disappointed by Summilux 35 FLE

[frogfish]

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Hello,

 

looking for a wide open 35mm lens for my M9 I settled for the FLE.

Just bought it last week after 6 months waiting.

 

For me the lens must perform well at two things:

- nice bokeh wide open

- be able to shoot against the sun wide open

 

sharpness etc doesn´t matter that much for me.

 

 

But this lens is not a good perfomer shooting wide open against the sun I am afraid. With the ghost (red and green) I could live, but the chromatic aberration is horrible.

1.4-2.8 is unusable, gets better at 4.0

 

My Nikon 35/2.0 D for 300 bucks is much (!) better, usable at 2.0.

 

 

The Leica costs more than ten times as much.

 

 

Any suggestions? What do you think?

 

Heiko

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[myinoshi]

That's normal. My copy was like that. Most lens don't do well in the situation as presented in the picture above.

Be happy it performs like a stellar everywhere else.

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[frogfish]

OK, that may be normal. But not for a 300 bucks lens I compared it to.

 

I am a wedding photographer and shoot many pictures this way. So if I have a lens that is bad at about a third of my outside pictures than I don´t like to pay 4000€...

[IWC Doppel]

Assume you used a 5 stop ND filter at 1.4 pointing at the sun !

[frogfish]

no filter,

 

ISO 200, 1.4, 1/4000 of a second

as you see, the picture is slightly overexposed, but I like the greens not too dark.

 

Heiko

[Jamie Roberts]

OK, that may be normal. But not for a 300 bucks lens I compared it to.

 

I am a wedding photographer and shoot many pictures this way. So if I have a lens that is bad at about a third of my outside pictures than I don´t like to pay 4000€...

 

Ok, so I'm a wedding photographer too, and I have the 35 Lux ASPH (non-FLE). I also own the Nikon 35 f2. I also shoot against the light a lot.

 

There is no way on god's green earth you can even compare one with the other, IMO. The *reason* you're getting CA with the 35 Leica--even at 1.4--is because it's actually sharp at that aperture.

 

The reason you don't see it with the fuzzy, fusty, $300 wonder that is the Nikkor 35 f2.0 is because it's smeared with 8 layers of vaseline at f2 compared with a Leica 35 at any aperture at all.

 

Seriously, the Nikkor simply doesn't resolve enough to create CA, which is saying something--it's one of the fuzziest lenses I own by anyone. I have it as an emergency lens from my D3 days. It's not worth anything to sell, so I still have it

 

Directly to your point, I don't know how you're processing these files, but in C1 or LR you wouldn't see any of this CA stuff anyway.

 

All you'd notice is that

 

1) the sharpness and contrast of the Leica lens at 1.4 outstrips, by a large margin, the sharpness and contrast of that Nikkor at f5.6 (or wherever it's sharpest. it's totally unusable until you get it f4 anyway), and probably 99% of your other lenses too

 

2) that the distortion profile at the edges is also not even worth comparing. You can put people at the edges of the Leica frame and they won't look plasticized or distorted. It's not a portrait lens, but it's one very well corrected lens!

 

Hey--that Nikkor is one heck of a $300 lens, don't get me wrong. But you're paying for the contrast, detail, colour, contrast, speed (it's twice as fast, don't forget) and lack of distortion in the Summilux.

 

I sincerely and seriously suggest you examine your workflow Unless sharpness really doesn't matter to you, in which case you bought the absolute wrong lens.

[pico]

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OK, that may be normal. But not for a 300 bucks lens I compared it to.

 

I am a wedding photographer and shoot many pictures this way. So if I have a lens that is bad at about a third of my outside pictures than I don´t like to pay 4000€...

 

May we see the shot from the 300 dollar lens? And with weddings, isn't the subject closer to the camera, and you use flash-fill, don't you?

 

Wide open into the sun? With digital? A 10,000:1 brightness range? Forgive, but it seems a rather unrealistic expectation.

[frogfish]

Hi James,

 

 

impressive work you do. Thank you for your input.

 

Of course the Nikon is not as sharp as the Summilux. But as I said, sharpness is of minor concern for me. It makes my pictures not unusable. I haven´t tried LR, I process with Aperture.

 

As you see, I am not so much for sharpness...

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[farnz]

Heiko,

 

I don't think that the purple in the first picture is CA because there's red/purple on both edges on each branch but with CA I'd expect to see red on one side and green on the other as the spectrum is dispersed.

 

Clearly the sky in the background is massively overexposed and I suspect that the purple is bloom as the M9's sensor struggles to cope with sudden change in luminosity at the edges of the branches. I note, for example, that the purple is only evident where the branches are set against the heavily overexposed sky. There's also a lot of flare which is contributing to the strange yellowy-greens and I wonder if the large amount of infrared introduced by the overexposure isn't swamping the M9's (weak) IR filter too.

 

The second set of pictures is not overexposed because you've meters for the highlights, which is why the shadow areas appear underexposed.

 

I expect that if you re-took the first picture while exposing for the sky then the bloom wouldn't appear and you'd find that it's not your 35/1.4 Summilux FLE that's at fault.

 

Pete.

[gvaliquette]

... Of course the Nikon is not as sharp as the Summilux. But as I said, sharpness is of minor concern for me. It makes my pictures not unusable. ...

 

Heiko,

 

Why did you buy a Leica???

 

Guy

[CalArts 99]

Since you don't like the lens, sell it to me. I'll buy it. Seriously.

