Leica SL2-S
It’s easy to forget that Leica has been making full-frame mirrorless cameras longer than anyone else except Sony. The firm launched its original 24MP SL (Typ 601) back in 2015, when the likes of Canon and Nikon were still confidently asserting that the future lay with DSLRs. It took three more years before those two giants joined this now-dominant section of the market. At about the same time, Leica banded together with Panasonic and Sigma to form the L-Mount Alliance, building cross-compatible cameras and lenses.
Towards the end of 2019, Leica released the SL2, a £5,300 47MP behemoth that had a lot in common with Panasonic’s Lumix S1R, which had been launched earlier in the year. Now we have the SL2-S, a 24MP model that uses the same chunky SLRshaped body design but places a greater emphasis on video. Like its higher-resolution sibling, this latest model is positioned very firmly as a high-end professional tool, with a price tag to match.
In fact, at almost £4,000 body-only, the Leica SL2-S is fully twice the price of most of its 24MP contemporaries, including the Panasonic Lumix S1 with which it shares a lot of its DNA. It’s priced in the same ball-park as the video-specialist Panasonic Lumix S1H and Sony Alpha 7S III, and is only £200 less than Canon’s 45MP, 8K-capable EOS R5. So what does it offer to justify such an outlay?
Features
Leica has built the SL2-S around what it describes as a newly developed BSI-CMOS full-frame sensor,
