Character by Design

The Leitz ELSIE lenses are purpose-built for cinematography with character-rich, beyond full frame performance to serve a broad range of productions. They exhibit a gentle fall off of focus, resolution, and illumination toward the edges of the frame that draws the viewer’s attention toward the subject creating a dimensional feel that is more pronounced than the lenses in our Performance series, but more subtle than the more extreme lenses in our Legacy series. Their warm color temperature makes sure that talent looks beautiful and colors remain accurate.

The ELSIE lenses offer cinematographers a look with personality, but without getting boxed into something too intense or limiting in scope. While the lenses can exhibit dynamic lenticular flares wide open, they can be controlled easily by stopping down so that scenes with windows and hot practical sources are easily manageable.

They exhibit a relatively high contrast which combines with their unique focus fall off to create separation that gives the appearance of a faster lens without the drawbacks of working at an ultra-fast aperture. The bokeh quality was fine-tuned in conjunction with Leica Camera to be smooth yet maintain structure to out-of-focus elements that maintains a sense of place without sacrificing the feeling of depth, separation, and dimensionality.

Built for Cinematography

Designed from the ground up to be cinematography lenses, the Leitz ELSIE primes feature many of the technical attributes expected from professional lenses. Available only in LPL mount and including /i metadata, the large set of 13 primes from 15mm to 150mm are all T2.1 and come in consistent sizes with matched focus and iris ring positions for quick lens changes. The LEITZ ZOOMs make an ideal pairing when looking for companion zoom lenses.

Designed by our optical engineers and hand assembled at our factory in Germany, the ELSIE lenses embody the mechanical precision and technical accuracy as well as the human touch that Leitz lenses are known for.

The lenses feature a noticeable but gradual falloff of resolution and illumination as the image approaches the corners to create a dimensional pop that gently draws the viewer‘s eye toward the center of the frame. The LEITZ ZOOMs make an excellent companion for the ELSIE primes in both image look and feel.

The name ELSIE is inspired by lifelong humanitarian Elsie Kühn-Leitz, daughter of Ernst Leitz II, who championed the oppressed and suffering and risked her own life to help them.

Who is Elsie?

The name ELSIE is inspired by lifelong humanitarian Elsie Kühn-Leitz, daughter of Ernst Leitz II, who championed the oppressed and suffering and risked her own life to help them. During World War II Elsie and her family helped save the lives of hundreds of their employees and fellow citizens by sending them out of the country. Her efforts to alleviate the suffering of Ukrainian forced laborers during the war landed her in jail, but her spirit persisted and after the war she continued to dedicate her life to improving the lives of others.