Leica Elmarit-M 90mm f/2.8 (v3)

This is the 90mm most M shooters actually keep. Not the f/2 Summicron that costs twice as much and lugs heavier in the bag, not the older fat-barrel Elmarit. The slim Elmarit-M is the short telephoto people reach for when they want a head-and-shoulders portrait that snaps into focus without doubling the weight of the kit. It is sharp wide open in a way that surprises people who assume f/2.8 is a compromise aperture.

Optically it runs a clean four-element design, and Leica tuned it for the center first. At f/2.8 the middle of the frame is already cutting, contrast is high, and skin renders crisp and high in contrast rather than soft and glowing. Close down to f/4 and the corners pull into line; by f/5.6 the whole field is even. The out-of-focus rendering behind a subject is smooth and undramatic. No swirl, no nervous edges, just a quiet falloff that keeps the eye on the face, which is exactly what you want from a portrait tele.

Focus is the hard part. On an M rangefinder, 90mm wide open gives you a sliver of depth of field, and the rangefinder base length is working near the edge of its accuracy at this focal length. Land the patch on the eye and the frame is brilliant. Miss by a hair and the ears come out sharp instead. People who shoot this lens learn to rock slightly and recompose, and plenty of them close to f/4 in the field for a little safety margin. It does not work the way a 50mm does, where you can fire from the hip and trust the depth.

Flare is well controlled for a lens of this generation, though it predates Leica's latest multicoating, so a strong backlit source will lift the shadows a touch. Most owners shoot it with the hood and forget about it. The 46mm filter thread it carries is shared with several other M lenses of the same era, handy if you stack a yellow filter for black and white or a thin polarizer and want to move it between bodies.

Today it sits at the cheap end of properly good Leica glass. It is one of the most affordable ways into a Leica short telephoto, well under the Summicron and the APO versions that followed, and it turns up used constantly because Leica built it for a long stretch. Portrait and documentary shooters cross-shop it against the f/2 Summicron and usually decide the extra stop is not worth the size and money. When you do work it wide open in dim window light, meter off the face and trust the reading. In Zone Light Meter, spot the cheekbone and place it where you want the skin to land, because at f/2.8 there is no depth of field to bail out a guess. Get the exposure right and the negative will hold more than this little lens can resolve.