Is (and why) is 28mm the less popular wide ?

[RobSkeoch]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

I own both the 35 and 28. I even have the Zeiss 25.

I also own a retail store selling rangefinder gear. I'm not a Leica dealer but do sell Zeiss and Voigtlander. The 35 and 50mm are by far the top sellers... and they sell about the same numbers. Even though there are a couple different models in each length.

The next top seller is the Zeiss 25.

The 28's don't sell near as often. For a while I didn't even keep one in stock and no one missed it. I think it's because so many people use a 35mm on a rangefinder camera, then want a bigger spread for their next wide angle.

They sure are great lens though and I don't mind having one in the bag.

-Rob Skeoch

[IkarusJohn]

The rest of the posters on this thread are far more knowledgeable and experienced than me. However, I do find myself using my 28 a lot.

 

I have the following focal lengths - 75, 50, 35, 28 & 21. A pretty even spread, tending towards the wide end of things. They're also reasonably fast lenses, each with particular feel and affection.

 

The 50 and the 28 sit in my bag full time. An alternative combination is the 75 & 35 as a wandering, all purpose combination. The 21 comes along if I'm likely to need an extra-wide lens, and if I fit the external view finder.

 

The 28 doesn't need an external viewfinder with either the 0.68 or 0.72 viewfinder, so it is convenient for framing, and it just gives a bit more interest than the 35. I do find I have to remind myself to move a bit closer than with the 35.

 

I also love that the 28/2 is only marginally longer physically than the 35/2, and it has the same smooth focussing feel. It also uses the same sized filters as the 35/1.4 and the 50/1.4. I'm new to this focal length, and I'm enjoying it a lot.

 

Interestingly, the 28/2 tends to sit on my M9, and the 35/2 on my MP - I couldn't tell you why.

 

Cheers

John

[Ecar]

the 28 2.8 is a bit soft

Interesting - I find it to be one of my sharpest lenses (sometimes even too sharp)

[lars_bergquist]

I agree with Andy. One salient reason for the lack of popularity of the 28 is the M finder. I have never been able to use a 28 on a M without an accessory finder, because, as a specs wearer, I simply cannot see the frame, not even on a M9. I had to use an accessory finder. That is OK with me for really wide lenses, because they structure space differently. (The 28 Summicron ASPH was a wonderful 37mm lens with the M8, but that is another story.)

 

Structuring space: With a standard lens (and the 35 is a standard lens, the short standard) you compose your image the standard Western way. There is a Main Subject, and everything else is subordinate. These things are like the landscape (actually, two landscapes) behind the Mona Lisa. They are meant to be seen with the peripheral vision. With a really wide lens, if you are mindful of picture space, you are transformed from a Russian icon painter into a Chinese painter of landscape scrolls. You are no longer statically taking in the Main Subject, you are travelling along the Yangze, and scenery unrolls before you. This scenery, with its groups of conversing scholars, plowing peasants, water buffalo and bamboo groves, has to be structured somehow. And this takes more time to do than just focusing, rebalancing and exposing a central composition of the standard Western kind.

 

A good accessory finder is probably the best way to do this.

 

I can do this kind of work with lengths from 24/25mm to 18mm. But 28mm is neither here nor there. It's just a kind of loose 35mm. And I presume that subconsciously, lots of people know that. Wide angle photography is a different kind of game, but 28mm is just not there.

 

The squinty-eyed old man

[Rolo]

No doubt that the 28mm is an excellent lens and if I wanted a wide to be glued to my M9 I might well choose it. However, I don't. I bought the equally superb 24mm Elmarit to help me when in tight corners when the 35mm just won't cover the terrain, or when up-close in the street.

 

I haven't used the 24mm aux VF ever since I discovered there's a screen on the back of the camera where i can check my accuracy of cover. I estimate that for about 40% of my 24mm images I don't even use the camera VF as I've become very familiar with it's angle of view.

[colonel]

No doubt that the 28mm is an excellent lens and if I wanted a wide to be glued to my M9 I might well choose it. However, I don't. I bought the equally superb 24mm Elmarit to help me when in tight corners when the 35mm just won't cover the terrain, or when up-close in the street.

 

I haven't used the 24mm aux VF ever since I discovered there's a screen on the back of the camera where i can check my accuracy of cover. I estimate that for about 40% of my 24mm images I don't even use the camera VF as I've become very familiar with it's angle of view.

 

I find this very interesting. Having not used a 24mm with the M9, how far the borders go outside what you see. I really don't fancy buying or using an external viewfinder

[lars_bergquist]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

If you don't wear specs (or use an eyepiece correction lens, which also increases eye distance) then the 28mm frame more or less coincides with the edges of the total field of the finder. So you do not see anything wider than 28mm. If you think you can use that for 24mm or wider, you are just deceiving yourself. You are guessing. And from the point of view of actually composing a picture, you could just as well shoot with both eyes closed. That's all right – we all do an occasional Ave Maria, overhead or from belly level – but it is a generaly good idea to know WHAT you are doing.

