As purchasers of the Leica Q2 Ghost edition by Hondinkee, we missed out on the very collectible set that included a matching silver thumb grip as one of the extras. Our search for one turned up nothing more than a standard black version which I was not interested in. My enquiries to both Leica and Hodinkee could not help as it was not available as a spare part. I could not even locate a third party option.

The desire for a new piece of gear reaches into the very soul of most of us from time to time. Wherever our interests take us, the cloven hoof of temptation is never far away. How well we each resist this is highly personal and I like to think that I am a fairly resilient person where this is concerned. But every now and again I fall head over heels for something that trundles onto decisions’ battlefield, where it jousts between head and heart for several days. Occasionally I become overwhelmed with a strong impulse to scratch an itch that, if looked at rationally, did not exist in the first place.

I originally purchased this lens shortly after it was introduced several years ago and enjoyed using it so much I decided, bizarrely, to sell it. Other than to help finance a new SL 75mm APO lens, I had no other reason to part with it and suffered seller’s remorse as soon as it had left the house. It is the only Leica lens I have ever sold on and I view this moment of madness as a lesson in needlessly purging equipment in an effort to keep further outlay minimised.

My interest in Leica Zoom lenses has taken me on an interesting journey over the last few years. The first ones I acquired were for the TL system, notably the 11-23 and 55-135 objectives. Now discontinued these lenses are superb, albeit a little slow. Both remain in my collection and continue to be used, particularly when travelling. As I slowly moved into the SL system I read countless reviews as to how good all of the dedicated zooms are, so I thought I should try a couple out for myself. I have never really cared for standard zooms, preferring fast primes when working with my favourite focal lengths - between 35mm and 100mm.

Continuing with my renewed interest in zoom lenses, we recently purchased Leica’s APO Vario-Elmar 90-280 f2.8-4 telephoto zoom lens. We took it out in the field a few days ago to start to familiarise ourselves with it. Below are some of the images taken during its first use. We will post a wider review of our experiences when we have used it for a few months.

A few years ago I wrote about how Leica’s 55-135 and 11-23 zoom lenses for the APSC TL/CL cameras had changed my opinion of zoom lenses for the better. I moved away from zooms four decades ago due to being very unimpressed with the output from them. The only exception to this was a 11-22mm Zuiko zoom for my Olympus E-1 in 2005. This was a good lens but suffered from severe purple fringing in high contrast areas. So when I got into Leica’s APSC system I decided to give zooms another try and could not believe how good they were. Over the decades I had become very used to fast aperture primes and realised that by going the zoom route, I was going to have to compromise speed for something more sedentary. With this in mind I held onto the couple of primes I was already using with my TL2 so that I would have access to fast aperture glass. The combination of zooms and primes worked very well and is one I still use when travelling.