Leica M10 Ordered; What is about a lens

[JAC]

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The M10 was designed to use Leica lenses.  35mm is a great focal length for your first.  Then just buy as fast a lens as you can afford.

[ramarren]

This reflects a bit of a rosy view of the lens corrections done by the M10.

As the lenses have been designed to be corrected optically, there is not much that cooking the file can add. A bit of vignetting, a bit of distortion correction for UWA lenses, maybe - and the lens type in EXIF. That is all.

There is no subtle magic going on, I fear.

ZM lenses are no different in this respect, purely optical designs; there will not be a discrepancy.

 

To be clear, lenses designed for digital cameras like the SL. Q and CL, and other brands, have the digital corrections taken into consideration during the optical design - that is a completely different situation.

 

 

The lenses may not have been designed for digital correction, but in most cases (all except the very latest generations) they were designed for film recording media. The digital corrections provided by the profile lets them image as they were designed to using digital capture media, and different kinds of digital sensors given that not all the cameras Leica promotes their use with have the same sensor.

 

The differences are difficult to see and require very precise testing to measure in some cases. But I've done a bit of that testing and have found subtle differences with and without the lens profile engaged, even on relatively modern lenses that aren't in the UWA range. The differences are greater, of course, with older lenses and shorter focal lengths. 

 

Many of the Zeiss and Voigtländer lenses available now were designed before a digital M. Since I've used a couple of these lenses on both my M4-2 and on my M9, M-P240, M-D262, I see imaging differences that I don't see in most cases when I use the Leica lenses on film and on these same cameras. 

 

Going at this from a different perspective, why would you think Leica built and maintains such a complex mechanism (coding on the lenses linked to lens id, sensors on the bodies and on the mount adapters to transmit the codes, a list of lens profile choices that are manually or automagically selectable to use with the lenses, etc) if they didn't think that it made a significant difference? That's a lot of development and maintenance money to spend for something that doesn't make any difference, jaapv. I don't know that Leica is really all that profligate with wasting resources. They could have created a much simpler mechanism to get the lens name and basic information into the EXIF data.  

 

So with this high highfalutin 'original lens rendering' how did Leica ever overcome the problem of people putting different types of film into their cameras? Damn that pesky independent thought process that some humans can be prone to. 

 

You know it is rubbish even with digital, as soon as you see a high contrast shot in your minds eye, or wanting a sunburst flare, or translating the image into B&W, what does 'preserving the rendering' matter, unless you automatically stand up and make a salute to Leica every time you take a photograph?

 

 

The rendering of the lens onto film is the same regardless what film is there, and what you do with the image as or after you capture it doesn't change the lens qualities one iota. Sorry. 

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[jaapv]

Ummm.. Leica does nothing to improve the rendering of a lens in their M10 profiles. Only vignetting and sometimes a smidgen of distortion correction. Anything else you might see is a placebo effect.

The coding was introduced on the M8 to combat extreme colour shifting in the corners and to enable EXIF data. That is when the development was done (2004-2006). Even then there was no attempt to influence the rendering of any lens.

With the M10 this is no longer needed, except for some vestigial corrections and EXIF (on which even aperture was dropped) There is no reason, however, not to leave the system in place.

 

If you claim to have seen differences, back it up with your results and testing method. It will be interesting, because you will be the first of all reviewers to document this.

[a.noctilux]

Jaap,

Last M10 firmware added the "guessing/calculating aperture in EXIF" as users wanted them back.

[LBJ2]

For the OP and others that may be interested in the Zeiss Distagon T* 35mm 1.4 ZM for your M10

[Printmaker]

... 2- What is the best single lens for M10 to be used for family, event and travel? I don't want to carry more than two lenses. One should be enough

1- Is Zeiss lenses great for Leica M10?

Thanks

 

If you are going to spend the money on a M10, get a Summicron in either 35 mm or 50 mm. Anything less is just that.

[budjames]

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Why buy a Leica M if not to use Leica lenses? That makes no sense to me. I purchased my M10 to use Leica lenses. I'm glad that I did too.

 

Regards,

Bud James

 

Please check out my fine art and travel photography at www.budjames.photography or on Instagram at www.instagram.com/budjamesphoto.

[hteasley]

Thanks for your advice. What Leica lens should I buy it used? Also, I have heard I should not at all buy used lenses! Is it true?

 

Set yourself a budget, and start looking around. I've never had bad luck with used lenses, and I've bought a bunch. I think I was 6 or 7 lenses before I was ever able to buy a new Leica lens.

 

For a first lens, I'd go with 35-50mm. The 35mm Summicron is sort of the default Leica lens, in many ways. F2 is nice and fast, the lens is sharp as a scalpel, and there's pretty much nothing you can't do with it. The new Apo 50mm Summicron is insane, and also insanely expensive: I have the previous version of the 50mm Summicron, the v5, which I find to be probably 95% the lens the new Apo 50 is. And it's about an eighth the price, used. I have a v2 as well, which is probably 90% what the v5 is, and those are about a third the price of v5.

