A few years ago I bought a Canadian made Leica Tele-Elmarit 2,8/90 from 1979. It was a good deal – at least that was what I thought. The lens turned out to flare quite a bit in some lighting situations. Since I use it on a Leica M – as supposed – I can’t see if it flares in the rangefinder. It is not until the pictures at shown on the display that one can tell if the picture had the flare. I have not been able to understand when it will flare and when not. The result was that I did not use the lens, as I could not know if I got the result I wanted. I could of course use ”live view” – but that is not how I shoot. I hate live view…in most cases…

The solution to this was to use an external EVF – in my case an Olympus VF-2. The Olympus VF-2 is more or less exactly the same as the Leica EVF for the M240 – but to half the price. I bought it to use with my Zeiss 2,8/21 Biogon – but it proved to be more useful.

I went to the small beautiful town of Vadstena, not far from where I live, to try this combination out. Vadstena is a town where the church is visible everywhere in a kind of ”historical” way. There is a lot of Swedish history in the walls of the old houses and churches of the small town.

With the EVF mounted to my MP240 the Tele-Elmarit shines. I could handle the flare and focus perfectly. Suddenly the small cheap flare- lens had jumped up to be a very useful and nice lens. It is really sharp from the widest aperture (the BNW pictures are shot usingg f2.8) and easy to focus. It is an old lens and in some parts there can be some ugly purple fringing, but if used for black and white shooting, that is not a problem. I think this little lens will find it’s way in to my camera bag more from now on.