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In praise of the Mandler lenses


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Err..Which Canon 50/1.8?  I totally agree  that the plastic EOS toy is not something to be proud of, but the 1950-ies LTM one is better than  the Leitz lenses of the period.

 

 

Right. I am talking about the EF 50/1.8 (v1 and v2, same glass).

I have not tried the new STM model, but I understand it has the same glass with improved coating. Hopefully it won't flare like hell anymore, and colors will be a little less crappy.

Edited by CheshireCat
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Err..Which Canon 50/1.8?  I totally agree  that the plastic EOS toy is not something to be proud of, but the 1950-ies LTM one is better than  the Leitz lenses of the period.

 

 

I don't know how much it costs now but when I had a Canon system the EF 50/1.8 used to be about £75. I think I owned one for a while and then upgraded to the 50/F1.4. The latter had a metal mount but wasn't leaps and bounds better nor was the "plastic toy" a bad lens at all. In fact, it was perfectly decent and represented (probably still does) incredible value for money. This kind of sneering doesn't IMO reflect well on you. I have absolutely no doubt that a good photographer using this lens will produce work with it that will give any 50 APO photograph I have seen in this forum more than a run for its money.

Edited by wattsy
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..... upgraded to the 50/F1.4. The latter had a metal mount but wasn't leaps and bounds better ..... 

 

I have and use the Canon 50/1.4 which is a good, competent lens. In terms of build quality and micro-contrast it probably does lose out to the Summilux M but then its a tenth the price. And yes it does produce images which are very acceptable indeed. I have no complaints with mine although the FF bodies it fits are rather large.....

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I don't know how much it costs now but when I had a Canon system the EF 50/1.8 used to be about £75. I think I owned one for a while and then upgraded to the 50/F1.4. The latter had a metal mount but wasn't leaps and bounds better nor was the "plastic toy" a bad lens at all. In fact, it was perfectly decent and represented (probably still does) incredible value for money. This kind of sneering doesn't IMO reflect well on you. I have absolutely no doubt that a good photographer using this lens will produce work with it that will give any 50 APO photograph I have seen in this forum more than a run for its money.

I rater disliked the lens for flaring and all-plastic construction. And the coffee-grinder AF sound. But I agree, at the price one should not complain. It came for free with my 10D. In the end it hardly saw any use as I preferred the 17-40 L. A superb lens.

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I don't know how much it costs now but when I had a Canon system the EF 50/1.8 used to be about £75. I think I owned one for a while and then upgraded to the 50/F1.4. The latter had a metal mount but wasn't leaps and bounds better nor was the "plastic toy" a bad lens at all. In fact, it was perfectly decent and represented (probably still does) incredible value for money. This kind of sneering doesn't IMO reflect well on you. I have absolutely no doubt that a good photographer using this lens will produce work with it that will give any 50 APO photograph I have seen in this forum more than a run for its money.

 

 

A used Zeiss C/Y 50/1.7 represents quite better value for money.

 

And sorry, but the "good photographer can take better photograph with a coke bottle than any of you with a 50 APO" is a kind of reverse-snobbery, and quite insulting to many good photographers here in this forum.

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And sorry, but the "good photographer can take better photograph with a coke bottle than any of you with a 50 APO" is a kind of reverse-snobbery, and quite insulting to many good photographers here in this forum.

 

 

But I don't think the EF 50/F1.8 is a coke bottle (or anything like it) – that was my point. Feel free to feel insulted though if you want.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I really do not like the current lenses for how they present images.

 

Like many aspects of photography ..... it depends. I have a set of my favourite focal lengths from the Mandler period - 2 x Mandlers (35/1.4 & 75/1.4) + a Schneider (21/3.4) which are my personal favourite lenses. I also have their modern equivalents. I use both depending on what I'm doing and why. Both have their place, virtues and failings. You demonstrate why you like the Mandlers very well :) . There are though some subjects which high precision and detail with high micro-contrast enhance. I've built two sets up over many years and like both, but I agree that Mandler's lenses are a high point. Its odd but I think that they come from a period where camera and lens designs 'peaked' in some ways. I'm hard pushed to desire anything more in than the M4 which is so clearly the ancestor of later Ms and the Nikon F set the base parameters for the SLR which got added to rather than usurped. An interesting time.

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It's matter of personal preference and what you are used to seeing.  I used to be obsessed with Mandler lenses and was very dismissive of the latest designs.  Back then (5 - 10 years ago) I had the 50/2 for the M and 35/2, 50/2 and 80/1.4 for the R. All Mandler designs.  

 

That preference has changed somehow and my current favorite lenses are the 35 FLE and 75/2AA which I prefer over the Mandler lenses I used to own.  One reason for the change in preference is that I now prefer neutrality over warmth.  Another reason is that I started to associate the Mandler look as less contemporary. The optical signature of the Mandler (or any vintage) lenses give the resulting pictures a very identifiable certain era look that I'm not sure if I want.  This is especially evident if you're shooting film.  