 

The Zeiss C-Biogon 35mm is, as I said, fantastic. Lose a stop over the Summicron, but it draws just as wonderfully. The 40mm Summicron is underpriced: it's not a classic focal length, and the M10 doesn't have 40mm framelines, so composing is more annoying, but it's a great lens, too.

 

Going faster than f2 means generally getting a lens that is much more expensive, or cheapish but with some idiosyncratic character. The Voigtlander 40mm f1.2 is one such lens: heavy vignetting wide open, and not critically sharp, so it's a lens you want to know something about before getting into it. Same with the f1.4 Voigtlanders.

 

Some ideas: used v5 50mm Summicron; used 35mm Summicron ASPH; 40mm Summicron-C (all of them are used); Voigt 35mm f1.7 Ultron; used Zeiss 35mm Biogon f2; Zeiss C-Biogon 35mm f2.8; 35mm or 50mm Summarit f2.4 (new or used). You won't hate any of those.

[hteasley]

One other thing: Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist are both good to check, because you can deal locally more easily and meet the seller and check it out before you buy. I've never had bad luck on ebay as a buyer.

 

And check the classifieds here, getdpi.com, rangefinderforum.com, and check folks like Bellamy, japancamerahunter.com. He only deals in excellent stuff; reliable and very nice.

[Franky]

Hi,

My first Leica was a m10 with a 28mm Summicron; the second Lens was the 75 mm Summicron. After this experience I tested some Zeiss lenses: and I found the 50 mm Planar and the 35 mm Distragon were equally or better than the Leicas in real photography but a little bigger. So I have now Leicga and Zeiss and I am happy.

 

Frerk

[250swb]

 

The rendering of the lens onto film is the same regardless what film is there, and what you do with the image as or after you capture it doesn't change the lens qualities one iota. Sorry. 

 

Makes you wonder why there were so many types of film to chose from, only to discover now that choosing a film because of it's colour, contrast, grain, and sensitivity to a different spectrum of light, or using a filter, was all cancelled out by using a Leica lens.

 

A lens only renders something when projected onto a medium that can record what it is rendering, and that medium changes how an image is recorded. As Marshall McLuhan said 'the medium is the message'. 

[wosamko]

The lenses may not have been designed for digital correction, but in most cases (all except the very latest generations) they were designed for film recording media. The digital corrections provided by the profile lets them image as they were designed to using digital capture media, and different kinds of digital sensors given that not all the cameras Leica promotes their use with have the same sensor.

 

The differences are difficult to see and require very precise testing to measure in some cases. But I've done a bit of that testing and have found subtle differences with and without the lens profile engaged, even on relatively modern lenses that aren't in the UWA range. The differences are greater, of course, with older lenses and shorter focal lengths. 

 

Many of the Zeiss and Voigtländer lenses available now were designed before a digital M. Since I've used a couple of these lenses on both my M4-2 and on my M9, M-P240, M-D262, I see imaging differences that I don't see in most cases when I use the Leica lenses on film and on these same cameras. 

 

Going at this from a different perspective, why would you think Leica built and maintains such a complex mechanism (coding on the lenses linked to lens id, sensors on the bodies and on the mount adapters to transmit the codes, a list of lens profile choices that are manually or automagically selectable to use with the lenses, etc) if they didn't think that it made a significant difference? That's a lot of development and maintenance money to spend for something that doesn't make any difference, jaapv. I don't know that Leica is really all that profligate with wasting resources. They could have created a much simpler mechanism to get the lens name and basic information into the EXIF data.  

 

 

 

The rendering of the lens onto film is the same regardless what film is there, and what you do with the image as or after you capture it doesn't change the lens qualities one iota. Sorry. 

 

You have great analysis !!! Thanks

[jaapv]

 

 

The rendering of the lens onto film is the same regardless what film is there, and what you do with the image as or after you capture it doesn't change the lens qualities one iota. Sorry. 

That is true - and applies to any software manipulations, whether they are called "profiles", film choice, darkroom or "postprocessing", equally. The lens itself will always render the same. I am contesting your alleged manipulation of the data by the camera.

[wosamko]

Set yourself a budget, and start looking around. I've never had bad luck with used lenses, and I've bought a bunch. I think I was 6 or 7 lenses before I was ever able to buy a new Leica lens.

 

For a first lens, I'd go with 35-50mm. The 35mm Summicron is sort of the default Leica lens, in many ways. F2 is nice and fast, the lens is sharp as a scalpel, and there's pretty much nothing you can't do with it. The new Apo 50mm Summicron is insane, and also insanely expensive: I have the previous version of the 50mm Summicron, the v5, which I find to be probably 95% the lens the new Apo 50 is. And it's about an eighth the price, used. I have a v2 as well, which is probably 90% what the v5 is, and those are about a third the price of v5.

