The Fantastic Pre 35mm Summilux

[menos I M6]

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Saying that the super low wide open contrast some how helps with film is BS IMHO. You only loose all information in the deep shadows because all the random light veiling the whole scene.

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Hannes, this is probably misunderstood from your side.

The saying, that low contrast lenses, when wide open are better suited for film stems from the fact, that, when really needing f1.4, one also would use pushed black and white film in higher speeds, which does get quite contrasty by itself.

 

The low contrast, wide open lens does help here, to not nuke the image, as modern ASPH lenses do.

 

In fact, low contrast lenses indeed do show more shadow detail and not the other way around, like described by you, which is the whole reason, why I strongly prefer classic lenses, to use on my digital Ms.

 

Granted, the 35 Lux pre ASPH does have "some character" as they say, but for me, this is both a specialty, to be used about this lens and a technical limitation, I can live with as of it's other characteristics (extremely compact and light).

 

After having used mine for a little while and found more about it's characteristics, this lens is more and more defined as a special purpose lens, while I found, that as a user, I strongly prefer the 35 Summilux ASPH.

 

The ASPH is a lot bigger and heavier, but still makes for a compact camera lens pairing on a M.

It's design is much better for quick handling, as it's controls are actually well laid out and accessible (in my opinion, Leica went a bit too far with the crippled ergonomics of the pre ASPH, especially, when using a lens hood - the design of the ASPH really resolves these issues.

Another point, I love and hate about the pre APSH, is it's interesting rendering wide open together with it's unreliability in combination with flare.

 

If you shoot this lens in an environment, it is made for (handheld night shots), you never know, which part of the image will be destroyed.

The ASPH completely resolves this issue.

 

But don't get me wrong - I love the pre ASPH, it just can be a bit of a drama queen.

 

Untitled by teknopunk.com, on Flickr

 

Untitled by teknopunk.com, on Flickr

 

Untitled by teknopunk.com, on Flickr

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[Hank Taylor]

Nice pic... Did you by any chance take it in Prague?

Sorry been out of town and just read your comment. Yes, I used this lens mostly on my trip to Prague

Hank

[thompsonkirk]

I don't see how anyone can have anything but a love/hate relationship with this beautiful/unreliable lens.

 

On the one hand, its wide-open glow (or aberration, if you want to call it that) can be quite beautiful.

 

On the other hand, it's definitely unreliable because of flare. It can produce the sort of semi-circular arc you see in Nick Yoon's post above (also some of Ben's jazz images, as well some of my own); and this can really wipe out what might have been a fine shot.

 

Below are a couple of examples (shot with hood):

 

The first is pretty darned glow-y. But it had a light ring of flare from the bottom of the subject's jacket through her hair. It took quite a bit of Photoshopping to minimize the flare.

 

The second is a different kind of flare than Nick showed, much more diffuse. Either kind can occur when there's a bright light source just outside the edge of the frame.

 

So I like to use the pre-aspherical Lux when I'm just shooting for myself, might encounter low light, & don't have to be reliable. On the other hand, if I have to 'deliver' for somebody else I use the FLE, which I thought would be my everyday lens but which is IMO rather 'clinical,' & also too heavy for the camera to balance nicely.

 

As I see it, both 'glasses' are half full – or half empty, if you see things that way.

 

Kirk

 

PS, IMO the 'sleeper' 35mm lens for M9 is actually the 40 Summicron – because if it's filed to bring up 35mm framelines, it very closely covers the area you see through the viewfinder, without the 'slop' of extra coverage with a 35. Also it's sharp wide open, & not too contrasty.

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[menos I M6]

I have been inspired by many photographs, made with the 35 pre ASPH Summilux, I have seen, to find one nice sample.

 

I love the look, the lens gives wide open (minus the flare issues).

 

I have been on a long journey through many different 35mm lenses with the purpose of finding a lens, that gives the known look, I love.

 

One lens deeply impressed me on that way, it is the famous black paint Canon 35 f2 LTM, a lens known with the moniker "Japanese Summcron".

 

It is lighter and smaller than the pre ASPH Summilux, also can suffer from flare (albeit not as deadly) and has a quality of workmanship, equalling without a doubt it's German counterpart.

