Performance - M versus R?

[RKh]

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Please forgive me my not perfect English, I will be corrected

 

And another very important in my opinion historical fact from Mr. Erwin -

 

"Dr. Schade was the first person who discovered that an improvement

in contrast was the cause of a visually enhanced sharpness

impression, even with identical or lower resolution. This

knowledge, first employed in the TV design in America, has

been adopted by Dr. Mandler, Leitz-Midland, when he designed

the first Summicron-R 50mm f/2, introduced in 1964 together

with the new Leicaflex. This lens had a very high contrast and

image quality judged by the then accepted standards. The high

level of contrast was coupled in a smart way to a high level of

resolution and for a long period, because of its excellence in

terms of the micro-contrast at the limit of useable resolution,

this lens served as the reference lens for tests of film emulsions.

If you are engaged in collecting Leica lenses, this one

should be in your collection as a significant milestone in lens

design. Since then, Leica designers have always been engaged

in optimizing, which is not the same as maximizing, contrast

and resolution at full aperture"

-Leica R-Lenses by Erwin Puts-

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[urs0polar]

If you look at it one way, as an M shooter, then yes, the downside is that it makes the M bigger and heavier than using equivalent M lenses. But if you look at it the other way, as an R shooter, then it becomes an advantage as you now have a slightly smaller kit with no mirror slap so you can shoot handheld at even slower shutter speeds.

 

AND if you use it on the digital M's, you get essentially a digital R solution from Leica. (Well, okay, workable for wider lenses only, but still...)

 

This is a novel solution, but I don't think you have to go to the extreme of scale focusing on an M body to get rid of mirror slap for an R lens. My R8 has a mirror-up mode; even the old SL(2?) could do mirror up if you flicked the shutter just right.

 

Once the mirror is up, then it's just a normal shutter.... just like the M (the digital ones, anyhow). I think the M8 had the same shutter as the R8 anyway. When I first got my R8, in the dark, I would hand hold it with the mirror up lever engaged... just focus, touch once to get the mirror up, hold still, and touch again to get the shot.

 

But, I learned that the damping is so good on the R8 that I can shoot it almost/just as slow as an M and it doesn't show signs of slap. They are very well designed.

 

For a digital solution, you can use mirror-up on a 5D (yes, the 5D does have horrendous mirror slap in comparison). Then again, the 5D also has nice high iso, so maybe you wouldn't need to.

 

I just don't see the advantage in scale focusing at f/8 like it's 1910. It's a good way if you have an R lens and only an M body, but it's not superior -- just smaller.