 

The Zeiss C-Biogon 35mm is, as I said, fantastic. Lose a stop over the Summicron, but it draws just as wonderfully. The 40mm Summicron is underpriced: it's not a classic focal length, and the M10 doesn't have 40mm framelines, so composing is more annoying, but it's a great lens, too.

 

Going faster than f2 means generally getting a lens that is much more expensive, or cheapish but with some idiosyncratic character. The Voigtlander 40mm f1.2 is one such lens: heavy vignetting wide open, and not critically sharp, so it's a lens you want to know something about before getting into it. Same with the f1.4 Voigtlanders.

 

Some ideas: used v5 50mm Summicron; used 35mm Summicron ASPH; 40mm Summicron-C (all of them are used); Voigt 35mm f1.7 Ultron; used Zeiss 35mm Biogon f2; Zeiss C-Biogon 35mm f2.8; 35mm or 50mm Summarit f2.4 (new or used). You won't hate any of those.

 

Thanks for your advice. From the replies I get a feeling it is wrong decision in the beginning to buy none leica lenses. Anyhow, we I hear fast I know it mean fast fous "Autofocus"! How come a manual lens is fast?! I expected the hands and fingers should fast in focusing!

[Boojay]

Thanks for your advice. From the replies I get a feeling it is wrong decision in the beginning to buy none leica lenses. Anyhow, we I hear fast I know it mean fast fous "Autofocus"! How come a manual lens is fast?! I expected the hands and fingers should fast in focusing!In 

In lens terms "Fast" refers to a lens with a large aperture (the opening of the lens).  For example a Summilux 1.4 Versus a Summicron f/2 - the Summilux is faster.  Nothing to do with how fast you can use your fingers - though practise with a rangefinder, pre-setting the distance scale helps enormously.

[hteasley]

Thanks for your advice. From the replies I get a feeling it is wrong decision in the beginning to buy none leica lenses. Anyhow, we I hear fast I know it mean fast fous "Autofocus"! How come a manual lens is fast?! I expected the hands and fingers should fast in focusing!

 

Fast in this case means large aperture, to gather in more light. You want fast lenses for indoor ot low-light photography, typically. The term "fast" is used because the lens can gather the same amount of light with a fast shutter speed that a slower lens will gather with a longer shutter. A lens at f/5.6 at 1/250 will gather X amount of light; a lens at f/1.4 will gather the same amount of light (for the same exposure) with a shutter of 1/4000. A lens at f/1.4 will let in 16x more light than a lens set at f/5.6, at the same shutter speed.

 

https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/camera-exposure.htm for some education on this.

[lucerne]

Fast in this case means large aperture, to gather in more light. You want fast lenses for indoor ot low-light photography, typically. The term "fast" is used because the lens can gather the same amount of light with a fast shutter speed that a slower lens will gather with a longer shutter. A lens at f/5.6 at 1/250 will gather X amount of light; a lens at f/1.4 will gather the same amount of light (for the same exposure) with a shutter of 1/4000. A lens at f/1.4 will let in 16x more light than a lens set at f/5.6, at the same shutter speed.

 

https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/camera-exposure.htm for some education on this.

That is a very good resource for anyone needing to know the relationship between the basic camera settings. I fear that we have introduced confusion to the OP simply because in our eagerness to supply the whole gamut of photographic knowledge we may have overestimated his current knowledge. I tend to try to look at the background of a post on the forum. In this case, the OP clearly does not have English as his first language and terminology can be confusing. Also, we should appreciate that his location may limit or should strongly influence his purchasing opportunities. Finally, I’m not even sure that he has ever handled a fully manual camera and rangefinder and I’m concerned that the combination will prove to be a steep learning curve.

I would have advised him to get full and continuous advice from a local dealer and purchase locally. I think he is in one of the Arab states.

 

Let’s keep it simple and straightforward in our future exchanges. It’s his money, not ours and he is taking note of what we are saying as best he can.

Edited July 24, 2018 by lucerne

[cp995]

Why buy a Leica M if not to use Leica lenses? That makes no sense to me...

 

Why?

For me it makes a lot of sense!

[evikne]

I think "fast lenses" because of shorter shutter speed is an old-fashioned expression. Today's high ISO properties make very large apertures redundant.

 

But we still need them for shallow depth of field. 

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[M11 for me]

Why?

For me it makes a lot of sense!

Sometimes I tend to simplify a bit. But frankly: I would never buy an ugly, long and heavy Zeiss when there are wonderful and small and light 35 or 50mm Summicrons out there. And f/2.0 is still a very fast lens. Often at parties you will use a Summilux lens at 2.0 anyway because of deapth of field. And in this case I would accept the ISO being doubbled.