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Lenses - poor design/build quality or characterful?


pgk

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Its something not often discussed. There are numerous Leica fitting lenses or varying vintages, 'qualities' and designs but how can they be differentiated into good, bad and ugly? Is the design paramount? A well designed lens will probably perform within its design parameters whether old or not, but a poorly designed lens won't. Or is it build quality? Many poorly built lenses can be adjusted and improved. Are they simply good lenses marred by assembly errors? Comments? Suggestions?

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I don't think there are any bad ones as such.

 

Soviet era LTM lenses are variable in quality and might not work correctly on a Leica without adjustment but then they weren't made for Leica's so it's unfair to think of them as 'bad' for that reason. Some are very good, like a Jupiter 8 I have.

 

Some of the collapsible lenses can suffer from wear and might wobble a bit but again can be repaired.

 

The rest is down to the condition of the optics if used, and sample variation.

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An interesting comment. So are all designs acceptable I wonder? And why then do we obsess over lenses as much as we do?

 

It depends what you want. Some want a 'retro' look to their images, low contrast, high contrast, zero distortion, lots of distortion (fish eye lens?). 

 

A pinhole can make a perfectly good image after all. 

 

Most of what people seem to obsess about makes little impact on the final results, after all when was the last time you saw a particularly good photography but thought to yourself, if only they'd use XYZ lens that photo would have been so much better! 

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Most of what people seem to obsess about makes little impact on the final results, after all when was the last time you saw a particularly good photography but thought to yourself, if only they'd use XYZ lens that photo would have been so much better! 

 

Funny you should say that - Saturday - modern lens! De-centred. Not Leica fit though.

 

In all honesty I suspect that you are right. If I try to remember an image that was actually technically unacceptable actually due to a poorly designed lens, within a reasonable set of focal lengths (say about 24mm to about 135mm), which was simply not up to the job I'd have to go back a long way. That said I have tried a number of lenses on digital cameras which couldn't deliver acceptable results (due to chroma, etc.) but then they were outside this focal length range. I have my suspicion that many lenses have been well designed for a long time. its more the peripheral longer/shorter or more complicated zooms which have become far better lately. Leica M fit lenses, which for the most part sit inside my criteria, have probably been excellently designed for a very long time and for the most part have been and still are capable of very high quality results.

 

This probably explains the need to obsess over the nuances - differentiation is often subtle.

Edited by pgk
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Same subtle difference as between Lagavulin and red label JW. Both drinkable but...

 

Lenses and wine have some similarity here: the more expensive wine might not taste better than a cheaper one. It all depends on the personal taste and characteristics of the wine. Same with lenses - matter of taste if a more expensive one really is better than a cheaper one. For one a specific characteristic of a cheaper lens might make it more valuable than the more expensive counterpart - and it goes the other way around for somebody else, too. I personally prefer in some cases much cheaper CV lenses over Leica M lenses, in others I prefer clearly the Leica lens. 

 

Coming back to whisky - here always smoky Scotch stands out for me, so I am all in for Lagavulin!

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Lenses and wine have some similarity here: the more expensive wine might not taste better than a cheaper one [...]

 

Well my CV 21/4, ZM 35/2.8 and ZM 50/1.5 are among my favorite lenses ever but those are exceptions confirming the (my) rule. In matter of lenses as well as whiskies or fine wines, the dearer the better. IMHO of course ;).

Edited by lct
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Lenses are but a tool, and every tool has a use.

 

Think of a painter using an expensive brush, a cheap one, a spray gun, a sponge, a rag, or even his bare hands, to paint. They are all options of the art.

 

You judge based on the final work produced, and not the tool used to create. Of course, someone would go "Wow, imagine using his bare hands to paint that amazing picture".

 

I have fallen in love with by Industar 61. Sure it's not the same as my 50 Summilux, but its a small, lightweight $25 wonder that works.

 

Now, will I use it in every situation. Of course not.

