Leica 90mm f2.8 on a Leica CL(?)

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Hoods in the positions as shown, i.e. the worse case:

 

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[plewislambert]

I used a 90mm on my CL and focusing wasn't a problem. I should say that most of my subjects were at a distance and the lens probably at f5.6 to f8. How accurate have you found the rangefinder in your CL? Does it show the correct single coincident image at infinity? I checked mine on distant house chimney tops and tv antennae.

There is a different problem with 90mm lenses when you are used to the 40mm and that is camera shake. If you are trying to get the best out of a lens put the camera on a tripod and fire the shutter by cable release. A screw-in delayed action is also good. If it looks sharp enlarged on your computer screen (assuming you get the films back scanned onto a cdrom) then you are doing something right.

I moved from the CL to the M4-P (which meant going back to a hand exposure meter) and found the viewfinder/rangefinder an improvement over my CL but of course the results weren't any sharper.....

Regards

Philip

[crow]

If I buy the 90mm Elmarit-M, and if I have to use it on my CL having not bought an M body,

I would probably use it for portraits. For longer focal lengths I have my OM... Portraits, perhaps inside, would mean no hood. The 1 meter shots on both examples from Philip come in the way of the right lower corner, if I am reading them correctly. Probably cropping the 90mm frame lines would be a solution. Infinity set shots have almost unaffected frame lines.

So it is usable, even when it means altering the rectangle, post image processing. Thanks for the input.

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What we're discussing here is just what you see in the finder. I.e., the 90mm Elmarit-M occludes but a small slice of the frame's corner. This does not in any way affect what you will get on film. It's just that in that corner something might be hidden you did not want to be visible in the image.

 

Caution: I do not know the distance for which those framelines are optimized.

[crow]

Kind of hard to visualize if you haven't seen photos coming out of this lens/body combination. I want to believe you, but I will know what you're talking about once I see an actual photo coming out of a CL with an Elmarit-M on. It's such an interesting lens that even if there is a bit of the lens black form in the picture frame cropping it out will be insignificant especially if you've done this before so you know by experience what to leave out of the composition when you design the shot.

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Don't fear. There's no way that a lens will get a corner of itself into the image it projects onto the film. No part of the lens can appear within the image made by the lens.

[payasam]

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The CL is not the best camera for critical sharpness with 85/90/100/105 lenses. I think Leitz and Minolta were wise to issue the Elmar C 90/4 with it. That lens is also compact like the camera body. It happens that I now use 90, 100 and 135 lenses with M Leicas and have no film SLR any longer: but I agree with those who say that an SLR is better than a RFDR for those focal lengths.

[giordano]

Philipp, thank you for the testing. I'd mainly been concerned that the big lenses might obstruct the CL's rangefinder patch at close focusing distances and it seems from what you've written that this isn't a problem. If they block a corner of the viewfinder's field of view that's at most a minor annoyance.

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I'd mainly been concerned that the big lenses might obstruct the CL's rangefinder patch at close focusing distances and it seems from what you've written that this isn't a problem. ...

 

That is not a problem at all. Even if I failed to shoot through the viewfinder at a constant angle (due to lack of equipment), I was able to squint through the CL's finder at every conceivable angle and did not succeed in obscuring more of the picture than shown above. Not even the 135mm Tele-Elmar with the hood attached will cover the RF patch. Not that I'd recommend using this on the CL, of course. I could not try that with the 135mm Elmarit, BTW, as this lens can not be attached to the CL. The shutter speed dial is in the way.