 

A lens that was instrumental in the changing of my preference is the 50 Summilux ASPH.  I had it for a month and that lens is perfect to a fault.

 

These debates, like film vs. digital, vacuum tube vs. solid-state, or vinyl vs CD, will always find supports on either side.  FWIW, I prefer film over digital and (good) solid-state over tubes.

 

in praise of the Mandler lenses …

you figure them out - I couldn't live without Mandler lenses. The funny thing is that I truly admire and respect what Peter Karbe has accomplished from an engineering standpoint and what Leica has accomplished with their current line up of modern lenses from a production and quality management standpoint (tolerances for manufacturing have significantly improved since Walter Mandler designed lenses), I really do not like the current lenses for how they present images.
To me lenses from the Mandler era are optically inferior without a doubt, yet they do seem to be aesthetically more pleasing, more balanced for imaging to my eye.

Especially I see this impact during post processing - where with Karbe lenses I have to spend ungodly amounts of energy and time into getting the look I like, with some characteristics not even possible to get (aspects of certain aberrations, leading to a pleasing skin detail or the inferior drawing of out of focus details with certain modern lenses), Mandler designed lenses (and I refer to the three big ones I use: 50/1, 75/1.4, 90/2) on the other hand deliver a finished image, which I hardly touch up beyond slight corrections in exposure (user error).

 

I really wish, Leica at some point might recognize this feat and might be influenced into reviewing their design goals for future lenses.

There are mainly two other ranges of lenses, which exhibit a very distinctive look, very pleasing to my eye, those are vintage Carl-Zeiss Jena lenses and the medium format Carl Zeiss designs, made for diverse 6x6 and later 645 systems.

 

The pleasing character with all these lenses is not entirely rooted in optical perfection of their technical designs, it is rooted in a character, partly based on specific optical shortcomings - what we often call a "character" of a lens or it's "rendering".

 

One cannot approach the design of a lens exclusively from an engineering standpoint, trying to achieve technical perfection.

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  • 2 months later...

I have never payed much attention to the Elmarits, but the other day a friend of mine bought the 90 f/2.8 Tele-Elmarit I. The compactness of the lens makes attractive and I did a test shot with it on SL. I was surprised by how sharp it was wide open (see attached image). It seems as the optical design was changed in 1974 and a version II was released, replacing version I from 1964, but I can't find anything on how the change affected the results.  Does anybody have experience with both versions? Is there a visible difference from version I to II in quality or rendering? Both are designed by Mandler.

 

 

Finally, one of my all-time favorites from the Mandler line - although not without its faults. The 90 f/2.8 Tele-Elmarit (thin version).

For me, Leica RFs are about compactness and light weight, and the 90 TE(t) ranks with the 35 and 50 'crons and the 21 f/3.4 Super-Angulon as a lens clearly smaller than any SLR equivalent.

It still amazes me that so much detail can be captured with 4 such thin bits of glass.

The TE tends to the cool and cyan, as does most of the other Mandler-era glass. But its well-known tendency to flare also means that it often picks up tints from the background or subject - it will tend to be a warm lens if there is, say, a red brick wall behind the subject, and very cool if there is a lot of sky in, or just outside, the frame.

It can be a bit soft at f/2.8 - but it is a "Gaussian" softness that is very amenable to being corrected with unsharp masking. And below f/4 it is sharper than any Summicron 90 except the APO.

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Compared to the V.2 TE, the V.1 90 TE is a bit less prone to flare from bright light sources just outside the frame.

 

It has a very severe drop-off in sharpness right in the image corners, which does not improve much with stopping down. But you'd only notice that 1) on digital full-frame, 2) in scenics or architectural shots (brick walls ;) ) where everything is in focus corner to corner. Won't be a factor when the corners are background blur anyway (as in your sample portrait), or on film, if cropped by slide mounts or automated machine printing or making 8x10/A4 crops, or even just cropped to what the 90mm M framelines framed (~105mm field of view at long distances). Which is probably why Leitz didn't bother to pursue the extra correction needed.

 

The v.1 is perhaps more "blue" in color rendering rather than the later 1970s-Mandler "cyan." Similar to the 60s-designed 135 Tele-Elmar 135. There may be other small differences visible on a test-bench, but so subtle that they really fall within the "background noise" of different lighting and subject matter in real-world shooting.

 

The v.1 is 50% heavier (330g vs 225g for the v.2), and a bit fatter in the middle of the barrel, thus the casual designations of "fat" (v.1) and "thin" (v.2) Tele-Elmarits. V.1 is shorter by about 2-3mm. The v.2 has simplified knurling on the focus ring, and other "cosmetic" differences, to conform to what Leitz was doing with other lenses in the 1970s-80s, vs. the 1960s.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Possibly not the most frequently used portrait lens for birds ;) , but the character of the 75Lux-M shines also with a European herring gull in front of the camera...

 

SL + 75Lux-M at f1.4.

 

 

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