We fell in love with the slightly weird Leica T back in 2014, simultaneously enchanted and a little bit confused by its touchscreen-powered controls. As a shooter’s camera, as a Leica, it lived up to our expectations. Now, a few years on, there’s a new variant called the TL that changes a few small things.
On the outside, the Leica TL is basically identical to the T — its chassis is milled from a single block of aluminium, and apart from some controls on the top plate it’s basically entirely driven by the big 16:9-ratio 3.7-inch touchscreen on the rear. That’s where you’ll change ISO and shooting settings, as well as swipe and pinch through photos to review them.
Internally, Leica has done two things to make the TL more useful. Its internal memory — yep, this is a camera with onboard storage, so you don’t need an SD card if you don’t want one — has been doubled to 32GB, and it also inherits a newer and more versatile autofocus sensor that handles continuous focus much better than the original.
You don’t buy a Leica for its bleeding-edge specs, though — you buy it for the quality of the brand’s lenses, and Leica’s TL system has three primes and three variable-aperture zooms. More useful is the fact that you can use Leica SL lenses without an adapter, too, or adapt your very expensive collection of classic M primes.
And, finally, the Leica TL app that works both as an external viewfinder and to transfer photos off the camera to your phone and onwards to all your various social media networks has an Android version as well as iOS.
You’ll pay $2450 for the Leica TL body in Australia — three colours now, with black and silver and anodised titanium on offer — with Leica-branded neck straps and half-body protector cases in three complementary colours costing $120 and $170 respectively. [Leica]
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