Beginner Questions regarding lens and memory cards

[Pessoa1]

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Hi folks,

 

New to the forum so, greetings to all. Studied at the London College of Printing decades ago and now have time and money to invest in a Leica. Have been mostly using point and shoots for the last 2 decades. Learned on a Pentax K1000 back in the day. Presently live in South America so will be taking a trip to NY to buy.

 

I'd like to buy an M240 but I have 3 questions.

 

1) Lenses - what is the ASPH lens? And could somebody explain the 6-bit code lens to me? I intend to buy standard digital lenses. What should I be looking for regards description? The prices vary considerably but often it's not clear what are 'digital' or modern lenses and which are vintage. I'm guessing just by looking at the price differences.

 

2) Which memory card offers the quickest buffering? I read the Overgaard website that says the SanDisk 64GB 95MB gives a one second start up time. Which card is the quickest and best for writing images to the card?

 

3) Does it really take 4 seconds for the image to buffer after taking a shot? Do I have to stand around for 4 seconds until I can take another shot?

 

Thanks to all.

[lct]

Welcome to the forum .

1. Asph lenses have one or more aspherical elements. 6 Bit coding allows the camera to recognize lenses and to apply vignetting and color shift corrections.

2. The 64GB 95 MB/s Sandisk card is indeed one of the fastest but i would not expect less than 1.7 second startup time with it. See http://tinyurl.com/kp8qe83.

3. Fortunately not. Seven (raw + jpeg fine) to twelve (jpeg standard) frames can be shot consequently with no wait at all.

[Pessoa1]

Thanks for your reply Ict. How does the m240 perform when shooting on a dng file?

[lct]

dng alone does't make a significant difference with dng + jpeg standard as far as start up times are concerned.

[Jeff S]

... I intend to buy standard digital lenses. What should I be looking for regards description? The prices vary considerably but often it's not clear what are 'digital' or modern lenses and which are vintage. I'm guessing just by looking at the price differences.

 

The good news is that most every M lens, old or new, can be used on the M240 (and so can loads of non-Leica lenses). People often make choices based on rendering characteristics, not age.

 

For a summary of Leica lenses, and other gear, you might purchase either Puts' Leica Chronicle or Lens Compendium. The former, less expensive, will offer a good primer.

 

There are loads of discussions in the Lens section of the forum, easily accessible by the search box. And be sure to read the FAQs, including this brief lens summary, which addresses some of your questions.

 

Jeff

[paulsydaus]

Just adding to what others have already said.

1. An aspherical lens has at least one element which is aspherical which means the radius of curvature of the lens varies with the diameter, in other words it is not perfectly circular. These are used to give better performance, particularly in the corners of the image...

2. I own that card and never have any problem with it. However note that the camera write speed is only about 30Mbps to the card (around 1 FPS after the buffer is full) so you'll only see the faster speeds of 95Mbps when you download the pictures to your computer. 64GB is quite large, you may be better served by buying a few smaller cards. Make sure that before you use the cards for the first time, you format them with the free PC utility called SDFormatter.

3. No, you can shoot a series of images at 3 FPS until the buffer fills up, then it reverts to 1 FPS. Note that the new M240-P has a 2 GB buffer so if this is important to you, I would definitely get the M240-P, compared to the regular M240 which had only 1GB buffer. Keep in mind though, most rangefinder users don't really operate the camera like a machine gun.

[paulsydaus]

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Adding to point 3 above, it takes about 0.3 seconds to buffer the image after shooting, much quicker than 4 seconds! ;-)

[paulsydaus]

Regarding old versus new "digital" lenses, are you buying new or second hand? All current Leica lenses will come with the 6 bit code which means you can use on the digital camera and have the lens information embedded in the files EXIF data.

However if you are buying second hand, it's certainly something you should look out for (is this lens coded?)

The coding of the lens doesn't have anything to do with its vintage or performance though. For example, you can still buy a brand new 50/2 Summicron, even though the optical design hasn't changed for 30 something years.

Similarly you can buy a used 50/2 Summicron that is 20 years old and get the same code added to it...

Leica's website used to show what year the lenses were introduced but I'm not sure if the new website still does. I hope that helps.

[Pessoa1]

Thanks very much Paulsydaus and Jeff S for all the good info - buying second hand.

[Jeff S]

….buying second hand.

 

Recommend that you do so through a reputable Leica dealer, with some form of warranty, just in case.

 

Jeff

[Pessoa1]

Recommend that you do so through a reputable Leica dealer, with some form of warranty, just in case.

 

Jeff

 

So guys taking the leap and thanks very much for all your info. I have 'leicad' myself out in reading and research over the last few weeks.