Edited by rramesh
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there are no bad lenses, only bad photographers. :D

 

If you look how popular Lomo cameras can be- with plastic lenses that are woeful in terms of optical quality- and then you look at how some users make really interesting photographs with them- and then you look at me- with a Noctilux f1- and the really boring back yard photos I have taken with it- you begin to understand:

 

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Edited by jaques
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I hear you jaques...

 

I think manufacturers have reached the zenith of lens design for sharpness and contrast. With modern glass compositions and fast computer analases of ray paths...its math afterall..

 

It seems to me lenses with faults (character) and the right subjects get more interest than the clinical moderns.

 

Personnally i still like pinhole picures...easy to make, or buy, for modern M cameras. The images are ethereal and have a painterly look. Sometimes I use my Linhof with 4x5 film...and get marvelous gradations in B&W...soft but gentle through the distance from v close to infinity.

 

all best...

Edited by david strachan
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Well isn’t this thread the proverbial can of worms!

 

The original question seems a bit muddled (sorry). You’re equating design with build quality, durability and reliability? The two are completely separate. Are you lumping optical quality in with design or build quality?

 

As for good, bad and ugly it’s an interesting question because it implies mainly the aesthetics (results) which is highly subjective.

 

I’ve come to really dislike distortion of certain types and amounts, but that’s my subjective opinion. Wide-angle lenses can be particularly affected. Fortunately, nearly all Leica lenses (at least the modern ones?) have very low distortion, some astonishingly so. I’ve never seen a wide-angle Leica image that looked bad in this way, so they have great designs!

 

I really like colour and that certain je-ne-sais-quoi “creaminess” and of course soft, round, even bokeh. Again subjective but bokeh appreciation/obsession seems to be somewhat endemic so I can hardly be pilloried for that surely.

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Optical and mechanical quality are connected. Some lenses can be designed, but not built until mechanical tolerances can be met. See the Apo-Summicron. The design remained on the shelf for eight years until machining had caught up with optical design.

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Question for the lens experts here: I was always curious about the Voigtlander M lenses - they are made by Cosina in Japan which also makes Zeiss glass. I read once a statement that all or some of the Voigtlander glass designs rely on blueprints of the more expensive Zeiss glass but that they are indeed very much the same, but the Voigtlander lenses are sold for much less. Is this true?

 

Nevertheless, just judging from my own experience here, Voigtlander M lenses provide me in general with a better bokeh than equivalent Leica glass, but Leica glass is a bit sharper wide open. When closed down one or two stops, lenses are equivalent in sharpness. I don't own a Zeiss M lens, so I can't compare Voigtlander to equivalent Zeiss lenses. Similar to Sigma DSLR lenses, Voigtlander lenses seem to have a bit warmer tone than Leica glass, but the difference is fairly small. 

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Lenses and wine have some similarity here: the more expensive wine might not taste better than a cheaper one. It all depends on the personal taste and characteristics of the wine. Same with lenses - matter of taste if a more expensive one really is better than a cheaper one. For one a specific characteristic of a cheaper lens might make it more valuable than the more expensive counterpart - and it goes the other way around for somebody else, too. I personally prefer in some cases much cheaper CV lenses over Leica M lenses, in others I prefer clearly the Leica lens. 

 

Coming back to whisky - here always smoky Scotch stands out for me, so I am all in for Lagavulin!

 

Yes, and often a 'cheap' wine beats the more expensive ones in a blind tasting!

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[...] Voigtlander M lenses provide me in general with a better bokeh than equivalent Leica glass [...]

 

I would have said pretty well the opposite, proof that bokeh is a matter of tastes if any. Depends on lenses also so i would avoid generalizations. Now current Leica lenses tend to be sharper at full aperture than their CV counterparts and sample variation is less of a problem with Leica. Leica lenses have less focus shift issues as well but all CV lenses are not faulty there by far. Fact is when comparing similar lenses side by side i generally prefer Leica's over ZM and CV lenses but this is not true for my favorite CV 21/4, ZM 35/2.8 and ZM 50/1.5 for mainly subjective but also objective reasons. 

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