Leica 28mm Summicron ASPH 2016 #11672-- Owners Thread

[LarsHP]

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For reference, here's a 100% crop of the right-hand side of an image shot with Leica M (typ 240) with my 28mm Summicron Asph II @ f/4.

As can readily be seen, the center of the image (the left side of the crop) is very sharp, but towards the edge of the right side, it gets really blurred. When checking other images, it is apparent that the issue is severe field curvature @ f/4. I will send my test shots to the service company here in Norway, and hopefully Leica will accept a re-do of the optical adjustment.

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[lct]

Field curvature i don't know. Is the left edge soft as well? If not it could be some decentering perhaps. Not acceptable anyway. 

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[LarsHP]

32 minutes ago, lct said:

Field curvature i don't know. Is the left edge soft as well? If not it could be some decentering perhaps. Not acceptable anyway. 

Yes, it's field curvature since objects that are much closer in the borders of the sides or corners of the frame are sharp. This applies to both sides, so no swing or tilt. 

Edited May 8, 2021 by LarsHP

[lct]

Leica will tell you what it is i guess but field curvature that huge on one sample only sounds curious.

Edited May 8, 2021 by lct

[Alberti]

On 3/28/2016 at 8:28 PM, lct said:

Or that it is softer at f/2 than f/2.8 at 0.7 metre focus distance.

Or that the EVF is not good in reproducing the optimal focus, that is , on your screen; that for instance the red border system is not accurate. [I turn it OFF as it confused me with false results.]

[lct]

My post you're replying to is from 2016. Too old for me to comment sorry.

Edited March 13 by lct

[Couperus]

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On 5/8/2021 at 11:58 PM, LarsHP said:

Yes, it's field curvature since objects that are much closer in the borders of the sides or corners of the frame are sharp. This applies to both sides, so no swing or tilt. 

Lars, could it be a filter infront, like a nano-filter? 

[LarsHP]

2 hours ago, Couperus said:

Lars, could it be a filter infront, like a nano-filter? 

I have Zeiss UV cut filters on all my M lenses, but I don't think a perfectly flat filter can introduce field curvature. If so, I expect we would have heard about it decades ago, and I should also see it with my 28mm Ultron II, which has almost completely flat plane of focus, even with the Zeiss UV filter.

[Alberti]

My saga. As to my copy, that I had bought last week. For fun I'll give a example shot. Remember. Sharpness is for bourgeois.

This morning I checked the RF against the EVF version, on infinity. The EVF showed horizon shap, when the index was at 10 meters. ==> So way out of calibration. 

As well I saw that there was a hint of sharpness in the otherwise unsharp pictures (RF=50m) on the right side of the frame. All at once an object (sign) would be sharp). ==> This implies the lens parts might be decentered.

The few pictures that I focussed with EVF looked good by itself. 

The shop took the lens in for repair, promissed to send to Wetzlar. [>10 weeks....]

--

Nothing sharp?

 

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Unsharp, excent one of the the brown painted window parts that looked sharper. .  

On this close focus  shot you see the focus shift - 5 cm back at this distance:

Verdict. No pictures I made yesterday in the old city center were as charming as the Biogon pictures I previously made. Not only the sharpness, but also the colour rendering is less than I expected. 

But I accepted a repair. 

Edited March 21 by Alberti

[rscheffler]

5 hours ago, Couperus said:

Lars, could it be a filter infront, like a nano-filter? 

Couperus: if you are considering buying this lens, I would strongly suggest doing so from a source that will allow you to test it so that you may determine if it suits your requirements. And allow you to return it if you're unsatisfied. 

The two copies I tried in 2016 both exhibited performance similar to Lars's crop above from 2021, that the sides/edges of images focused at or near infinity never quite reached similar sharpness to the central area, when stopped down in the f/5.6 range, whereas with my 28 Cron v1 copy, sides/edges were similarly sharp to the center by f/5.6. (The v1 had field curvature that bent towards infinity as it moved to the image edges, whereas my v2 copies had FC that came closer to the camera towards the image edges.)

Someone could easily say that edges will never be as sharp as the center but the stopped down differences I saw with my v2 copies were inferior to my v1. V2 images side by side with the same from the VM 35/1.7 also showed considerably better edge sharpness with the VM. Yes, different focal length, different crop of the scene, but IMO considerably inferior (if sharpness was important).

Since my earlier posts in this thread I've had a few discussions with other 28 Cron v2 owners over the years and anecdotally it appears that some copies may be better than others for stopped down across frame performance. Based on dates on the boxes, the two copies I had were both very early production and it's possible that early run 'teething pains' have since been addressed, if that was what the issue was with my copies. Whatever the case, I strongly feel this is a lens you need to try before you buy.

Regarding the Voigtlander VM 28/2 v2 as an alternative: thus far the one copy I have tried was not as strong a performer as those used by Fred Miranda for his lens test over on his forum. Based on feedback there it appears the VM is also subject to some copy variation.

Good luck!