New Leica MM page on overgaard.dk

[01af]

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And what I saw was that the photos were simply photos. No special Summilux-M Asph silky-pearl bokeh, no dreamy smokey Noctilux-M Asph bokeh or effect.

 

Simply just the image.

My sentiments exactly after I tried the then-brand-new-not-yet-obtainable Apo-Summicron-M 50 mm Asph two years ago in May 2012 in Solms for just a couple of minutes. I wasn't able to shoot more than a handful of frames in the Solms parking lot ... and still, this "just the image" effect became immediately evident (I also fired a few frames with my Summilux-M 50 mm Asph to compare).

 

Ever since, I like to call the Apo-Summicron-M 50 mm Asph "the transparent lens."

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[thighslapper]

As a Brit, I found the wide-eye tone of the piece somewhat condescending and odd. Talk of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings.

Maybe I should go to america and talk about tobacco chewing, gun toting hill billies.

 

Just reads strangely, but good that you yanks can find time out of your busy day choosing 12 gallon hats to visit our li'l ole country.

 

I think that's a bit unnecessarily snippy .........

 

....... for many people from abroad (DENMARK) a visit to the hallowed halls of Oxford is a bit like a trip to another planet .......

 

...... you seem to have lost the appreciation of just how eccentric and odd we really are .....

[Overgaard]

My sentiments exactly after I tried the then-brand-new-not-yet-obtainable Apo-Summicron-M 50 mm Asph two years ago in May 2012 in Solms for just a couple of minutes. I wasn't able to shoot more than a handful of frames in the Solms parking lot ... and still, this "just the image" effect became immediately evident (I also fired a few frames with my Summilux-M 50 mm Asph to compare).

 

Ever since, I like to call the Apo-Summicron-M 50 mm Asph "the transparent lens."

 

I was just editing some portrait from Paris and I couldn't quite understand how bright and detailed they looked.

 

It took me a while, then I remembered and noticed in the EIF that I had used the APO-Summicron.

 

I had just never seen the Nocilux f/0.95 look like that before, I thought. So that was why.

 

Hopefully I will be getting there APO-artricle updated soon with more samples and the interview with Peter Karbe.

[Delcredere]

As a Brit, I found the wide-eye tone of the piece somewhat condescending and odd. Talk of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings.

Maybe I should go to america and talk about tobacco chewing, gun toting hill billies.

 

Just reads strangely, but good that you yanks can find time out of your busy day choosing 12 gallon hats to visit our li'l ole country.

 

As a Brit I thought this contained brilliant field observations of academia on its home turf, and particularly enjoyed the fellows on the grass. I have lived and worked outside of the UK for two stints of three years, in the USA and France. Each time I came back I found, for a while at least, that what had seemed to me before I left to be normal and obviously the way things should be to be strange, parochial and not at all obvious. I had temporarily become a foreigner in my own country and saw its strangeness.

 

One thing that was a constant, however, was the ability of Brits to laugh at their own absurdity even if they are on the receiving end of a puncturing wit. Surely we do not have to be defensive when someone twits one of our most successful instructions? Relax with the thought that other than Thorsten himself all that Denmark has ever produced is Soren Kierkegaard and Victor Borge:)

[MattMaber]

I'm happy to laugh at myself and British absurdities, however were not a homogenous whole of bowler hat wearing toffs just as Americans aren't all truck stop red necks.

It was just strange observations taken from "I'm trying to be humorous about the little Brits in the 1970s" 101 and a bit tired and tiresome tbh.

But maybe thorsten just isn't funny and should stick to stoic reviews of cameras taking photos of brick walls.

Everyone's a critic.

[Likaleica]

Hey, I resemble these remarks. I'm a gun toting', 'baca chewin', truck drivin' red neck hillbilly from Idaho. Only, you can't say "hillbilly" or "redneck" anymore. Ain't politically correct. Now you gotta call us "Appalachian-Americans!"

[theboch]

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Appalachian-Americans! ;-) great ha ha

[gpwhite]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 01af View Post

 

My sentiments exactly after I tried the then-brand-new-not-yet-obtainable Apo-Summicron-M 50 mm Asph two years ago in May 2012 in Solms for just a couple of minutes. I wasn't able to shoot more than a handful of frames in the Solms parking lot ... and still, this "just the image" effect became immediately evident (I also fired a few frames with my Summilux-M 50 mm Asph to compare).

 

Ever since, I like to call the Apo-Summicron-M 50 mm Asph "the transparent lens."

*************

 

I was just editing some portrait from Paris and I couldn't quite understand how bright and detailed they looked.

