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Summicron 75mm versus CV 75mm-Sean Reid's new review


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In case anyone is interested, here's what the 35s look like all together.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

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Hi Wilson,

 

I don't have a Noctilux here and would need to check the measurements but my gut sense is that the Zeiss is a little bigger.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

 

Thanks Sean, It is just that I think my next major lens purchase may be a toss up between a WATE and a CZ 15, given that they are about the same street price. I would not however, want to go a whole lot bigger than my current (albeit just sent back to Solms again) Noctilux.

 

Wilson

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Guest guy_mancuso

Here as promised . Missing is 75 lux at leica getting coded and also 90 macro which took this shot but as you can see the WATE is really not that big.

 

lens on far right is a OLympus 24mm shift lens in leica R mount with a R to M adapter to use on the M8

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Thanks Sean, It is just that I think my next major lens purchase may be a toss up between a WATE and a CZ 15, given that they are about the same street price. I would not however, want to go a whole lot bigger than my current (albeit just sent back to Solms again) Noctilux.

 

Wilson

 

Hi Wilson,

 

You've read the UW review, right? Which way are you leaning? The WATE is significantly smaller than the ZM 15.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

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Guest guy_mancuso

I replaced all my leica hoods with round metal ones i got on e-bay for less than 10 dollars . Much better solution except for the sliding lenses and of course the WATE has Johns adapter on it

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Hi Wilson,

 

You've read the UW review, right? Which way are you leaning? The WATE is significantly smaller than the ZM 15.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

 

Sean,

 

I have only read little bits of the UW review, as the last couple of weeks have been travelling and sorting out family stuff. I am finding, a little bit to my surprise, I do not use my ZM Biogon 21 a whole lot, so I may sell it. Whereas there is absolutely nothing to complain about it as a lens, I find the EFOV of 28 mm just does not give the wide WOW factor I am looking for. In fact recently I have been using the Zenitar fish-eye on an Elephoto adapter more than the Biogon 21. I suppose thinking about it, I used the Biogon G 21 mm a whole lot more on my Contax G2, than I did the Biogon G 28mm.

 

If I think f4 is fast enough, it is an easy decision - a WATE plus the litte 21/24/28 finder. If I think f4 is not fast enough it is weight lifting lessons and the Distagon 15. I think I am going to wait until my re-serviced Noctilux comes back and see how much I want fast as opposed to light (using my 50 Elmar-M rather than the Noctilux). If it's fast then it's the Distagon. If it's light (+ flexible) then it's the WATE.

 

Wilson

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Sean,

 

I have only read little bits of the UW review, as the last couple of weeks have been travelling and sorting out family stuff. I am finding, a little bit to my surprise, I do not use my ZM Biogon 21 a whole lot, so I may sell it. Whereas there is absolutely nothing to complain about it as a lens, I find the EFOV of 28 mm just does not give the wide WOW factor I am looking for. In fact recently I have been using the Zenitar fish-eye on an Elephoto adapter more than the Biogon 21. I suppose thinking about it, I used the Biogon G 21 mm a whole lot more on my Contax G2, than I did the Biogon G 28mm.

 

If I think f4 is fast enough, it is an easy decision - a WATE plus the litte 21/24/28 finder. If I think f4 is not fast enough it is weight lifting lessons and the Distagon 15. I think I am going to wait until my re-serviced Noctilux comes back and see how much I want fast as opposed to light (using my 50 Elmar-M rather than the Noctilux). If it's fast then it's the Distagon. If it's light (+ flexible) then it's the WATE.

 

Wilson

 

Gotcha...makes sense.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

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Since I'm prepping these right now anyway, I thought this might be of interest.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

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Guest guy_mancuso

Just to chime in . I read Erwins lens stuff but you really need to read between the lines to figure what he is saying , which frankly is a PITA because like Sean i am more a user and feel person on lenses . Yea i will shoot my walls and test corner performance and such but lenses are more about there character and how they act with film or sensors and that is the part i think Erwin just does not see when he talks digital cameras. I just don't think he has the experience in the digital world to read and always understand what he is saying becuase clearly he is wrong. I had a e-mail nightmare with him on jpegs and testing with jpegs and he simply could not understand the camera in any different brand uses completely different algorythms and processing gimmicks on there files. Noise just does not just go away on thin air either, with noise reduction there is a loss of detail. real simple point of this if you go back and read Seans review on the 5d and M8 . yes the noise is better on the 5D at the higher ISO 's but what almost everyone missed in that was look at the micro detail in the M8 files at the higher ISO which spanked the 5d. So there is give and take in this stuff that goes unsaid and he just does not understand some of this and as a shooter there are way more important aspects about this that he nevers gets into . Tonal range for one i see never gets a mention or color, anyway like i say take this stuff and put the puzzle together. Myself i buy a lens and try it see how it feels and make a decision if it works. frankly i really only listen to Sean because i know he thinks like me and my style and how we work as shooters and i will buy a lens looking at his reviews or what i hear of it and than test it myself. i've been arounsd awhile and know what to expect but there are many new faces out there searching for a good lens. frankly i think 90 percent of them are good in the M system and kind of hard to really make a bad mistake. Now i can't truthfully say that about other OEM's but i never bought a bad leica, Zeiss or CV lens either, maybe one i did not like but never garbage

