Just picked up the CV Ultron 28mm f2.0

[antistatic]

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It is now attached to the front of my BP MP and it is like they were made for each other. The barrel has a similar gloss to the black paint and even the red 'feet' scale matches the red of the 'B/off' on the shutter dial. It feels very solidly built and it comes with its own screw on hood. When looking through the .72 viewfinder it barely pokes its nose into the frame. I also like the focusing tab.

 

"Well so much for the cosmetics, what about the results?" I hear you ask. I will post as they come to hand. This may be too early to call, but this lens may actually constitute great value for money. This would make it something of a rarity in the Leica world.

[thomasw_]

I am very interested in the rendering of this lens as compared to the Summicron 28/2. The fairly high contrast of the Summicron 28's rendering has made me a tad reluctant to buy one, as I shoot mostly BW and do not want to lose shadow detail. It seems to be rather suspectible to flare, too. I will be interested to see more images of this Ultron 28/2, for at f2 it appears to render more sharply than the Summicron in the center of images but softer toward the corners. It seems to be a bit better at rendering the shadow details in BW with its slightly lower contrast. But I remain to be completely convinced....thus I look forward to some more image samples

[lct]

...I look forward to some more image samples

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/leica-m8-forum/60967-new-cv-ultron-28mm-f2-m8.html

[georg]

"fairly high contrast...do not want to lose shadow detail"

 

You don't improve shadow detail with a low-contrast-lens, you just lose information (just like a softer lens doesn't have more depth of field, it's an illusion because the difference between in and out of focus areas isn't as big while the real information in the image is even smaller) - hopefully one of our native-english-speakers can properly explain this common myth.

[thomasw_]

"fairly high contrast...do not want to lose shadow detail"

 

You don't improve shadow detail with a low-contrast-lens......

 

I know, but that is not what I claimed. Let me try to clarify.

 

I don't want a low contrast rendering just as I am not keen on rendering with high contrast (I could see this being desirable for some who shoot mostly colour, but I don't). Shadow details for me are best rendered through a lens if likened to a golden mean; neither too much nor too little contrast, as either will wreck the detail albeit in different ways. So while I would like a summicron 28's speed, I would like ideally to find a 28 as fast but with a rendering that affords less high contrast than the summicron, but not a low contrast lens per se. As I said, I am not sure that the cv 28/2 is for sure 'the 28' for me....but in looking at some early results on flickr, it does look promising in approaching that 'golden mean'.

 

respectfully, thomas

[tobey bilek]

Get a Mandler design v 3 with the 49mm filter thread.

 

In fact all the 1980 designs are what you want.

[wizard]

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Thomas, although I know what you mean, I'd still say that a high contrast lens will give you more detail than a medium or low contrast lens, simply because a high contrast lens will be able to transfer even the most subtle contrast nuances which the photographed object shows onto film (or sensor). Only a high contrast lens can do that, as a lower contrast lens will not record these subtle nuances, but will instead record very similar contrast levels as just one level of contrast.

 

Cheers,

 

Andy

[john_s]

Although the high contrast lens is the more accurate, there can be an advantage in some light spilling into the shadows. Just as one might pre-flash paper in the darkroom to get a little more detail in the highlights, one could pre-flash film in the darkroom before loading it into the camera to get some more detail in the shadows. Some light spill in taking the photo, due to some mild flare achieves the same end.

 

It is actually compensating for the limitations of the photographic process, i.e. the print does not contain the range of brightness of the scene (usually).