 

It took me a while, then I remembered and noticed in the EIF that I had used the APO-Summicron.

 

I had just never seen the Nocilux f/0.95 look like that before, I thought. So that was why.

 

Hopefully I will be getting there APO-artricle updated soon with more samples and the interview with Peter Karbe.

 

The evaluation that I was trying to make about the APO 50, in response to both 01af's earlier posts and the current article published by Thorsten, is that its images are hardly transparent @ f/2 or oven @f/2.8.

 

IMHO, the extraordinarily smooth transition away front focus plane into OOF is a very attractive and defining aesthetic element for composition. Transparent, to me, would mean there is no OOF ... That is because OOF, by its nature, is a distortion of how the visual system represents the outside world in the brain. I think the stylistic character we are attaching to this lens or that lens is just an indication about whether we like or dislike the particular distortion to transparency the lens renders.

 

It will be fascinating to read Karbe's comments, related by Thorsten. At least for me, the APO 50 has a huge aesthetic, and I look forward to learning about Karbe's interpretation from his technical point of view.

 

Oh, I hope my musings make it through the truck slop and ricocheting bullets over here!!

[01af]

The evaluation that I was trying to make about the Apo-Summicron-M 50 mm Asph [...] is that its images are hardly transparent at f/2 or even at f/2.8.

Okay ... at full aperture there's some vignetting. But this can get eliminated in post-processing easily, and by f/2.8 it's almost entirely gone.

 

 

... the extraordinarily smooth transition away from focus plane into out-of-focus [blur] is a very attractive and defining aesthetic element for composition.

It definitely is, and this does add to the impression of transparency.

 

 

Transparent, to me, would mean there is no OOF. That is because OOF, by its nature, is a distortion of how the visual system represents the outside world in the brain.

Sorry to disagree. The human eye has limited depth-of-field, too—just as any optical image-forming system. We normally just aren't aware of it because the eye is so quick to focus at whatever we center our attention on. So seeing the world around us with apparently unlimited depth-of-field, in fact, is a distortion of how the visual system represents the outside world in the brain.

 

Transparency, with regard to how a lens draws, is the absence of obvious aberrations and a smooth, artifact-free transition into the out-of-focus blur. It's as if the picture magically has thrown itself at the sensor, with no technical help of any refractive elements. As I said two years ago—your files will be all picture, no lens ... just like Thorsten noticed, too.

[gpwhite]

Sorry to disagree. The human eye has limited depth-of-field, too—just as any optical image-forming system. We normally just aren't aware of it because the eye is so quick to focus at whatever we center our attention on. So seeing the world around us with apparently unlimited depth-of-field, in fact, is a distortion of how the visual system represents the outside world in the brain.

 

Transparency, with regard to how a lens draws, is the absence of obvious aberrations and a smooth, artifact-free transition into the out-of-focus blur. It's as if the picture magically has thrown itself at the sensor, with no technical help of any refractive elements. As I said two years ago—your files will be all picture, no lens ... just like Thorsten noticed, too.

 

Well, 01af, we do disagree. Your poetaahtoe just does not taste to me like my potayta. There is nothing "natural" about the dissolve of OOF @ f/2 for a 50mm, and the APO 50 is yet another degree of finest silk beyond any other level of optical distortion.

 

Actually, the human eye has immense capability, well beyond what human artifacts can accomplish (even in Hollywood). The eye has a curved sensor and continuous FLE in a healthy unit, so DOF is well beyond what camera lenses can record. But we see cortically, not through much processing up in the eye itself (lens+cornea+retina). It is the brain that has perfect AWB, superlative AUTO ISO adjustment and manages perspective distortion transparently :rolleyes:

[01af]

But we see cortically, not through much processing up in the eye itself ...

Sure—and that's why any comparisons between human eye and camera lens are totally pointless. I don't see why you brought this up in the first place.

 

Anyway ... the unusual transparency is the most prominent property of the Apo-Summicron-M 50 mm Asph, and contrary to most people's belief, superior sharpness is not. Sure, it is a damn sharp lens, but that's not what jumps out at you when looking at the pictures. The transparency is.

[semi-ambivalent]

Maybe I should go to america and talk about tobacco chewing, gun toting hill billies.

 

Just reads strangely, but good that you yanks can find time out of your busy day choosing 12 gallon hats to visit our li'l ole country.

 

That's "hill williams" to you, sir.

 

Soon to be on your island, (the beer had better be worth it. ),

s-a

[MattMaber]

Steer clear of Stella