Summicron 50 APO vs 50 Lux Asph?

[andalus]

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I must be curious to see comparative photos taken with the 50 Lux ASPH and the new 50 Summicron APO. I am astounded anyway how it could be possible that the 50 Lux at just over half the price of the new Summicron, and actually is faster, could be a lesser lens. I suppose the real question is this: What would it involve to literally SEE the difference in shots taken with these lenses. A difference that would justify paying 7k plus for the Summicron, assuming the funds were readily available.

I might order one anyway and simply not use it at all. It might be worth more than a dollar could ever be long term. Like a bank account, except the bank is the lens.

 

Anyway, yes, if anyone has any answers here, please do inform this non technical journalist photographer.

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[North]

It is just a matter of diminishing returns!

 

To improve the image quality of the already excellent 50 Lux ASPH you have to use exotique glass types and complex constructions. The manufacturing costs go up a lot, but the improvement will be rather marginal for most use.

[lars_bergquist]

The Summilux is already exotic enough. Leica in fact had to persuade Schott to take up the manufacture of an old glass formulated by the famous Leica glass lab, in order to make the lens possible.

 

Its high speed and its floating element also make extremely high demands on assembly and quality control (and remember, this is responsible for more than half of the price of any Leica lens). I doubt that these demands are much lower than what the Apo-Summicron demands. In short, I suspect that the price differential has more to do with marketing strategy than with manufacturing cost.

 

In other words, Leica have got themself another bragging lens, along with the new Noctilux and the 24 and 21mm Summiluxes. These lenses do indeed offer a demonstrable advantage to the user. That user will have to ask himself whether the exorbitant price is proportionate to the often marginal advantage. This question, I think, will be especially salient in the case of the Apo-Summicron.

 

Leica Camera AG have shown themselves capable of making products for an extremely small but either extremely wealthy or extremely gear-obsessed segment of the market. Now it remains to be seen if they can also design and produce for that far larger segment of serious working photographers of ordinary means that they have to capture in order to reach that one percent market share that Herr Kaufmann has been talking about. The Summarit line and the new 21mm Super-Elmar might be a beginning on the lens side. But a really innovative and still purchaseable interchangeable-lens EVF camera is also needed.

 

The old man from the Mandler Age

[Phil U]

In short, I suspect that the price differential has more to do with marketing strategy than with manufacturing cost.

 

I think so too.

[North]

I certainly agree that the 50mm lux is an excellent lens, with a very advanced construction and quality control!

 

My point was, to improve this already excellent build, just marginally (which Leica seem to have done according to MTF curves and those who have tested it), there is a need for a LOT of work. Correcting for the limitations of the laws of optics further out towards the image corners is a great achievement. But it does not come cheap, and it is only visible in some very limited photographical situations. Otherwise every lens maker would have done the same.

 

The old extreme aircraft carried spy cameras come to mind. Some used backplanes with a slight concentric wave structure and vacuum pumps to hold the film towards it. To compensate for the wave structure in the focal plane for even the most well corrected lens.

 

With optics you can always improve the quality but the development cost and manufacturing challenges will increase into the stratosphere.

 

I have no idea if the "margins" are higher or lower on this lens compared to the lux, but I would guess they are rather comparable.

[delander †]

WRT the new Summicron we were all expecting something different, an ASPH lens which would have a price somewhere between the current Summilux and Summicron, to replace the current Summicron. But Leica have done something different, a lens which stands apart from the current range, exceeding the performance of the current ASPH Summilux, the design of which some years old now. For the lens designers at Leica the excitement is in pushing the boundaries and seeing where that takes them.

Of course only they know what new cameras designs they have in the pipeline and it may be that such designs will need lenses like the new Summicron to reach their maximum potential.

Jeff

[lars_bergquist]

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No doubt very exciting for the optical design staff. But they are not paying for the company's upkeep. The buyers are.

 

Yes, there are buyers out there. Are they many enough to compensate for the many more buyers they will lose by not producing the old Summicron, or a new lens of at least commensurate price?

 

And please don't give me that self-delusional talk that the old Summicron will be continued. I will be surprised indeed if it is still listed a year from now.

 

The old man from the Age of the Rigid Summicron

[Wail]

 

<snip>

 

its floating element

 

<snip>

 

Excuse my ignorance, but what is floating element?

[delander †]

 

And please don't give me that self-delusional talk that the old Summicron will be continued. I will be surprised indeed if it is still listed a year from now.

