M8 Lens question

[wlaidlaw]

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Thanks Wilson.

 

Can you, or someone else, please explain what I'd be giving up by not having a coded lens?

 

Thanks,

David

 

In the short term - not a lot. Your EXIF will not show the lens and that is about all. The 28mm Biogon has even less vignetting than the 21mm Biogon I have and that is barely noticeable in real life. You have to shoot a white card to see it at all. In the medium term, if Leica's next firmware update includes correction for Cyan vignetting when using an IR filter and does not include manual lens coding, you will be a certain disadvantage, as you will have to manually remove any IR filter cyan vignetting by means of a reversed layer overlay in PS - see lots of other posts for methodology of doing this. The firmware is projected to do this automatically for a coded lens. If manual coding comes in simultaneously as we all hope, then you are at no disadvantage again. This is more relevant for my 21mm lens, where cyan vignetting is much more of an issue than with a 28mm lens.

 

The 21mm is really quite wide and I feel, behaves more like a 25mm lens than the theoretical 28mm it should be. A number of other people have said that they feel in the real world, the lens focal length multiplier "feels" more like 1.25 than 1.33. This is only a guess but it might be because the edges of the image from the M8 are so crisp and evident, that they give the impression of a wider lens. In the end I think you would be equally happy with a Biogon, an Elmarit or a Summicron - they are all top class. You pays your money and you takes your choice.

 

Wilson

[carstenw]

Although the Biogon may not vignette much, there is at least the possibility that the cyan shift is significant. Do you have an IR filter, William?