What is the most used lens on your M?

[ECohen]

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I dunno. What's the most-used string on your guitar?

 

 

 

What is the most used lens on your M?.......is a fair question......But Adan ....this is a great answer!! And you are so correct. +1

[jonathan_r]

I started with only a 50 'cron, then bought the 35 ASPH 'cron.  I would like to use the 50 all the time, but in reality it's the 35 that gets left on the camera, perhaps because it's just so much less bulky and easier to use.  I take both street/social documentary and landscape with it.  I tend to use the 50 for (environmental) portraits and landscapes if it's on the camera at the time.

 

I think the trouble is that the human eye sees in two different ways.  Our bifocal FOV is wide like a 35, but once we fix our attention on something it's more like a 50 or even 75.

 

I love the sense of space the 35 gives me, but find it problematic to fill blank foregrounds except by falling into compositional cliches. 

[pop]

I dunno. What's the most-used string on your guitar?

That's not the same. 

 

When I play a piece of music, I produce many notes in sequence and even several notes in parallel. Hence, you usually use all strings for even a simple tune.

 

When you take a single photograph, you use but one lens for it. After taking - say - a hundred photographs you can tally the number of times you used each lens.

[adan]

Pop, the greatest works of photography, at least since WW2, have not been single photographs. They have been the essays, the stories, the exhibitions, the books - where the pictures play off one another, "chord" together, flow rhythmically, and add up to a total greater than the sum of the parts.

 

The Big Picture magazines obviously started that, but even after they folded, there were other outlets.

 

Gene Smith's essays for LIFE, and on his own, Pittsburgh and Minamata

Cartier-Bresson's The Europeans, The People of Moscow, China in Transition, Man and Machine

Ernst Haas' The Creation

Bruce Davidson's East 100th Street

Robert Frank wasn't known for a single picture, but for The Americans

Garry Winogrand didn't make his name with a single picture, but with The Animals and Women Are Beautiful

What put Ralph Gibson on the map was not single pictures, but Days at Sea and The Somnabulist.

Danny Lyon's The Bike Riders and Conversations with the Dead - his later Pictures From The New World was more of a retrospective collection of single images, what Gene Smith called "a parking lot for pictures," and nowhere near as powerful as his coherent essays.

Susan Meiselas' Nicaragua

Mary Ellen Mark's essays for LOOK, but also her book essays Streetwise, Ward 81, Falkland Road, Indian Circus

Josef Koudelka, from The Gypsies to Black Triangle

....the list goes on and on.

 

Some of them used one lens or two, others composed with a quartet or quintet.

 

When I photograph, my inspiration is not pictures, but poetry, music, novels, and life. I listen to the music. My "single pictures" are just the words and the notes.

 

As Gene Smith put it, "I don’t think I became a real photographer until I made a real acquaintanceship with music. That’s why I make my layouts the way I do. Photography happens to be my means of communication."

 

When I was young and learning, I put some effort into figuring out which lenses great photographers had used, and how often. Like a young guitarist fingering out the notes and chords of a rock riff by ear. Fortunately, I outgrew that phase rapidly - as does the guitarist, if s(he) has any skill - and that is when my photography blossomed.

 

I guess I could poke through any of my essays and stories and count up how often I used one lens or another, but - a cautionary tale, from Terry Pratchett's Thief of Time:

_________

 

   The frame of what once had been Sir Robert Cuspidor's Waggon Stuck in River was leaning againt a wall. It was empty. The bare canvas was neatly rolled beside it. In front of the frame, carefully heaped in order of size, were piles of pigment. Several dozen Auditors were breaking these down into their component molecules...."Only known molecules and atoms so far," said an Auditor, its voice shaking slightly. "Well...is it something to do with the proportions? The balance of molecules? The basic geometry?".....

   "Look at them," said Susan. "Only an Auditor would take a picture apart to see what made it a work of art."

   "There's a big pile of white dust over there," said Lobsang. "Man with Big Fig Leaf," said Susan absently, her eyes still intent on the gray figures. "They'd dismantle a clock to search for the tick... You know, I really loathe them. I really do."

[Printmaker]

35 Summicron M type IV.

[Rick]

Adan,

 

You need to put your life of photographic knowledge and artistic creativity into a book and/or a seminar.  I'd buy it.

 

Rick

[dbane883]

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Since I'm just dipping my toes into the Leica waters, I suspect it will be this one:

 

 

50mm lux 1.4 Black Chrome.