 

The old man from the Age of the Rigid Summicron

 

I know you dont like the current 50mm Summicron, but I like it very much and there is no way I'm going to pay out £5000 for the new one. Leica could discontinue the current Summicron and rely on the Summarit to fill the gap, but why would they? They can make Summicrons with their eyes shut.

 

Jeff

[delander †]

No doubt very exciting for the optical design staff. But they are not paying for the company's upkeep. The buyers are.

 

The old man from the Age of the Rigid Summicron

 

Dont you think that the recent lenses the 21, 24 and 35 mm Summiluxes, the Noctilux, and of course the 18, 21 and 24 elmars all recent designs pay for the companies upkeep?

 

I wouldn't be suprised if the Leica management has said to the lens design team, 'follow your dreams, see what you can come up with'. Superb lenses are important to the Leica ethos.

 

Jeff

[lars_bergquist]

Excuse my ignorance, but what is floating element?

 

A floating element is one or several optical elements in a lens that, when the lens is focused, move a bit differently in relation to the others. This is primarily to counteract the fall-off in performance that especially high speed lenses, and macro lenses with their very close focusing, show when they are focused close. Most lenses are corrected for infinity, and suffer a bit when focused closer than about one or two meters.

 

Zooms of course have different parts of the optical array dancing around in different directions, but 'floating elements' refers to prime lenses. The first prime lenses to use them were macros. The term 'element' is a bit of a misnomer today, because now it is often not only a single element but an entire group of elements that moves. With both the current 35mm Summilux ASPH and the new 50mm Apo-Summicron, it is actually the entire rear half of the lens array that focuses differently from the front half.

 

The old man from the Macro Age

[lars_bergquist]

Jeff, Leica is a small manufacturer that cannot, for technical reasons, enlarge its capacity much unless they more or less double it. They may plan to do so with the move back to Wetzlar next year. But until then, the highly and specially trained people assembling 50mm Summicron lenses cannot during the same hours produce any other lens, and vice versa. So there is a practical limit to how many different lenses they can offer, juggling their planning so that waiting lists do not get impossibly long.

 

And any manufacturer would find it absurd to offer five different 50mm lenses for the same camera system. They would also find it absurd to offer two different 50mm f:2 lenses, both for exactly the same use. That is two absurdities rolled into one, and that should be enough to give pause to even Leica Camaera A.G.

 

The old man from the Kodachrome Age

[philipus]

I am astounded anyway how it could be possible that the 50 Lux at just over half the price of the new Summicron, and actually is faster, could be a lesser lens.

 

That is not the question.

 

The question is how the 50 APO at almost twice the Summilux Asph's price could possibly be that much a better lens.

 

I'd almost be willing to wager that nobody, except pixel peepers and - perhaps - those who print enormous prints, will ever see any difference between the two. For anyone using film, there chance of seeing any difference would be even less.

 

The Summilux is currently, it seems to me, Leica's best and cheapest lens. It is simply amazing.

[JWW]

Leica lens designs have long cycles, look how long the current 50mm Summicron has been in production. The new Summicron may have been designed to accommodate expected sensor performance increases for the next, let's say 10 years. Why up the sensor performance for the M10, M11, and so on if the lens performance does not keep up?

 

I would believe the Nikon D800 folks may be finding out about lens requirements with their 36mp.

 

Of course the real question is whether the whole chasing of sensor/lens capabilities up the slippery and expensive slope is getting to the absurd point.

[algrove]

I suppose the real question is this: What would it involve to literally SEE the difference in shots taken with these lenses. A difference that would justify paying 7k plus for the Summicron, assuming the funds were readily available.

 

I sure hope that the difference you refer to is visible in prints-the question is then, at what size prints do you see the difference? Probably, bigger prints than the maximum size prints the printer most of us have at home will be able to print.

 

Where does the difference come in-40x50? Wow, not only would I love to have images worthy of that size, but also the $ to spend on this one lens. I used to think a $4000 printer's affordability was out of this world, now even the lens to use a printer like that costs twice as much as the printer, not to mention the paper price. Guess I'm further behind the power curve than I thought.

[algrove]

That is not the question.

 

The question is how the 50 APO at almost twice the Summilux Asph's price could possibly be that much a better lens.

 

I'd almost be willing to wager that nobody, except pixel peepers and - perhaps - those who print enormous prints, will ever see any difference between the two. For anyone using film, there chance of seeing any difference would be even less.

 

The Summilux is currently, it seems to me, Leica's best and cheapest lens. It is simply amazing.

 

Agree. When I lived in Schevenging (sp) years ago I imagined owning a Leica would be golden.