means you can edit the images with any piece of software (I like [Darktable](https://www.darktable.org/)), rather than waiting for your favorite app to add support for some proprietary RAW format. Kudos to Leica for going with the standard.
The SL2 is one of the more capable video cameras you'll find in the full frame space. It can shoot 4K 60p full frame video, something no other camera I'm aware of can pull off (the Panasonic S1R can do 4K 60p, but it crops slightly). There's also quite a few log recording options videographers will appreciate. In fact, given the very high level of support for quality video, and the excellent results I got from the SL2, the fact that the rear LCD doesn't rotate is even more frustrating. Outside of that, the SL2 is a video powerhouse.
As noted above, the SL2 is capable of shooting with legacy Leica glass, and while you can argue that the cameras are overpriced, very few would say the same of the lenses Leica has made over the years. Leica doesn't just adapt legacy lenses though, the sensor has been optimized to handle older Leica lenses. Specifically Leica has optimised the sensor design to improve image quality at the edges when using legacy Leica lenses from the M mount system.
My one gripe with The SL2 is the bursts autofocus. The SL2 is can shoot at 20 frames per second with the electronic shutter and 10 frame per second with the mechanical shutter. That's quite good, but the catch is that in both cases that rate is with auto focus locked. If you want continuous focus and exposure, you'll need to drop down to the slower 6 frames per second burst rate. This is primarily of concern if you shoot things like sports or perhaps wildlife, though it did bite me once or twice trying to shoot my kids running around.
Leica has updated its Fotos app for the SL2 and there's a new iPad version. If you pony up for a $50/year subscription you can integrate Fotos and Lightroom, as well as gain access to a few other extras.
In the end the SL2 is an premium camera at a premium price. I have always resisted the lure of Leica, but the SL2 has a certain feel to it—there's something about the experience of using it that I really can't put into words well, except to say that maybe there is something to the magic of the red dot.
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