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A Crazy Proposal

lars_bergquist

By lars_bergquist
in Leica M9 / M-E

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lars_bergquist

lars_bergquist

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Leica do concede what many users also admit -- focusing any 135mm lens with the standard finder magnification is touch and go. A finder loupe is inconvenient. The goggled Elmarit, which I do own, works OK but is a beast to lug and swing for an old man from the Age of ... oh the heck with it.

 

So the longest practical focal length with the M9 is now 90mm, period. Lovely one. But it is not a real tele, in a practical sense.

 

So here is my crazy proposal: Introduce a new M focal length -- 105mm. Replace the 135mm frame with one for 105mm. Lots of people who rely much on their 50mm lenses would want a 4.0mm 105, a new Berg-Elmar, but faster, and sharp! The gap between 35 and 105mm is not too great either -- I have lived and worked with it. People would either buy their new camera with the 105mm frame, or have their old one updated with a new finder mask. I do think such a lens would sell better than the present, semi-orphaned Apo-Telyt. (Or do Leica have some radical finder innovation up their sleeve, waiting for the photokina?)

 

A personal confession: My own favourite short teles were 100 or 105mm lenses -- not on Leica cameras, of course. But no, I'm not old enough to have owned a Berg-Elmar! Now please do consider this. Maybe I am wrong, but I would like to see my proposal refuted by rational argument, if at all.

 

The old man from the Age of the 13.5cm Hektor.

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chris_tribble

chris_tribble

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Not crazy, Lars, but not a solution that would suit me. The gap between 90 and 105 wouldn't be enough to justify it's purchase for me. And the reality of work with the 135 Apo Telyt has been pretty good. If I want to use it for landscape then it needs the tripod - but so does any longer lens I've used if I want to hold objects on a distant horizon. If I'm working with objects at 10-30 metres I really find that focusing is not a major problem. For the moment, I'll stick with the Apo Telyt for long on the M9.

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lct

lct

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Too close to 90mm but at the same time incompatible with every viewfinder made over the last 50 years or so.

Agree and the wide 0.68x VF mag is not a fatality. Lars, did you try the 1.4x magnifier with 135mm lenses?

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Guest BigSplash

Guest BigSplash

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I think that you have an excellent proposal for the M10 and its suite of lenses. I like to use my 75mm (f1.4) on the film Leicas and the M8. I also use the 90mm Summicron and only very very rarely use the 135mm for the reasons you mention.

 

Would I buy a 105mm if I have a 90mm and 75mm ...probably not.

 

If I eventualy get a M10 or M9 would I want to see the 135mm frame lines or would I prefer 105mm, 75mm etc ...Personally I guess I would appreciate the 105mm option and simply forget about 135mm. I believe that Leica would have a more balanced range in this case.

 

Frankly above about 100mm I think a rangefinder camera becomes limited in its usefulness. The Leica M is brilliant between about 100mm through to superwide angle and this is even more true as one considers how a large telephoto lens makes the ensemble really large, and detracts from the discrete easy to handle Leica M with lens.

 

I am asuming that rangefinder focussing would be unchanged and would accept all old lenses. Consequently I could still use my 90mm and guess the frame by using the 75mm frame lines (or 90mm). I have done this type of thing with a 75mm on a M4...so no problem.

 

I believe that Leica should also look at Summilux ASPH type lenses for both 75mm and 105mm plus a cheaper Elmarit or Summicron. In my experience the 75mm (f1.4) is fantastic and gives a depth of field that f2.0 does not achieve...I do not understand why Leica dropped the f1.4 at 75mm.

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bill

bill

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Hi Lars,

 

I don't think your proposal is crazy at all, but neither do I think it is workable or more importantly saleable, for the reasons already stated by others above.

 

105 is an in-betweenie focal length, neither one thing nor the other. I would not buy it. I am happy with my 135 (One Canon, one Leica) and with 75 and 90. I use 75 as a "long standard" rather than a "short tele", and 90 is a much-loved focal length for me (I have three, one Elmarit-M, one Collapsible and an LTM). You have already "confessed" that you have an emotional attachment with the focal length - nothing wrong with that - but it is not my, nor I suspect many others, cup of tea.

 

My other thought is that you are "lowering the river" in your suggestion as opposed to "raising the bridge". I would rather see two things happen first, before a new lens is introduced, incompatible, as Steve says, with every body that has gone before:

 

1. Everyone struggling with focussing gets their eyes tested - our prescription changes as we get older; I have just had my 2-yearly checkup and have a half-dioptre change in one eye, and a quarter in the other.

2. Investment goes into improving ease and accuracy of focussing for ALL lenses rather than introducing a compromise lens.