 

I am aware that most non-pros, and very many 'pros' meaning people who are paid for taking photographs, no more, never look at the entire picture. They just aim the camera at the main subject, and fire. What's to the right or left of it, or in front of it or behind it, comes as a complete surprise. Often an unpleasant one.

 

Seen one of those large arenas packed with people, a horse show or a football match, with little pinpoints of light popping all over the grandstands? Those are all the people with point-and-shoot cameras or even phones, firing away with their miserable little built in flashes, range c. three meters. It is the market that you see. The market just lifts its cameras or mobiles and presses the button without any preconceived notion whatever of what the picture (if any) will look like. The only intention is that knee reflex thing: Preserve the moment. Prove to yourself later that you was there.

 

Once, at an Army sniper course, I met a fellow who had just experienced the elk hunt of his life. And he had the picture to prove it. He produced it, and I looked. In amazement.

 

The simplest way to express it is this: There was no image in the picture. It looked like purple haggis, a coarse-grained magenta substance spread evenly from edge to edge. But that picture told me something. That was not a picture at all. The 'pictorial' aspect was completely irrelevant. This was a talisman, a holy object that preserved the magical charge of that occasion. It did not matter that you could not see anything in it: He knew already what the talisman represented. And those grandstand spectators firing their flashes were also creating their souvenirs, their talismans to prove that they had been there.

 

People who actually take pictures in a 'pictorially premeditated' way are a vanishing minority. All those people waving their compacts and phones vaguely in the direction of interest prove that. Now Leica do provide us with the means to make premeditated photographs. Using those means can be pretty interesting, for us artsy-fartsy types. Thanks, Leica, for existing. Thanks for building cameras with finders.

 

The old man who has seen most of it

[SJP]

thanks, inspirational.

[rsh]

Most of the time, when using the 28 Summicron, I use the camera finder, but there are times, when a wider view is necessary, I use the new 21 finder because the secondary frame is very close to the 28.

[Jeff S]

One reason I'm reluctant to switch from an M8.2 to an M9 is that I like my 28 Summicron asph on the cropped camera better than I liked my 35 Summicron asph on my film Ms.

 

On full frame, I used the 28 only occasionally, even though I had no problem with framing wearing specs. Never liked external finders, but then very wide views aren't my niche. My 'zone' seems to be 35-75 effective FOV. The challenge for me is to remain creative in that space. Not sure why...just is.

 

Jeff

[MarkP]

The rest of the posters on this thread are far more knowledgeable and experienced than me. However, I do find myself using my 28 a lot.

 

I have the following focal lengths - 75, 50, 35, 28 & 21. A pretty even spread, tending towards the wide end of things. They're also reasonably fast lenses, each with particular feel and affection.

 

The 50 and the 28 sit in my bag full time. An alternative combination is the 75 & 35 as a wandering, all purpose combination. The 21 comes along if I'm likely to need an extra-wide lens, and if I fit the external view finder.

 

The 28 doesn't need an external viewfinder with either the 0.68 or 0.72 viewfinder, so it is convenient for framing, and it just gives a bit more interest than the 35. I do find I have to remind myself to move a bit closer than with the 35.

 

I also love that the 28/2 is only marginally longer physically than the 35/2, and it has the same smooth focussing feel. It also uses the same sized filters as the 35/1.4 and the 50/1.4. I'm new to this focal length, and I'm enjoying it a lot.

 

Interestingly, the 28/2 tends to sit on my M9, and the 35/2 on my MP - I couldn't tell you why.

 

Cheers

John

 

Hi John,

 

I have a similar spread of fast lenses between 21mm and 75mm. My thinking is similar to yours. Being relatively new to 28mm, and having used 35mm as my standard FL for years, I find the 28mm Summicron a very refreshing lens to use. I now also often take 28 & 50 as my 2 lens combo, and although 35 is still my standard I am using the 28 on its own more often.

 

I do not have problems using the 28mm framing in the VF.

 

Mark

[myshkine]

The 28 is very popular with me! As Lars has said in his clever post, it is the widest lens that still allows using the VF, adding to that the fact that what you see in it is what you'll get in your picture, so it is very convenient. I recently bought an Elmarit 2.8 and it looks to me as a great lens, I just love the rendition of the shots, sharpness, angle of view, etc...

Since I have had the 28, my Summicron 50 sits idle, I may even decide to sell it and buy a used 35 Summilux, that would complement well the Elmarit I think.

Another think that is important to me is that with wider lenses you take the habit of going closer to your subject. I believe this is a good start to better pictures.