 

Now my fun begins , my wife calls me from NY sitting in the hotel lounge with clients and her purse gets ripped off. Luckily it was just her drivers license and 200 bucks. Now have to figure out how to cancel her drivers license before she leaves for Paris. Life just smacks you sometimes, been kind of a bad day all around too. sorry needed to vent

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Sean and Erwin are pretty much at opposite ends of the reviewing spectrum. As has been mentioned Erwin is pretty much a numbers man where as Sean is much more subjective. Both approaches have their place and I think we all gain by having the two viewpoints.

 

Where Erwin does fall down IMHO is with digital. He just doesn't seem to 'get it'. Comparing cameras by only shooting Jpegs was the low point for me. Why not try to find the _best_ a camera can do? At this point in time that involves shooting RAW.

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Using a low contrast lens doesn't actually extend the dynamic range of what the camera is capable of capturing from black point to white point. That's a fixed limitation set by the hardware.

 

You are not extending the dynamic range of the hardware, you are reducing the contrast of the scene so it will fit into the sensors limited range. Studio photographers who use slide film which has a very limited dynamic range do this by controling lighting ratios. For me the Zeiss lenses would be the ideal lenses if they were'nt so damn contrasty. They are delivering to the sensor a scene that is beyond its recording capabilities and once you loose data in the highlight or shadow you are not going to get it back.

 

A more contrasty lens that can record a scene more accurately is from an engineering point of view better but if the sensor it is intended to be used with can not record what the lens can it is counter productive. You get a 'better' lens but a worse end result. I shoot raw with an expensive camera and lens because I want to first and foremost record all the data in a scene. With a camera that is intended to be used in available light you have to consider the worst case scenario-contrasty lighting in full sun-will the lens/sensor combination be able to record the full range of highlight and shadow? For say a Hasselblad lens intended to be used in a studio where I control the lighting sure bring on the contrast I can light the scene so its dynamic range matches my sensors. Consumer digicams are tuned to provide a lot of saturation and contrast as this gives a better looking out of the camera print at the local drugstore. I don't care if my initial capture look flat as curves and saturation are easily applied in a raw converter or in photoshop.

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An illustration of what happens when you take two different scene contrasts of the same scene and then deliver that input to a sensor whose dynamic range is less then the range of the original scene. On the left #1 better captures the dynamic range of the scene with superior contrast but on the right the highlights and shadows that are beyond the dynamic range of the sensor get clipped.

 

The superior input can deliver inferior results.

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You are not extending the dynamic range of the hardware, you are reducing the contrast of the scene so it will fit into the sensors limited range. Studio photographers who use slide film which has a very limited dynamic range do this by controling lighting ratios. For me the Zeiss lenses would be the ideal lenses if they were'nt so damn contrasty. They are delivering to the sensor a scene that is beyond its recording capabilities and once you loose data in the highlight or shadow you are not going to get it back.

 

A more contrasty lens that can record a scene more accurately is from an engineering point of view better but if the sensor it is intended to be used with can not record what the lens can it is counter productive. You get a 'better' lens but a worse end result. I shoot raw with an expensive camera and lens because I want to first and foremost record all the data in a scene. With a camera that is intended to be used in available light you have to consider the worst case scenario-contrasty lighting in full sun-will the lens/sensor combination be able to record the full range of highlight and shadow? For say a Hasselblad lens intended to be used in a studio where I control the lighting sure bring on the contrast I can light the scene so its dynamic range matches my sensors. Consumer digicams are tuned to provide a lot of saturation and contrast as this gives a better looking out of the camera print at the local drugstore. I don't care if my initial capture look flat as curves and saturation are easily applied in a raw converter or in photoshop.

 

Exactly.... And since I first began writing about this aspect, many photographers have found (empirically) that it is indeed true. Higher lens contrast does not automatically make a lens better. As Hank says, and as I've often written, high lens contrast is indeed a technical achievement but not necessarily one that will make a given lens more suitable for a specific task.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

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