28mm Summicron vs Elmarit

[semi-ambivalent]

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Shame about the hood though. So many lenses around this lens' length just look the part with no issues of flare. The summicron has been around since 2000 & I wouldn't be that surprised (as so many other lenses that are wider & narrower around it have modern problem free hoods) if it was updated soon.

 

There are plenty of people here who have more scuttlebut about that than I but if Leica was going to change the 28 Summicron it would certainly be more than just the hood. There was mention (here?) that the 35 Summicron is going to be 17 years old next year and could use an 'update' although I don't know what that might be.

 

Leica always has these insane lens design criteria: Best-in-Class performance, very (compared to the DSLR world) small size, superlative 'feel' in use. The list goes on. If the 28 was going to get a bump maybe floating elements would be high on the list but those are very hard to do with the size constraints. FWIW I bought the 2.8/28 in part because of that 2100 bucks but I've come to really like it. But if there was a new release of a 2.0/28, I don't know...

 

s-a

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[Marct40]

I have been trying to decide which to go with on my new m240. As I do landscapes and city scapes, I don't necessarily need the wider aperture so I am looking at overall sharpness and detail. I was lucky to be able to compare the two side by side and in these terms they are essentially comparable however as you can see the CA in the summicron is quite pronounced. Is this an anomaly or a trait with the summicron?pictures were taken at max aperture.

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[microview]

I have been trying to decide which to go with on my new m240. As I do landscapes and city scapes, I don't necessarily need the wider aperture so I am looking at overall sharpness and detail. I was lucky to be able to compare the two side by side and in these terms they are essentially comparable however as you can see the CA in the summicron is quite pronounced. Is this an anomaly or a trait with the summicron?pictures were taken at max aperture.

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Do I recognise that lamp-post – as seen from outside Leica Mayfair?

[250swb]

Perhaps some people balk at the additional 2,200 (US) dollars. No shame in that, and Leica1215 has a point about digital's high ISO performance negating (to some extent) the need for f/2. The Elmarit ASPH is also a very new design with a long life ahead of it, if that's something you worry about.

 

s-a

 

At the risk of committing blasphemy there is another option if you don't mind sometimes increasing the ISO, and it is much kinder on the pocket even than the Elmarit. It is, wait for it.......the CV LTM 28mm Color Skopar f/3.5!

 

I was looking for a 28mm for my IIIF, and reading the Cameraquest site came across the Skopar, and the descriptions of 'legendary' etc. So I eventually found one on a well known auction site and compared it with my 28mm ASPH Summicron on my MM, a camera that really shows a lenses resolution. And it is indeed 'legendary', well it has to be true, at each equivalent f/stop it is as sharp and contrasty as the Summicron! Well, maybe the Summicron stays a bit sharper at f/16, but to counter if at some apertures the Skopar is sharper in the corners. And the lens is tiny, really tiny, much smaller even than a collapsed 50mm Elmar M. So if you don't mind higher ISO when the light goes down, and a discrete size with no big hood, ideal for street or landscape, LTM or digital, the Skopar is worthy of the search.

 

Steve

[Marct40]

Yes the very same.. Leica were very good and allowed me to test many differnt lenses including the 50 apo

 

 

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[semi-ambivalent]

At the risk of committing blasphemy there is another option if you don't mind sometimes increasing the ISO, and it is much kinder on the pocket even than the Elmarit. It is, wait for it.......the CV LTM 28mm Color Skopar f/3.5!

 

Steve

 

No blasphemy at all. You know, I looked at those as I was first getting in to Leica (I had used Nikon Fs since the 70s) and they are impressive. I shoot B&W almost exclusively and like 28mm a lot.

 

One day I had been going through some of my 'keepers' and realized I could not tell where in the timeline I had stopped using the 28/3.5 Auto-H, then the 28/2.8 AiS and started with the 28/2.0 Ais. For my use patterns the extra stop just never seemed to come into play. Today, given the choice of those three lenses I'd take the 3.5 simply because I have the lens, it's paid for, it's sharp, I like its look and it balances nicely on the F but, buying into Leica I just couldn't convince myself the extra stop/$ was warranted based on *my* images and shooting. I can control the Elmarit-M ASPH's contrast with developer and agitation regimen, and I love its look. (Also, I'd be lying if I said staying in the Leica 'family' wasn't important to me.)

s-a

[ananda]

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I HAVE HAD BOTH LENSES but I think I prefer the Elmarit, both for it's size and for its cost. Frankly, there is not a tremendous difference in IQ. I just got back from S Africa and the Elmarit was wonderful with landscapes.

[awesom3]

i had the asph elmarit and it was a great lens with more contrast than the cron but also more distortion which bothered me a lot so eventually i upgraded to the cron. love the cron, images are creamy and not digitalish - if you know what i mean. you can find a used cron at a reasonable price these days, brand new i think its overpriced

[airscrew]

For medium wide angle I have Elmarit 24 Asph, Elmarit 28 Asph, Summicron 35 v4, MATE and Konica Dual.

 

Pictures taken with Elmarit 28 somehow pop out for the rest mainly by the contrast. I have been thinking is it good or bad thing and ended up that it is nice to have one different kind!