 

Given the still very affordable price of nice samples (getting rare now), everyone liking classic lenses and the 35mm focal length ought to have one:

 

Untitled by teknopunk.com, on Flickr

 

Untitled by teknopunk.com, on Flickr

 

Untitled by teknopunk.com, on Flickr

[Hannes Lummes]

Hannes, this is probably misunderstood from your side.

The saying, that low contrast lenses, when wide open are better suited for film stems from the fact, that, when really needing f1.4, one also would use pushed black and white film in higher speeds, which does get quite contrasty by itself.

 

The low contrast, wide open lens does help here, to not nuke the image, as modern ASPH lenses do.

 

In fact, low contrast lenses indeed do show more shadow detail and not the other way around, like described by you, which is the whole reason, why I strongly prefer classic lenses, to use on my digital Ms.

 

Umm...I really don't get it. I have quite a lot of experience in signal theory, but perhaps not as much in optics. This is the way I see it:

 

A lens can not act as a compressor, i.e. the transfer function for light in a lens is always linear as far as I know. Because of this a lens with low contrast is not mapping the original tone scale of the scene to a more narrow scale in a controlled fashion. The reason a lens has low contrast is because of stray light that does not contribute to the picture details. Since most of the light is still travelling as it should, and the amount af stray is quite small compared to highlights, they don't get much dimmer (some people actually think this happens) but of course in shadows the stray energy is quite big in proportion to the zones there. So, do you mean that this stray energy can push shadow details to the zones that the film can register? If this is in fact true, then those details will have really awful definition compared to the base film noise. Am I correct?

 

When I use lenses which have poor contrast, wide open, with B&W film, the first "zones" from scans seem to contain mostly noise, no real details.

 

Judge for yourself. The following test was between lux35 and nokton35/1.2, both at f/1.4. The scene is cropped a bit to get rid of the corner areas that are soooo different in vignetting that they can not be compared in any meaningful way.

 

I shot the pictures with the same exposure, but lux35 was just a tiny bit darker, also in the middle, which I have compensated.

 

I painted those black and white spots because photoshop "save to web" will otherwise map the tones differently.

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[lct]

Not sure which contrast difference you are comparing here.

At f/1.4, the Nokton 35/1.2 is hardly more contrasty than the Summilux 35/1.4 pre-asph.

You would need a contrasty lens like the Summilux asph for your test, or whatever 35 at say f/4.

I wonder if the game's worth the candle though. Recovering shadow details is always easier with low than high contrast lenses IMO.

[Hannes Lummes]

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Not sure which contrast difference you are comparing here. At f/1.4, the Nokton 35/1.2 is hardly more contrasty than the Summilux 35/1.4 pre-asph. You would need a contrasty lens like the Summilux asph for your test, or whatever 35 at say f/4.

 

?? Did you actually *look* at the pictures? I know that Nokton is not up to summilux asph standards, but it is much better than pre asph lux in contrast. I shot these lenses for some months side by side, all the time, and decided to sell the Nokton because it just was too big and I was getting over my low light obsession. Well, I miss the bokeh, which was better.

 

Or if you prefer, look at my previous dog house example where the lux pre apsh is compared to itself, f/1.4 does not bring any shadow details visible compared to f/2.8 which surely is much more contrasty.

[engelfangen]

I have an good example of this nice lens for sale in the BUY & SELL section!

:-) best regards Marc

[pico]

[...]In fact, low contrast lenses indeed do show more shadow detail and not the other way around, like described by you, which is the whole reason, why I strongly prefer classic lenses, to use on my digital Ms.[...]

 

I find that to be true in particular with the pre-asph 35mm Summilux (and old brass lenses for LF). In fact, when I had to shoot with the Canon XL-* where blooming and contrast was a problem in clear-sky daylight, I had a set of Tiffen low contrast filters, for example the 105C low contrast #5. I also used it on a MF camera where the sun was directly overhead and it definitely helped. It does so by creating what Tiffen calls 'local flare'.

[menos I M6]

Hannes, I don't know about the scientifics (and to be very honest, I could care less about those details), but I do know, what I see from shooting modern lenses vs their older low contrast lenses a lot.

 

Your comparison with those two lenses is strongly flawed mainly in two ways:

 

The Cv 35/1.2 is in fact a rather low contrast lens, by far less contrasty, than Leica's ASPH optics, especially @ 1.2 and 1.4 still.

 

The 35 Summilux pre ASPH has a very strong light falloff, right from a very small circle in the center.