 

Finally, and no apologies for trotting this out once more, this will help to illustrate the point about the 105 being too close to 90 in the lens lineup:

 

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Regards,

 

Bill

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lars_bergquist

lars_bergquist

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If the frame lines or a zooming finder were activated by the 6 bit coding (or the internal list of lenses) instead of mechanically, any focal lens will be theoretically possible.

 

Lucien

 

True. It would be possible to replace the cutout lines on the finder mask with LED arrays, keyed not only by the focal length of the lens mounted, but also by the focusing distance. That is, the finder might be able to compensate not only for parallax, as it does now, but also for the variation of image angle at different focusing distances, what the Germans call the 'Bildfeldschwund' (I have never met a corresponding English word).

 

Oh my, more battery drain ...

 

But I do actually think that replacing the 135mm length with 105mm would be a valid proposal even with the present opto-mechanical finder. Please observe that I am NOT proposing to slaughter the 90mm length.

 

The old man from the Age Before the M3

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UliWer

UliWer

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The idea of a new "Berg-Elmar" is for sure not crazy at all - (anyway I should never exspect any crazy ideas by a man from the time of reason...:p).

 

If one thinks of a "natural" series of different focal lengths for a Leica, one might take the film/sensor-format as a basic. With a long side of the format of 36mm one easily gets a triad: 36 (35)- 72 (75)- 108 (105) mm. The short side leads to some other results: 24 - 48 (50) - 72 (75) - 96 (90) - 120mm. So the "Berg-Elmar" or the 120mm we are used to from the 90mm on the M8 seem to be "natural".

 

On the other hand we have a lot of Leicas around, which have viewfinders or frames with 90 or 135mm, but very very few VIDOMs etc. with 105mm and none with 120mm. This factual tradition will be stronger than any "natural" thinking. Even if Leica would introduce new frames for 105 or 120mm in new models, they could not abandon those for 90mm and the small frames being very close to those for 90mm would not be popular.

 

So I don't think we'll see a 105mm or 120mm lens as long as we won't have anything as evil as a "zoom" viewfinder.

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noah_addis

noah_addis

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I think it's crazy:D

 

I've used a 105--the excellent Nikkor 105/2.5AIS, and I don't feel like it's all that different from a 90mm in practice. The lenses are quite close in focal length and angle of view, and more importantly I don't really notice that the 105 gives much more of a telephoto-look than the Leica 90 (or the Nikkor 85 for that matter).

 

On top of that, a 105 would be incompatible with my old film M cameras.

 

I think the 90mm is a good compromise between the focusing ability of a rangefinder, the viewing size in a standard magnification finder and a lens that, photographically, is noticeably longer than a standard lens and provides some of the compression and look of a short telephoto lens.

 

I also think the 135, while it may be difficult to use (or maybe not, depending on who you ask), is valuable since it does represent a lens that really is closer in feel to a 180, which for me represents the longest SLR prime I use before stepping up to the 300/2.8s and longer. If you're trying to get by with the M as your only system, it's nice to have the option of a 135 even if it's a bit difficult to use.

 

I've never used a 135, save for a few test shots in a camera store, but for the way I use long lenses (for distant land/cityscapes, for aerial photos, etc), the 135 makes a lot of sense. Often I shoot this type of work at F5.6 or smaller and focusing doesn't present that much of a problem.

 

I would suggest a better solution to the problem would be to offer a high-mag M9, or better yet an option to retrofit existing M8 and M9 cameras to a higher-mag finder. I would say a magnification that offers framelines from 35 up to 135 or maybe even just 50 through 135 would be very nice.

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swamiji

swamiji

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Finally, and no apologies for trotting this out once more, this will help to illustrate the point about the 105 being too close to 90 in the lens lineup:

 

[ATTACH]186507[/ATTACH]

 

Regards,

 

Bill

 

 

Nice chart, very informative, but it omits the WATE, and last time I checked my local dealer still has new ones for sale...

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chuckw

chuckw

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Just looking at the horizontal angle of view on a full frame 35mm camera I believe a 90mm lens come in at about a 22.5 degree angle of view and a 105mm lens comes in at a 19.5 degree angle of view. That three degree difference could in most cases probably be taken care of with just a few steps forward or back.

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giordano

giordano

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I must have too much time on my hands:

 

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scott kirkpatrick

scott kirkpatrick

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Nobody seems to remember that the 75 summi's on an M8 gave a 100 mm-equivalent field of view. I liked that a lot, better than the wider image that the 75 throws on the M9. I think I'll restore the IR filter to my 75 and use it this way. I was very fond of an even earlier 105, Nikon's 105/2.5 manual focus in the plain F days, and also love the OIympus 50/2.0 Macro which is 100 mm-equivalent in the 4/3 lineup. I don't have a 90, but discovered a used mint 135 APO-Telyt recently for a significant savings...

 

Here's a nice example using the 100 mm focal length(Olympus E-1) .

 

scott

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