 

Image quality is excellent, lens is light and well made but no one of those beats Dual in mechanical quality and smooth and firm feeling when focusing and changing aperture (and focal length).

[Ecar]

Pictures taken with Elmarit 28 somehow pop out for the rest mainly by the contrast. I have been thinking is it good or bad thing and ended up that it is nice to have one different kind!

 

+1. I like both. The Elmarit is a wonderful lens for street work, the Summicron is better for landscape or architecture. Of course, YMMV.

Also allow me to spare a word in favour of the less expensive (and unloved) CV 28/2: not as sharp as the Summicron, and with less contrast than the Elmarit, but a good sample (try before you buy) will reward you with a very subtle, somewhat muted color palette and/or with an excellent basis for BW conversions if that's your thing.

[flyalf]

...

 

On my M9P neither lens delivers perfect color correction into the corners with Leica’s built in lens profile corrections (not sure if this is better with the M Typ 240 since I don’t have one). My 28mm Summicron on M9P suffers from the same fault in all four corners, rendering some vignetting at all apertures, with a sudden fall off as slightly cyan dark, right at the very corner. My 28mm Elmarit ASPH has a different pattern color casts, with the lower left corner rendering cyan and the lower right magenta, with gentler vignetting of tonality than the 28mm/2. The easiest way I have found to fix these flaws is the Adobe DNG Flat Field Plugin (Plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom | Adobe Labs) for Lightroom. I use reference photos shot with a piece of opaque white plexiglas that I cut to the size of a credit card, and the plugin uses these to remove either the color cast or color cast plus vignetting, and generates a new DNG file from your original raw image with the correction applied. This technique works very well for any wideangle that suffers the problem (like my 24mm Elmar ASPH and Zeiss ZM wideangles).

 

Overall, I prefer the 28mm Elmarit ASPH look for landscapes, while I think the Summicron is better for indoor photojournalism applications and artsy use of f/2.

 

Thank you for information,

 

I agree on the small color problem, but have only experinces with the 28/2,8 ASPH. This is the "worst" of my current lenses when it comes to color casts. This is not a big problem, but for critical snowscapes I tend to avoid using this lens on M9 because it will give some color cast that is very difficult to handle post. For summer work I find this negligible. I haven't tested this properly on M, but expect some small problems here as well. For other wides I have used Cornerfix.

 

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A merry Christmas!

[nggalai]

Nice timing with this thread.

 

My first 28mm for the M system was an Elmarit III (Canada) which I liked loads, but I somewhat missed one stop I was used to from my 50mm Summicron. I got the CV Ultron with lots of luck for about half the price I paid for the Elmarit, Nice timing with this thread.

 

My first 28mm for the M system was an Elmarit III (Canada) which I liked loads, but I somewhat missed one stop I was used to from my 50mm Summicron. I got a new CV Ultron (f/2.0 version) with lots of luck for about half the price I paid for the used Elmarit and initially liked it lots: A tad more compact, and the f/2.0 aperture I was used to for interior and nighttime shots. Apparently I was lucky, it doesn’t exhibit visible focus issues as so many others reported.

 

Some further lenses and a couple of RAW developer updates later I realised I didn’t really need f/2.0 in most situations; you can push lots in post-production, and hand-holding 28mm for me is far less difficult at slower shutter speeds than a 50mm. Hell, I hardly ever open my 90mm Summarit up to more than f/4, the Sonnar’s f/1.5 is more special effect than anything else for me. So I bought the Elmarit ASPH in 2012.

 

Loved size, weight and contrasty image quality. Didn’t care too much for focussing, mind. Also, by now there are these two small voices at the back of my head …

 

The first one goes “Dude, why do you need three 28mm? Sell them all and shop for a used Summicron, that’s what you wanted all along.” The second one whines “Dude, pick one, sell the others, you don’t need all three for what you shoot, and the ASPH is the newest and still in AAA shape; the sooner you sell it the less money you’ll have lost.”

 

I’m quite torn. I love all three lenses in their own way (pastel colouring with the Ultron has already been mentioned), but it’s crazy to keep all three. Sensible-me would sell both the Ultron and the ASPH and cry bitter tears every time I could have really used f/2. Nonsense-me would sell all three and shop for a Summicron. Idiot-me will probably keep both Ultron and ASPH and lust for the Summicron until I die.

 

Difficult. I must say the first three pages of this thread helped my decision finding somewhat, but I think I need more imput. So please, keep your experiences coming, yes?

 

Cheers,

-Sascha

[Ecar]

I’m quite torn. I love all three lenses in their own way (pastel colouring with the Ultron has already been mentioned), but it’s crazy to keep all three. Sensible-me would sell both the Ultron and the ASPH and cry bitter tears every time I could have really used f/2. Nonsense-me would sell all three and shop for a Summicron. Idiot-me will probably keep both Ultron and ASPH and lust for the Summicron until I die.

I'm with idiot-me here...

Yet, if I had to keep only one, it would probably be the Elmarit. Best overall balance - and great for street, which is a large part of my photography. YMMV.

I'd miss the Summicron and the Ultron very much, though...