15% discount on any Slim Skin Case with code May15 when purchasing a 6-bit Kit
Leica M Mount 6-Bit Encoder kit (includes pens, encoder, instructions and table of codes). The coder clips on to un-encoded lenses and allows quick and easy coding of any M mount lens.
Once the lens is encoded, your Leica M and SL2/SL3 camera will know which focal length lens it has mounted and record that information in to your photos (meta data) which will then be displayed in Lightroom and any other software allowing you to filter your photos by lens and focal length.
Your Leica will also apply various adjustments including vignetting, chromatic aberration and barrel distortion for cleaner JPG images and less post processing for RAW files.
An added benefit for SL2 and SL3 users when used with the Leica M adapter, is setting the correct image stabilisation for the lens length.
Any other manufacturer lens can be coded to the closest Leica equivalent, generally improving the quality of your photos through the automatic corrections applied and the recording of meta data for lens length (28mm, 50mm etc).
For coding third party lenses, some experimentation may be required to find the closest and best match but all M mount lenses can be coded.
The kit includes a compatible white and black pen, along with the 6-bit coder, instructions, and table of lenses and what to code them to.
If you have a lens not listed in the table below, mounting your camera on a tripod and photographing a scene uncoded, then photographing the same scene with a few of the closest codes will allow you to compare and choose the best one for your particular setup. This should only take around 20 minutes for more than one lens due to it only taking around 20 seconds or so to clean a previous code off a lens and then re-coding it.
A few lenses can have a screw where a 1-bit should be, filling this in with white allows you to then either leave it as white or place a black mark on top of it for successful coding.
Note: The QR code on the encoder takes you to the instructions online which includes the table of lens codes. If you are out and about with the encoder and pen in your bag, this should hopefully help code your lens quickly.
For SL2 and SL3 users you will also get the benefit of correct stabilisation automatically. An excellent video by Jonathan Harris at Worldwide Camera Exchange explains in more detail here:
Matt Osbourne, a professional model photographer reviewed version 1 of our encoder. See what he thought about it here:
A short introduction and tutorial can be found here:
Please see this excellent table below from lavidaleica.com (The original table was posted on Carsten Whimster's site (site no longer active) and with thanks to Sean Reid, Jan Dvorak, Dante Stella and others who had made it possible).
Thanks also goes out to many others in the Leica community who are providing valuable information that allow us all to code our lenses effectively.
Excellent although I did take a few iterations to get my lenses coded, including checking that my M262 was working with a new lens as none of mine worked to start with! Problems included having screws where the code should be (heavily flood the location) and for my 90/2.8 Tele-Elmarit-M I used the straight 90/2.8 Elmarit code as there is only a single location which clashed with the screw. Coding lens is particularly important for wide angle glass as pixels are sensitive to the direction of light whereas emulsion is not.
G
Guglielmo De Luigi
AkaraLabs for bit code
Perfect, thank you
W
William B
Works perfectly!
This Akara tool fits perfectly, and six-bit coding is easy with the included pens (black and white) and coding chart. I coded seven modern lenses quickly, and the digital rangefinder camera recognizes them every time. Codes exist for our earlier lenses (1937 - 1979), but so far I prefer to leave them uncoded, even though the coding ink can be removed easily.