[gjames9142]

This whole thread shows the absurdity of people who know nothing commanding the attention of people who know something. Why does anyone need a lens that performs well shooting directly into the sun? Believe me, the sun is bigger than any of us. Treat it with respect. It could be said, if you happen to be feeling dogmatic, that there is no subject, only conditions of light. But if you choose to point your camera into the sun through a bunch of small trees, don't be surprised if things don't work out perfectly, no matter how much you spend on a lens. Try and get a clue about what photography is.

[rramesh]

I don't see the rationale for shooting directly into the sun wide open and seeing it overexposed. Have you tried an ND filter?

[Jamie Roberts]

Hi James,

 

impressive work you do. Thank you for your input.

 

Of course the Nikon is not as sharp as the Summilux. But as I said, sharpness is of minor concern for me. It makes my pictures not unusable. I haven´t tried LR, I process with Aperture.

 

As you see, I am not so much for sharpness...

 

Heiko,

 

Thanks for your words on my work.

 

Listen: my 35 Leica Summilux ASPH is essentially a workhorse lens. It does it all, really and the FLE is even better than the one I have!

 

I totally get what you're saying on sharpness, but honestly, I'm not sure why you'd buy the Leica lens without knowing how sharp it really is. People are reacting strongly--me included--because even if you like Nikon lenses, their 35 f2 is really quite, um, well, it's not good, except when taking price into account And the Leica 35 Summilux FLE is a justifiably celebrated lens...

 

In any case, I don't think Aperture is doing you any favours here! It seems you're after a certain expressionistic look, and certainly you can work with the Leica in monochrome (as the shots you've shown here are) and not ever fear blooming or CA.

 

But your original shot would also show many fewer artifacts in a different raw converter.

 

Anyway, you can't always light a scene well with fill-flash--I get that--at least not without a crew

 

But since you have it, the 35 Summilux FLE will do exceptional things with soft light and maintain a ton of detail.

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[frogfish]

This whole thread shows the absurdity of people who know nothing commanding the attention of people who know something. Why does anyone need a lens that performs well shooting directly into the sun? Believe me, the sun is bigger than any of us. Treat it with respect. It could be said, if you happen to be feeling dogmatic, that there is no subject, only conditions of light. But if you choose to point your camera into the sun through a bunch of small trees, don't be surprised if things don't work out perfectly, no matter how much you spend on a lens. Try and get a clue about what photography is.

 

 

Very nice, thank you -

if my style is not your bread, so be it. But please let us play fair.

 

Heiko

[250swb]

This whole thread shows the absurdity of people who know nothing commanding the attention of people who know something. Why does anyone need a lens that performs well shooting directly into the sun? Believe me, the sun is bigger than any of us. Treat it with respect. It could be said, if you happen to be feeling dogmatic, that there is no subject, only conditions of light. But if you choose to point your camera into the sun through a bunch of small trees, don't be surprised if things don't work out perfectly, no matter how much you spend on a lens. Try and get a clue about what photography is.

 

The OP got his answer, and perhaps he hadn't thought enough about the problem he was manufacturing for himself, but if you don't ask you don't get. It's not absurd to question things, sometimes you are right, sometimes you find yourself wrong, thats life.

 

Steve

[frogfish]

I like shooting against the sun, makes the pictures dreamy and interesting. Playing with extreme light.

When overexposing you get the peoples faces visible.

 

I shoot Leica not because of the lenses but because I like rangefinders.

 

Heiko

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[azzo]

 

I shoot Leica not because of the lenses but because I like rangefinders.

 

 

 

That's a new one! ...

[IWC Doppel]

Seems to me what you want from a lens and what the 35mm Summilux FLE offers might be different.

 

I would have a read and look at some of the 35mm comparison threads and reviews and ideally try a few other 35's. What did you want to achieve with the FLE ?

 

I have owned a few 35mm Leica 35's, but not the FLE, the APSH before and the ASPHERICAL. For me I do not want to change to the FLE as the few pictures I have taken with the lens an the pictures posted highlight the difference (Increased sharpness and more rapid transition from in to out of focus)

 

For me the FLE appears to add sharpness and trades more classic rendering and feel of some of the earlier lux's. Horses for courses ?

 

With the pictures you have posted, I would look a late original 35 Lux, seems to me it might do more of what you want and trade some things you don't. I assume the tree sot was purely testing as you seem to be looking at light in a creative way with people as subjects ?

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[pgk]

The image in the first post is about the worst case scenario for producing purple fringing - a very bright and consequently overexposed white sky as a background, but (I assume) exposed for the masses of fine sharply focused (I assume) detail in the tree sharply set against it and the sun placed towards the centre of the image (assumptions made because its a web posted jpeg after all). This will almost always yield purple fringing (for which there are numerous suggested causes and as many suggested ways to get around it). But its rarely a problem if you aren't shooting precisely this scenario and a less sharp lens will not exhibit quite so much fringing because the abrupt shift in edge contrast ,where it occurs, is not as well defined.

 

Even though I actually take pleasure in shooting woodland scenes I rarely see such marked fringing because I am aware of the limitations of the system (I use a pre-FLE, often wide open) and its rare that a shot similar to the one posted would appeal to me so I am far less likely to take a similar image and if I did I would be prepared to do substantial post work on it to minimise the fringing. I think that if you persevere with the lens you will learn to appreciate its qualities and also when its accurate rendition is too much as is the case here.