Leica Vario-Elmar-R 28-70mm, E60

The Leica Vario-Elmar-R 28-70mm f/3.5-4.5 is a versatile manual-focus zoom for the Leica R system, covering everything from a useful 28mm wide-angle through to a short 70mm telephoto in one lens.

That range makes it an easy choice when you don't want to keep changing lenses. At 28mm there's plenty of room for travel, landscapes and street photography, while the middle of the range works naturally for everyday shooting. Move towards 70mm and you've got a useful focal length for portraits and tighter compositions.

The lens uses an 11-element, 8-group optical design, focuses as close as 0.5m and accepts E60 filters. 

Best for

Travel, everyday photography, street photography, landscapes, portraits and Leica R shooters wanting one lens that covers a useful range from wide-angle to short telephoto.

What to expect

The 28-70mm zoom range gives you quite a bit of flexibility from a single lens. At 28mm you get a broad field of view, 50mm gives a natural standard perspective, and 70mm lets you tighten the frame without moving to a dedicated telephoto.

Maximum aperture varies from f/3.5 at the wide end to f/4.5 at the long end, while the lens stops down to f/22. It focuses manually down to approximately 0.5m throughout the range.

This is a fully manual-focus lens with no autofocus or optical stabilisation.

Developing

This is a Leica R system film lens.

When used natively on a compatible Leica R film camera, developing depends on the film loaded. Colour negative film commonly uses C-41 processing, while black and white and slide films require their respective processes.

The lens can also be adapted to various digital mirrorless systems, but its native system and intended use are Leica R 35mm film cameras.