One lens

[david_choy58]

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If you only have one lens, what would it be?

 

Mine would be 28mm cron. Great FOV for M8, sharp corner to corner, great micro constrast and ok larger aperture.

[lars_bergquist]

With a film M, my bet would be that of Henri Cartier-Bresson: 50 mm. The nearest M8 counterpart is of course 35 mm, with an equivalent focal length of 47 mm, as against the 52 mm of the nominal 50. This to my mind makes it even more handy. And, ladies and gentlemen, the lens of my choice for a one-lens world tour is (drum roll):

 

---------- The Summilux-M 1:1.4/35 mm ASPH ----------

 

That back-focus issue is a pseudo-problem for closet neurotics obsessed with pushing their gear outside the envelope of practical use.

 

The TE is for daylight and outdoor use only; also, I don't fancy that 3% barrel distortion at the 28 mm setting.

 

The 28 mm Summicron is of course a serious contender. Still I feel that there should be a longer lens available too, if this is your mainstay. This could actually be 50 mm, but I think 75 is just right. 90 mm is too narrow. The c/v 75 is really amazingly good, better than many older Leica 90 mm lenses.

 

The old man from the Age of the Roll Film Folder

[rob_x2004]

Lars are you deliberately provoking the Leicas Matchstick Ruler Photography Brigade.

[lars_bergquist]

Lars are you deliberately provoking the Leicas Matchstick Ruler Photography Brigade.

 

You bet I am.

 

The egregious old man

[palmskov]

with M8 my choice is a 35mm cron asph. Actually it's a personal goal only to use one lense for the next few months. Just for the practice....

[stunsworth]

Single lens it would be a 28mm - I currently own a Voiglander Ultron.

 

Two lenses would be a 24mm Elmarit and a 35mm ASPH Summicron, both of which I already own. On a recent trip to France I'd guess I used these two for about 80-90% of all the shots I took.

[jlancasterd]

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Single lens it would be a 28mm - I currently own a Voiglander Ultron.

 

Snap! - although I'm wondering about the 35mm f1.7...

[Falk61462]

You bet I am.

 

The egregious old man

 

Hi, if you have to focus at the tip of the noise of the person you are portraiting in order to get the eyes (M8 with 35 lux asph) sharp in a desparate trial and error process with a multi thousand euro gear, you tell me who is "neurotic"

 

Best

[lars_bergquist]

Hi, if you have to focus at the tip of the noise of the person you are portraiting in order to get the eyes (M8 with 35 lux asph) sharp in a desparate trial and error process with a multi thousand euro gear, you tell me who is "neurotic"

 

Best

 

Both my 35 Summilux and my 28 Summicron are off to Solms for coding, so I cannot experimentally refute your claim. Are there any other lenses, aspherical or not, that according to you are in practice unfocusable? I may have some of them.

 

The bothersome old man from the Age of Tape Measure Focusing

[Gilles L.]

The 50 was my favorite lens on the M7... and it is still on the M8. I am not sure why... I have been trying to use the 35 more but the 50 always goes back on. I suppose I just take a couple of steps back... What ever works, right?

[tom0511]

1 lens: Summicron28mm

2 lenses: Summicron 28mm and TE28-35-50

[elansprint72]

Leica DC Vario-Summicron.

[Woody Campbell]

 

. . . .

---------- The Summilux-M 1:1.4/35 mm ASPH ----------

. . . .

 

 

Amen on everything Lars says.

[Joe Mondello]

My favorite lens on my Leica M3 was the 50 DR 'Cron. My fave on the Nikon F2 was the 50mm 1.2 and my fave on the D200 is the 28 1.4 ASPH.

 

On my Epson R-D1 my fave is the 50'Cron again! (it lives!!) and on the M8 . . . well the jury is still out but I am very happy with my newly acquired 75 2.5 CV Heliar as well as the 28 Ultron 1.9. But I'd prefer something physically smaller than these two, which leads me back to the 40 1.4 Nokton.

 

OY!

[sm23221]

Summicron 28 f/2.0

[Falk61462]

Both my 35 Summilux and my 28 Summicron are off to Solms for coding, so I cannot experimentally refute your claim. Are there any other lenses, aspherical or not, that according to you are in practice unfocusable? I may have some of them.

 

The bothersome old man from the Age of Tape Measure Focusing

 

Specifically the 35 lux and cron cause problems with the M8 as well as the 28 cron. See Tim ashley's thread in this forum and lots of threads regarding this issue in dpreview. Why don't you have Solms also inspect your lenses while having them coded?

 

Best regards

[BerndReini]

35mm 1.4 aspherical, hands down. Turns out that the old handmade miracle lens shows none of the flaws that the new version has and is tack sharp at any distance and f-stop.

[carstenw]

Lars, I'll stop short of wishing that your 35 Lux Asph comes back from Leica focusing like Tim's, but having tried the stopping down to f/4 of one of these lenses, a new one at Leica Camera Berlin, and having seen just how far the focus shifts (tripod, careful focus, dead-sharp wide open, yada yada), I think you do an injustice with your comment about the ruler brigade. There is really a problem there.

[Jamie Roberts]

I'd pick the 35mm ASPH 1.4 as well. I love that lens. It does not backfocus for me. That some do on some bodies, I have no doubt.

 

I'd even go so far as saying that it may be the pickiest lens in the M8 stable. But I refuse to believe I have a magic lens It was used, too.

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Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[lars_bergquist]

Lars, I'll stop short of wishing that your 35 Lux Asph comes back from Leica focusing like Tim's, but having tried the stopping down to f/4 of one of these lenses, a new one at Leica Camera Berlin, and having seen just how far the focus shifts (tripod, careful focus, dead-sharp wide open, yada yada), I think you do an injustice with your comment about the ruler brigade. There is really a problem there.

 

I respect your knowledge and judgment and I will of course do the tests when the lenses come home to roost ....

 

Until then, I sometimes wonder how careful some of the complainers have been in their testing procedures. There is always some variation in the outcome during a test series. It is then necessary to resist the temptation to choose one data point that shows what you want it to show, and ignore the rest.

 

We have just had a bad case of this here in Sweden when a guest researcher at the Swedish Agricultural University published a sensational article in Nature about the mechanism behind flowering. A couple of years later it turned out that he had fallen for just that temptation, and the lab had to publicly retract the article.

 

Mind you, I do not dispute the phenomenon itself. Spherical aberration can do just that sort of thing. What I do dispute is that it is significant in normal photographic practice. Especially, I would not trust anecdotal evidence based on hand-held tests. German tests may of course not be hand-held ... Germans seem to be born with tripods. I have done quite a bit of long-distance backpacking up in Lapland, and I could always spot a German hiker from a kilometer away. He often had one backpack, one 'belly-pack' and a tripod on top of it all.

 

I see that the next issue of Leica Fotografie International will carry an article about "problems and pseudo-problems" and it may well touch on this problem ... pseudo or not.

 

The insufferable old man from the Age of Tripods