This falloff can be very confusing, knowing of its much lower contrast than modern lenses and then seeing actually less shadow detail in the outer zones than with more contrasty modern lenses.

 

This is a tricky one ;-)

 

For a fair comparison on this fact (and it is indeed a fact), you should compare longer lenses, which do show much less fall off.

 

Here is a shot form a 60 year old Leitz Hektor 7.3cm ƒ1.9 - in the original file, there has been NO blacks clipped and shadow detail was plenty.

I had the freedom though, to add contrast by adjusting curves and clipping blacks (next to a standard 50/0.8/50 sharpening, this has been the only post processing here:

 

Hektor 7.3cm ƒ1.9 *1932 by teknopunk.com, on Flickr

 

Additionally, as can be seen well here is, that this photograph had been taken, before I stripped the lens to it's parts and cleaned the optical elements form haze.

You can see the strong effect from the haze especially in the outer zones, where it was worst and on bright parts in the picture.

 

I also shoot a lot late Canon RF lenses, which are absolutely wonderful in excelling, to not cut of blacks and giving endless tones into the shadows, where modern Leica ASPH lenses simply (and violently) cut off and throw away any detail.

 

Here is a sample of a shot with a rare Canon 85 ƒ1.8 LTM, that shows the beautiful character of these late Canon RF lenses, not killing shadow detail (I processed the file in a similar way, though much less so to the Hektor photo above):

 

Canon 85 f1.8 RF LTM by teknopunk.com, on Flickr

 

The Canon 85 1.8 LTM is an exceptionally sharp lens, resulting in a quite contrasty, sharp look with plenty of skin detail here - this is not to be confused with being a very high contrast lens (here is the beauty of the character of these Canon lenses - rather low contrast, not clipping shadows, but sharp optics and a beautiful acuity - the ideal mix for my taste).

 

Cosina actually offers different coatings with certain lenses (multi and single coated), while Zeiss, as I understand also offer more classic optical designs, manufactured Today.

I seriously pledge, Leica would do the same and offer an alternative lens design for certain important focal lengths in for a different rendering to their modern lenses (21, 35, 50, 90 would be nice).

 

The problem is, that such lenses are in fact most useful, when having fast apertures, to dive into night light, making such an offering most unlikely as of low demand and high costs.

 

Back to the 35 pre ASPH Lux - this is in fact a very special specimen, as it does act just different in many ways to other lenses (giving you the attitude in backlit situations, having high light falloff, sharpening not really up until very small apertures, etc …).

 

I love it for that actually - it's a bit controversial, like a Noctilux f1 - also pairing very well to one of those ;-)

 

A photograph from the 35 Lux pre ASPH, not clipping shadow detail (I mostly process such photographs, adding contrast by adjusting curves and black clipping - same here:

 

Untitled by teknopunk.com, on Flickr

[Hannes Lummes]

Menos, how about providing me/us with a comparison then? Single isolated pictures don't tell very much about things so subtle as deep shadow detail.

I also note that Mr Puts discredits the phenomenon that is "fact" for so many people.

 

One thing you talk about is "clipping into shadows" and surely enough low contrast keep things from clipping, but the question is whether there is any information in the shadows, or if the stray light is killing more of it than with high contrast lenses.

 

I tried again. This time film was delta 100. Apertures are 1,4 and 2,8. I Thought hard what is the way to present the result so that it is easy to see and opted for compensating for the overall contrast (crudely) by reducing the f/2,8 example contrast to the same level as fully open. I also kept the extremes away from full black and full white (so that people with substandard displays see everything), which are again there as references in those balls. And once again detail seems to be lost in both ends. The picture is a crop from the middle of a high contrast scene.

 

Shall we move this conversation to film forum? I find this topic interesting and am waiting to see any evidence (comparison!!) (which I guess there must be) to back up the low contrast dogma.

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[Hannes Lummes]

So, I have "flamed" about the contrast thing for a while, but here I return to something else. This picture is from Tuesday. One could call it "love" or "care". That whirly bokeh is quite fun sometimes, perhaps not in this picture, but there it is. Aperture was probably f/2 maximum.

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[menos I M6]

That is a beautiful photograph Hannes!

[Double Negative]

Hannes, that's a cool shot. I dig it!

 

I don't see issues with "low contrast lenses." If you shoot it digitally, you can very easily tweak the curves as needed. If you print, follow the old advice of expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights and/or use multigrade paper.