Leica Tele-Elmarit-M 90mm f/2.8

Leica built this one to fix a problem of their own making. The earlier 90mm Elmarit was a fine optic and far too much lens for the body, long and front-heavy on a small M. By the mid-1960s the rangefinder was supposed to be the compact answer to an SLR, and a portrait tele that tipped the camera forward worked against the whole pitch. The Tele-Elmarit answered that with a genuinely telephoto design, where the optical length runs shorter than the focal length, so it sits as a short, balanced barrel rather than a long protrusion. This first version, the heavier chrome-and-then-black "fat" model, ran from the late 1960s through 1974, when the much smaller "thin" Tele-Elmarit took over.

Wide open at f/2.8 it has the low-contrast bloom of old Leica glass: center detail is present, but it sits inside a faint glow rather than snapping. Corners trail the center, and contrast is well below anything modern. Stop down to f/4 and f/5.6 and the whole frame firms up into a properly sharp lens, which is where most people park it for landscape or anything that needs detail to the edges. Color skews warm and gentle. It flares into low contrast against backlight without much provocation, so a hood is not optional here.

The reason to own one is faces. At 90mm and f/2.8 on the M, it separates a subject cleanly and renders skin without the clinical bite that the later APO-Summicron-M 90 f/2 ASPH brings. The out-of-focus area stays smooth and calm, no busy outlining behind the subject. This is the classic available-light portrait and reportage length on a Leica, the lens you reach for when 50mm crops too tight on the face and you would rather not carry a Summicron 90 all day.

Two real limitations. Focusing a 90 wide open on a rangefinder is unforgiving: the patch gives you a fraction of the precision an SLR screen offers at this length, and at f/2.8 the depth of field is thin enough that a slightly worn or decalibrated rangefinder will hand back misses you do not deserve. And this first version is the one notorious for haze. Internal fogging settles into the rear group, which is built as a sealed block and frequently cannot be cleaned, so a hazy copy can be a dead end. Balsam separation in the cemented groups turns up too, but the fogging is the fault to fear. Inspect against a bright light before money changes hands.

Today it sits as the cheap 90 in the M lineup, cross-shopped against the Summicron 90 f/2 (sharper, heavier, dearer) and the later thin version (smaller, often rated a hair better optically). The fat model stays inexpensive by Leica standards precisely because of the haze reputation, which means a clean one is genuinely good value for a portrait shooter who hunts. One metering habit: wide open indoors or at dusk, meter the shadow you actually care about and let the gentle contrast carry the rest. Highlight rolloff holds well, so placing skin a stop or so over middle gray in Zone Light Meter keeps your highlights honest. The 39mm thread is standard Leica E39, so any filter, including an ND for shooting at f/2.8 in daylight, threads straight on.