APO Summicron-M ASPH 90

[L1913]

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I am interested in purchasing the 90 APO lens for taking photos of objects further away. I have attached a photo taken with my iPhone (which I understand is comparable to a 35mm) of what I am talking about. Ideally in this instance what I would like to be able to get a much more magnified shot of the lighthouse and the tip of land that its on. Would the 90 APO be a good lens for these type of situations?

 

Apologies, I am new at this and am a little confused. I often hear this lens referred to as a telephoto lens, but rarely hear of anyone using it for distant objects. Only thing people seem to talk about using it for is portrait shots and close objects. Would appreciate your input.

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[Guest Marc G.]

You can of course use it to magnify subjects that are further away, so the lens gives you a little bit more reach. But people mainly use it for the compressed perspective that it gives you, which is more flattering for portraits.

 

The 90mm APO-Summicron-M f/2 ASPH is a wonderful lens but if you're mainly using it for the perspective I would recommend getting the excellent 90mm Summarit-M f/2.5. It offers the same point of view but at a more affordable price but you get a very sharp lens with smooth out of focus rendering and it is a little bit lighter than the big APO.

[lct]

Rough comparo of 35 and 90mm frames. A 135 or a 180 could be preferable for what you're after. Otherwise the 90/2 apo is indeed the sharpest Leica 90.

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[jaapv]

If you want to use a lens for objects far away a 90 mm is not much help. You should really be looking at lenses with focal lengths of hundreds of mm-s. To get a decent format-filling image of that lighthouse I would guess you would need an 800 mm lens on a hefty tripod. You will be fighting motion blur, atmospheric distortion and haze in that case. Better to walk up closer.

[Jeff S]

And, L 1913, given that you own a new M, you can use use a tripod and crop a 50mm shot to at least a 90mm equivalent FOV without much loss, provided your prints are not monster sized and your pic taking and printing techniques are sufficient. At some point, though, you'll get better results with a longer lens, as others suggest.

 

You might consider trying some longer lenses (rental or dealer loan) to experiment.

 

Jeff

[L1913]

And, L 1913, given that you own a new M, you can use use a tripod and crop a 50mm shot to at least a 90mm equivalent FOV without much loss, provided your prints are not monster sized and your pic taking and printing techniques are sufficient. At some point, though, you'll get better results with a longer lens, as others suggest.

 

You might consider trying some longer lenses (rental or dealer loan) to experiment.

 

Jeff

 

Using a 50mm and tripod, what in your opinion would be the largest print that would be reasonable when cropping to a 90mm equivalent?

 

On that note, the only lens I currently own is the FLE. Unless your planning on making large prints is there really any point in having another lens at all?

[mmradman]

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Using a 50mm and tripod, what in your opinion would be the largest print that would be reasonable when cropping to a 90mm equivalent?

 

On that note, the only lens I currently own is the FLE. Unless your planning on making large prints is there really any point in having another lens at all?

 

You can print as large as you wish as long as you bear in mind there is no point looking at large prints from close distance.

 

You seem to be kind of guy whom Leica marketing will love no end, you just bought new M and Summilux 35mm FLE , costing best part of £9000 in UK and asking pretty basic questions here. Can you tell us what is your photographic experience before you acquired Leica M system camera, it may help provide you with measured response.

 

If you are new to photography perhaps you need a good book describing technical and artistic aspects of it all, if not you may be the joker who posts funny Leica gear video reviews on You-Tube.

 

BTW, like your lighthouse picture.

[UliWer]

 

 

... In this instance, a 35mm v 90mm using the light house as an example. To make things simple I would assume that by using a 90 to take that same shot the lighthouse would be substantially larger in the frame. This may be incorrect, but I have always though of a telephoto lens as a lens for taking photos of objects that you cannot get close to for one reason or another, however, it seems that no on the board uses this lens for this purpose. This is why I am confused. Why do they bother calling it a telephoto?

 

Yes, of course the lighthouse on your example would look larger on a photo taken with 90mm than on one taken with 35mm - from the same position.

 

Though it would not look really large to fill the whole frame. There fore you would need a much "longer" lens, say 400mm or even more. But then you would probably need a tripod to get results which are really sharp.

 

Lots of people say the little leaver to select frames in the viewfinder was of no use. If your camera had this little leaver, you might get an idea what you would get with a 90mm lens.