[Manoleica]

I started with only a 50 'cron, then bought the 35 ASPH 'cron.  I would like to use the 50 all the time, but in reality it's the 35 that gets left on the camera, perhaps because it's just so much less bulky and easier to use.  I take both street/social documentary and landscape with it.  I tend to use the 50 for (environmental) portraits and landscapes if it's on the camera at the time.

 

I think the trouble is that the human eye sees in two different ways.  Our bifocal FOV is wide like a 35, but once we fix our attention on something it's more like a 50 or even 75.

 

I love the sense of space the 35 gives me, but find it problematic to fill blank foregrounds except by falling into compositional cliches. 

You can Crop - it is allowed..

[Tailwagger]

That's not the same. 

 

When I play a piece of music, I produce many notes in sequence and even several notes in parallel. Hence, you usually use all strings for even a simple tune.

 

When you take a single photograph, you use but one lens for it. After taking - say - a hundred photographs you can tally the number of times you used each lens.

 

A bit literal.  And if we're being literal, when you shoot a digital photograph you use tens of thousands of lenses in parallel, not just one.  On a guitar, one chooses a string(s) and fingering(s) to produce a particular tone for a particular purpose.  Likewise, one chooses a given focal length, aperture, shutter speed, iso, even sensor size to achieve a particular result. In each case those selections are situational and subject to the vision and intelligence of the artist.  No matter how many or few lenses one might have access to, by definition, your favorite lens is always the one on the camera when you press the shutter.

[vladik]

Well, if I had to have one lens I guess it would be the  50 summilux Asph. . . . . 

 

but but but - my most used lens is unquestionably the 75 APO Summicron.

 

 

Exactly my favoured setup Jono, after I sold my 2.5/75 Summarit I missed the 75mm so Summicron 2/75 Asph. come along and at times is the No. 1 choice. (on M 240)

[pgk]

Pop, the greatest works of photography, at least since WW2, have not been single photographs.

With all due respect that depends on the genre. There have been spectacular and stunning individual natural history photographs for example. Essays, stories, books - yes fine, but there most certainly have been great individual images.

 

And again FWIW, specific genres of photography favour specific focal lengths so for 'street' photography 35 or 50mm (on FF), for underwater it might be 60 or 100 macro or fisheye for wide angle, etc., etc. That said being prescriptive, whilst not a bad thing isn't always the ideal way to go, so just because other prefer a specific focal length or even lens itself, this does not mean that everyone should use it. If I had to I could live with just about any focal length between 20 and 90 on an RF but some I prefer (21, 35, 75 & 90), though I'd rarely carry and use all at any one time, and some I am not so enthused about (28) and some I can't decide on (50). Tricky isn't it?

[pop]

A bit literal.  And if we're being literal, when you shoot a digital photograph you use tens of thousands of lenses in parallel, not just one.  

If we're literal, we recall the question which led to this thread. The question  was not about the array of lenses in front of the sensor but about the thing in front of your camera that makes the image.

 

It's a fact that the number of musical pieces which are performed using but one string of a guitar must be very small indeed. It's not impossible, of course, but very exceptional. It lies in the nature of music which usually consists of sounding different notes in  sequence and - very often - different "matching" tones at the same time.

 

When taking a photograph, it would be a very unusual exception to apply two different lenses for the making  of one image at the same time.

 

So, the question whether shoes are better than sandals is not the same as the question whether left shoes are better than right shoes.

[Soden]

I dunno. What's the most-used string on your guitar?

G string... Frequently and often...

[Tailwagger]

If we're literal, we recall the question which led to this thread. The question  was not about the array of lenses in front of the sensor but about the thing in front of your camera that makes the image.

 

It's a fact that the number of musical pieces which are performed using but one string of a guitar must be very small indeed. It's not impossible, of course, but very exceptional. It lies in the nature of music which usually consists of sounding different notes in  sequence and - very often - different "matching" tones at the same time.

 

When taking a photograph, it would be a very unusual exception to apply two different lenses for the making  of one image at the same time.

 

So, the question whether shoes are better than sandals is not the same as the question whether left shoes are better than right shoes.

 

The title is 'What is the most used lens on your M.'  As there is a micro lens involved in every shot, in a literal sense, for any given pixel, it and its brethren are the most used.  As for it being unusual to apply multiple lenses, forgetting about the fact that every modern lens is itself an assemblage of lenses, its not at all uncommon to employ auxiliary lenses to alter focal length, do macro or introduce some form of effect. 

