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Which lens for an M?


mikemgb

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First a little background, I have only really adopted zoom lenses since the advent of digital photography, all my film cameras had a fixed prime lens, either 35, 40 or 50mm, the only other lenses I bought were a 28mm which got some use, a 70-210 f2.8 Tamron and a 500mm, both of which got little use.

 

I'm currently in the market for a film M, but I just want one lens, my choices are either 35mm Summicron or 50mm Summicron. Once I make up my mind on this I will know whether I want an M2 or an M3. The trouble is I just can't decide which lens to get. Fortunately on another thread on the D-Lux Typ109 by Andreas Braun, he showed me some software that would examine the exif data of all my photos and tell me which focal length I use most.

 

Today I ran that software on my library of 40,000 plus images. Ignore the bar to the left, that is scans of film images with no Exif data.

 

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There you go, it is now clear as mud which lens I should get!

 

It does seem to lean more to the 35mm though.

Edited by mikemgb
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35 Summicron-Asph. for sure. It's a terrific lens for travel,people (environmental portraits), and landscapes.

 

I think this would better in the M lens forum.

 

Quite possibly but I'm new to this forum and the Bar is the place I read most. I'd be quite happy if a mod wanted to move the thread though.

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Next to a 35 (in my case a 35/2.8 Summaron on M2), the 50 acts as a short tele. I took both to Japan recently and could have easily left the 50 at home (in hindsight).

 

My vote is 35 and M2. Wonderful! :)

 

 

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Edited by Mute-on
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Before you decide you should run the software again but only on your 'good' images or your 'keepers' or 'favourites' or whatever you call them. That might tell you a different story...

I agree. It's not the quantity that counts :-) What focal length do you find easier to compose with? What suits your style and vision best?

 

For me I would choose a 50, but if I look in my library most of my images are shot with a 35 (because it was all I had for quite a while).

 

 

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I went for almost 20 years using almost exclusively a 35mm Summaron ( occasionally had a 90 & 135 in there for special stuff). I finally began to use a 50, because I found that I was using it frequently on my SLR bodies. Once I really delved into the 50 I began to appreciate its qualities, but the 35 seems to be my all-time favorite. I think it depends on which better fulfills you vision. Your chart suggests s heavy skew toward the shorter end of the spectrum.

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Before you decide you should run the software again but only on your 'good' images or your 'keepers' or 'favourites' or whatever you call them. That might tell you a different story...

 

Thank you, I have recently been going back through my images with some Lightroom tweaks and a few Photoshop adjustments. That adjusted subset goes into a permanent slide show on a monitor in my "study" and currently contains a little over 3000 images.. I've left the software analyzing that set, it'll be interesting to see the results when I get home this evening.

 

The lens I choose will be used almost exclusively for black and white, high contrast, often with high grain. My favourite film for landscape is Ilford SFX, I love the graininess and contrast of it, however, I do also use fine grained film so the quality of the lens will play a part.

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If you are absolutely certain that you only want one lens then I'd echo what almost everyone else has said and say go for the 35mm.

 

However;

Looking at the bar-chart it would appear that c. 80% of your images come within the 28mm - 100mm band. If we accept that a crop from a 50mm Summicron is usually good enough to give a more-than-acceptable-for-average-use print equiv. to a 100mm focal-length then if I were you I'd go for two lenses; a 28mm and a 50mm.

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Back in the days when there were few zooms and most of them inferior to prime lenses, the standard lens for each format was the one whose focal length was closest to the diagonal measure of the negative.  I always thought that was an arbitrary decision made by someone who was more mathematician than photographer.  Laypeople maintained that it most closesly represented what the naked eye saw, but that's just not accurate.  A human with two normal eyes sees a much wider field of view than a "standard" lens, and as to magnification, my impression looking through the viewfinder of an SLR with 100% coverage, an 80-85mm looks much more "normal" than a 50...try it, closing one eye and then the other, and see if you don't agree. 

 

That said, the viewfinder of a Leica seems to exert a strong psychological influence on lens choice.  Regardless of the lens one uses, the magnification of the overall finder image is the same.  The longer the lens, the smaller the frame, the more concentration required to discern the details of the final image. Therefore the most appealing lens tends to be the one whose frame occupies the largest finder area easily visible.  That would be a 35 on all the .72/.68x finder models.  

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OK, here we go with the analysis of the "best" subset, it does change things slightly. These are almost all taken with a Nikon 18-55, a Nikon 18-105 or the Typ 109 24-75mm.

 

Looking at this chart on its own I would almost be tempted to get a 28mm, but in conjunction with the one above I believe the 35mm would suit me best.

 

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Now I just need to book a trip to Chicago to go visit Dan Tamarkin.

Edited by mikemgb
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OK, here we go with the analysis of the "best" subset, it does change things slightly. These are almost all taken with a Nikon 18-55, a Nikon 18-105 or the Typ 109 24-75mm.

 

Looking at this chart on its own I would almost be tempted to get a 28mm, but in conjunction with the one above I believe the 35mm would suit me best.

 

focallength2.jpg

 

Now I just need to book a trip to Chicago to go visit Dan Tamarkin.

Interesting, the two Nikkor zooms start at equivalent of 29? so maybe you're trying to go wider? Also the 80 odd is the other end of the 18-55.

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Interesting, the two Nikkor zooms start at equivalent of 29? so maybe you're trying to go wider? Also the 80 odd is the other end of the 18-55.

 

Yes, the Nikkors start at 27mm equivalent. It's interesting looking at these stats, I can tell which focal lengths I used where. The 24mm column was a recent trip to Colorado with the Typ 109, the 80mm and above was a trip to Europe with the 18-105mm, the bulk of the images in the centre were a trip to California with the 18-55mm and a second trip to Europe with just a C-Lux 2.

 

The batch at 450mm was some sports photography I did for a charity over a few years, I don't do that any more.

 

This exercise has been interesting just seeing exactly where I do shoot.

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Added to my last post:

I also see that 24 is the start range of the Typ109 so when it powers on, 160 would be the other end of the 18-105, and the 80 is probably the other end of the Typ109. so you're spending a bit of time at either end of the zoom ranges.

I think you could probably go for either a 28 or 35 and be happy with either. In my opinion, 35 works better in the viewfinder, and there are more 35mm options - especially at faster than f/2.8.

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Added to my last post:

I also see that 24 is the start range of the Typ109 so when it powers on, 160 would be the other end of the 18-105, and the 80 is probably the other end of the Typ109. so you're spending a bit of time at either end of the zoom ranges.

I think you could probably go for either a 28 or 35 and be happy with either. In my opinion, 35 works better in the viewfinder, and there are more 35mm options - especially at faster than f/2.8.

 

I agree, definitely the 35mm.

 

Incidentally, the Nikon equipment is on eBay, I have only used it once since buying the Typ 109 and found I wasn't liking the f3.5 max. aperture at all! Besides, liquidating one camera makes it easier to bring another one into the house.  :D

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