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Summicron 50 rigid or summitar 50 1.5 For my leica m9 (and m6)


Giorgio Festa

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Depends on what you may be using the 50mm for. Do you mean the Summarit 1.5/50mm? There is no Summitar 1.5. The rigid Summicron is a nice lens and very well suited for various kinds of photography. The Summarit 1.5/50mm is somewhat softer, less sharp and with less contrast, the more so when you use it wide open. The Summicron would be my choice for general purposes.

Lex

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Depends on what you may be using the 50mm for. Do you mean the Summarit 1.5/50mm? There is no Summitar 1.5. The rigid Summicron is a nice lens and very well suited for various kinds of photography. The Summarit 1.5/50mm is somewhat softer, less sharp and with less contrast, the more so when you use it wide open. The Summicron would be my choice for general purposes.

Lex

Stopped down to 2.0 and smaller the Summarit can be very sharp with normal contrast for its period. Its reputation for being soft is related to many examples where the coating has gone hazy.

The bokeh is an acquired taste and can get quite wild and swirly. From your description I think the Summicron would be the better buy for you.

Edited by jaapv
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A good rigid Summicron, even old, is perfect on digital as well as on film : most of the pictures of my Leica gear (posted time to time in the "historical" section) have been taken with a Summicron rigid that has just reached half a century of life (1.986.334, which dates it to 1963... :)) , mounted on my M8.... just an example here below :

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1.5 Summitar has a special quality to it , old, lowish contrast compared to modern, but I have made some very special photos with it. I can not duplicate it photoshop. It is combination of sharp and not sharp combined almost. Wide open it is fairly soft and dreamy, but not the same as a soft focus lens. Summitars are very hard to find in good optical condition without internal fog shown by a penlight. The proper shade is important and hard to find, therefore expensive.

 

My Rigid is more general purpose and has less character, much less. Sharpness at f 2 is confined to a small circle in the center. This circle grows with each generation of 50 mm lenses.

 

Modern lenses have lost most all character and tend to produce a flawless image.

Edited by tobey bilek
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Thank you For this message. I am looking for a lens with character as only The "old" ones Can have....at The same time I need a generic 50 and this is The reason why I am going to buy The summicron.

However these old lenses have all some special characteristics which make them special....it is only a matter of what ingredient you want to put in the oven to give a special taste to your pics.

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Giorgio... you gave me the occasion to make a comparision I never made in strict terms....:) Summarit vs. Summicron (both OLD... Summarit is a "Taylor-Hobson" dated 1950... Summicron is from 1963 as i said above)

 

At f8 the difference in contrast is rather significant... and the 100% crops show also the lead of Summicron in sharpness :

(M8 at 160, unprocessed jpg out of camera, first Summarit, then Summicron)

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Edited by luigi bertolotti
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Of course, with selftimer I couldn't make a comparision at f2 :o... which I did on a different subject, same setting as above, 100% crops

 

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The Summicron is, definitely, still a great lens.

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In the same pic as above, cropping a different area, one can appreciate also the quite different rendering of the OOF at f2...

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Wow Luigi....wonderful post....very useful to understand The differences between these two great lenses.....thank you very much!!

 

Ps...strage to see The "giornale di Brescia" on an international forum ;)

 

I did it intentionally... :p... the only way to give international visibility to our modest local daily paper... :o and the "BIRRA PER TUTTI" in last page sounded also nice...

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The rigid is a great lens.

FWIW, there are several old Nikon and Canon rangefinder lenses that would equally meet your requirements.

Absolutely. If I had to choose a "best" lens from that period it would be the Canon 1.8/50 LTM. Superbly built too.

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Luigi's comparison set the standard, so I am sure you can distinguish on the following four examples which lens made which photo.

 

The competition is between

the 1:1.5/50mm Summarit,

the 1:1.4/50 Summilux 1. version,

the 1:2/50mm Summicron 2.nd version (rigid) and

the 1:2/50mm Summicron 4. version (current).

Though unfortunately the photos aren't in the same sequence as my list above.

 

All lenses at f/2, 1/180 sec, M9 with lens detection on manual for the 3.rd version of the 50mm Summicron, no changes in lightroom:

 

 

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Now some center crops, same sequence as above - n the last example the windwheel moved:

 

 

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