 

On Friday I'll be meeting Mr.Ken Hanson in NY as he seems to have quite a good reputation and I'll be buying a used M240 body from him. I've also bought a 21mm Super Elmar 3.4 and a 90mm Elmarit-M. Want to get a 35mm too but undecided on the summicron (latest version) or the lux FLE. Heard that the sum micron might be more forgiving on a beginner?

 

Best,

[lucerne]

I've also bought a 21mm Super Elmar 3.4 and a 90mm Elmarit-M. Want to get a 35mm too but undecided on the summicron (latest version) or the lux FLE.

,

 

 

That 21 SEM is unbelievably good! I'm just processing my images from Hong Kong. Packed the 90mm and couldn't use it. Bought a 60 year old 35mm f/3.5 while there and its looking like great value. Don't ignore vintage lenses.

 

Enjoy.

[Pessoa1]

That 21 SEM is unbelievably good! I'm just processing my images from Hong Kong. Packed the 90mm and couldn't use it. Bought a 60 year old 35mm f/3.5 while there and its looking like great value. Don't ignore vintage lenses.

 

Enjoy.

 

Yes, if I add any lenses in the future to this 3 lens set up they shall all be vintage. Good to hear about the SEM.

[Jeff S]

Want to get a 35mm too but undecided on the summicron (latest version) or the lux FLE. Heard that the sum micron might be more forgiving on a beginner?

 

Don't dismiss the Summarit…marginally slower than the Summicron, but performs equally or better (flare control).

 

Any of these lenses are plenty good enough, really, beginner or experienced….just shoot a lot (and stop reading….and buying…most people use one or two lenses most often). And make prints. My 2 cents.

 

Jeff

[Pessoa1]

Don't dismiss the Summarit…marginally slower than the Summicron, but performs equally or better (flare control).

 

Any of these lenses are plenty good enough, really, beginner or experienced….just shoot a lot (and stop reading….and buying…most people use one or two lenses most often). And make prints. My 2 cents.

 

Jeff

 

Indeed. Really looking forward to getting my kit then getting back to Rio and taking pics every weekend. Very excited

[Herr Barnack]

@Pessoa1,

I talked with the tech department at Leica NJ about the M240. Regarding memory cards, the head guy there stated that 45 MB/s was all the read - write speed that the M240 needs and can utilize.

 

He also stated that paying extra for faster cards amounts to spending money on higher speed cards will not result in increased processing speed for the M240. Therefore the optimal card for the M240 is a class 10 card with 45 MB/s read - write speed.

 

B&H photo in New York has the best prices on memory cards that I have seen so far. My go to card is the 16 MB Sandisk SanDisk 16GB Extreme UHS-I SDHC Memory Card SDSDX-016G-X46 B&H

A comparable card at Target runs about $5.00 USD more than the 16MB Sandisk cards go for at B&H.

 

These cards will hold 500-520ish shots in DNG file format, which is usually an adequate volume of storage space for me for a day's shooting.

 

To answer your question -

...Does it really take 4 seconds for the image to buffer after taking a shot? Do I have to stand around for 4 seconds until I can take another shot?

- the answer is a resounding no. You can make multiple shots nonstop with the M240 without the buffer filling up and momentarily limiting the shutter release to a 1 frame/sec fire rate, as lct and paulsydaus stated above.

 

Hope this helps...

[Pessoa1]

@Pessoa1,

I talked with the tech department at Leica NJ about the M240. Regarding memory cards, the head guy there stated that 45 MB/s was all the read - write speed that the M240 needs and can utilize.

 

He also stated that paying extra for faster cards amounts to spending money on higher speed cards will not result in increased processing speed for the M240. Therefore the optimal card for the M240 is a class 10 card with 45 MB/s read - write speed.

 

B&H photo in New York has the best prices on memory cards that I have seen so far. My go to card is the 16 MB Sandisk SanDisk 16GB Extreme UHS-I SDHC Memory Card SDSDX-016G-X46 B&H

A comparable card at Target runs about $5.00 USD more than the 16MB Sandisk cards go for at B&H.

 

These cards will hold 500-520ish shots in DNG file format, which is usually an adequate volume of storage space for me for a day's shooting.

 

To answer your question - - the answer is a resounding no. You can make multiple shots nonstop with the M240 without the buffer filling up and momentarily limiting the shutter release to a 1 frame/sec fire rate, as lct and paulsydaus stated above.

 

Hope this helps...

 

Sure does help, I'll just buy a good couple of your recommended sandisk 16GB when I'm at B&H and job done.

[Enbee]

Good Luck with new camera. I bought my M-P 240 sometime back from Ken. Super nice guy. I got a 35mm/f2 loving it so far. Have taken tons of photos. Lot of learning but super nice imagery. I will try the 21mm/3.4. Let me know what your thoughts are regarding it. Folks around here are very helpful so thank you everyone!