 

But back to guitars. If you play with a flat pick, unless you scrape the strings you will never play more than one note at a time. Its merely the brain being fooled into thinking the notes are played simultaneously rather than milliseconds apart. I find adan's analogy to be 100% spot on and has nothing to do with the dimension you seemed focused on. Apologies for longwindedly deconstructing his rather elegant remark. 

 

Assuming standard tuning, if I hand you a 24 fret guitar and tell you to play E an octave and a 1/3 above middle C, you have the choice of playing it on any one of the six strings, open on the first, 24th fret on the sixth.  If instead I chose D a step above  middle C, now there are only three choices.  Those options are available whether you're fingering a single note or whacking six at a time.  Even the most untrained player understands the difference between playing an G maj as an open chord as opposed to a barre in third position. They are the 'same' chord, yet possess an entirely different character.  The salient point is that the frequency range of the strings overlaps and therefore in any given situation one has a choice, be it single or multiple notes, about what string(s) to use.  One can mindlessly go about their business think an E is an E is an E is...etc  or one can study and understand the more subtle aspects of tone and timbre and exploit this overlap to greater effect. 

 

The overlap of frequency range with guitar strings is quite analogous to the overlap of field of view with lenses. Nowhere is this more evident and in your face than when using an M. Every shot we are confronted with a set of frame lines overlapping a portion of the other all set on a 28mm field.  We know that we have the option of changing lenses (strings) or moving far enough backward or forward (up or down the fretboard), we can duplicate any of the frames we see (play the same note) but alter its character due to changes in DoF (timbre).  

 

But perhaps adan wasn't referring to selecting from E-A-D-G-B-E at all. Unlike some other systems, with the M system we have a huge range of compatible lenses with numerous models, versions, iterations, even manufacturers at a given focal length. Each with its own subtleties, strengths and weaknesses.  Where other 'guitarists' are largely stuck with a single gauge and composition of string, we M players are fortunate to have the choice of nylons, flat wounds, slinky, guts, heavies, whatever we need for the particular gig. And depending on what style of 'play' we're considering for a given image, outside of imagination and finances there's little reason to limit one's choices. 

 

There are any number of of photographic styles and preferences which even in one's own work change over time.  Coupling that with such a wide ranging and rich selection of choices, choosing a single, as the OP put 'go to lens' is both an extremely personal and potentially futile exercise depending on how varied ones work tends to be. Each of our opinions are both temporal and extremely colored by a range of factors ranging from a bias toward light weight to low light shooting to corner sharpness.  Without accounting for tastes, usages patterns, etc,  simply looking at the frequency of use tells the OP very little and given the price of mistakes, is an oversimplification that borders on a disservice.   I interpret 'Whats the most-used string on your guitar?' as a far more succinct and rather artistic way of suggesting that as much as one might like there to a be some universal answer, there simply isn't.  

[adan]

@ pgk. Well, I'd be interested to see candidates of individual photographs, in any genre, that have the emotional and intellectual impact of, say, Minamata.

 

But you do remind me that I meant to include Peter Beard's ground-breaking natural history essay, The End of The Game, in my list. Got lost in the shuffle.

[TRIago]

35 cron asph by far. Then I use the 50 rigid cron here and there. Got rid of everything else since it was unnecessary. 

[LMBSGV]

Yet another 35 cron asph. I instinctively visualize the composition of a photo for 35mm; it's how I see things. When I realize it's best to emphasize a particular portion of the composition, then I use a 90 Elmarit M (last version).

[pgk]

@ adan Not being awkward, but it all depends on how you view images amongst other things. I tend to see them individually and have even bought some to put on the wall with no knowledge of the photographer or his/her other work. To me it if often the single, individual image matters. To other its the body of work or an essay of work. My point was that it varies depending on photographer, subject matter and viewer. We are all different fortunately.

[pico]

Summilux 35, V2. I am on my third one. I like it for its dual personality: wide open and stopped down.

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[sdk]

My favorite lens for the M-P is the 35mm/1.4 Distagon ZM from Zeiss. It has beautiful rendering, high resolution, nearly flat field, no focus shift, excellent color, and high flare resistance. It is distinctly bigger than the Leica M 35mm/1.4 lenses, with a longer barrel and a 49mm filter thread.