Center ND Filters for M Lenses

[Davidthefat]

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Has Leica, or any other manufacturer, produced center ND filters for M lenses? Vignetting is a common attribute to M mount lenses as a lot of them are retrofocus lenses. More so the wide angle lenses have heavy vignetting and a center ND filter would fix that. I know center ND filters are common in large format lenses, and on panoramic cameras (6x17 MF, and XPan/TX-1 cameras), but I have not seen them in smaller format lenses. Leica seems like the type of company that would produce center ND filters. 

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[pedaes]

Personally have never seen such a thing. Also would not say WA lenses have 'heavy vignetting'.

[Davidthefat]

12 minutes ago, pedaes said:

Personally have never seen such a thing. Also would not say WA lenses have 'heavy vignetting'.

Looking at the WATE datasheet as a reference, the vignetting gets down to less than 40% at the edge (just above 20% wide open). If losing 60% of the light at the edges at the best case isn't heavy vignetting, I don't know what is. Similar numbers for 28mm Elmarit. 

 

 

edit: I should have specified, in the context of film. Digital cameras fix vignetting in post with lens profiles. 

Edited February 18, 2019 by Davidthefat

[a.noctilux]

I have never seen center ND filter for Leica lens.

For fun I've used the center ND (or anti-vignetting filter) from my Xpan 30mm.

Lucky me, the filter is same E58 as my Noctilux 1.0.

But results seemed weird at most, artificially "corrected" = lost of main Noctilux character 🙃.

Never used on wide lenses though.

On digital M with 6bit coding, some vignetting is "corrected" for some wide angle Leica lenses.

But it's only me, I prefer non coded lenses to keep intact their characters (vignetting and all 😇).

You can find some ND filters in another brands out there.

Edited February 18, 2019 by a.noctilux

[henning]

The WATE really doesn't have 'heavy vignetting' in practice. I have an old Hologon 15mm, for which I do have a centre filter. THAT has heavy vignetting, with the design of the lens itself not counteracting the cos4th law to any real effect. I used the centre filter for almost all shots, giving me an effective T16. One of the lenses I used a lot that had significant vignetting was the 21/3.4 Super Angulon, but I doubt I would have used a centre filter if I'd had one as the vignetting wasn't that severe (although more than 2 stops wide open, ie, over 75% light loss in the corners). The f/1 Noctilux has fairly severe vignetting wide open, but putting a centre filter on it would be counterproductive, as this would cause the lens to admit the light of an f/2 lens or so.

I've had the Xpan 30mm and at least a half dozen LF lenses from 35mm to 150, each with their own centre filters and they can be useful, but are not always needed and sometimes are detrimental to a picture. Rarely does a picture look its best with completely even illumination from centre to corner.

Some lenses such as modern 'kit zooms' produce 4 stops of light falloff wide open at the short end. Digital correction brings that to 1-1/2 to 2 stops, which is aesthetically acceptable.

[pgk]

3 hours ago, henning said:

One of the lenses I used a lot that had significant vignetting was the 21/3.4 Super Angulon, but I doubt I would have used a centre filter if I'd had one as the vignetting wasn't that severe (although more than 2 stops wide open, ie, over 75% light loss in the corners).

I used the 49mm XPan centre filter on the SA (it drops in like the Series 7 filter does happily enough) and whilst it worked it did rather take away the character of the SA so I stopped using it. Vignetting on most other lenses can be dealt with in post processing with little detriment.

[adan]

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On 2/18/2019 at 2:15 PM, Davidthefat said:

Looking at the WATE datasheet as a reference, the vignetting gets down to less than 40% at the edge (just above 20% wide open). If losing 60% of the light at the edges at the best case isn't heavy vignetting, I don't know what is. Similar numbers for 28mm Elmarit.

edit: I should have specified, in the context of film. Digital cameras fix vignetting in post with lens profiles. 

1) Center ND filters were made for the original (ca. 1970) Zeiss Hologon 15mm in Leica M mount. And also for the revived Contax/Zeiss 16mm Hologon-G to fit the G1/G2 AF cameras (ca. 1997). Zeiss also made one for their ZM 15mm f/2.8. Should be possible to figure out a way to adapt/convert those filters to fit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hologon#/media/File:Hologon16.jpg

But no, Leica does not make their own. Of note, Schneider has also discontinued their own line of center-ND filter for their film view-camera 90s and 65s and such.

2) A 50% light loss is just 1 f/stop-worth. So losing 60% of the light is about 1.4 stops. 75% loss = 2 stops, 87.5% = 3 stops and so on. 1 f/stop loss to vignetting is definitely "normal" and not "heavy". 2-stops-plus is "heavy."

3) Actually, retrofocus lenses generally have less vignetting - because the lens is farther from the film or sensor, and thus there is less light-loss due to natural fall-off (the corners being farther from the lens than the center. and light intensity falls off as the square of the distance). Compare 21mm Elmarit-M (retrofocus to allow metering) with 21mm Super-Angulon or those old 15mms (nearly touched shutter) - the Elmarit has about 1/2-stop less vignetting at f/3.4. Even more so for an extreme-retrofocus 20/21 with back-focus distance of 42+mm (as made for traditional mirror-reflex SLRs).

[pico]

Some people find a center-filter disappointing because the vignetting had a desirable effect. Some people do not find any difference because they did not use it properly or do not like how slow it makes the lens because ordinarily the lens must be stopped down to make the filter work.

 

[Pyrogallol]

As someone who prints black and white in the darkroom a bit of vignetting is ok as it saves burning in the corners.

[250swb]

Sounds like an invented problem to me. In any case as has been pointed out above a bit of vignetting is desirable, whether directly from the lens or when post processing or printing. And the reason isn't aesthetic (although this is also a good reason), it is because when the edge of the image is against the white border of the paper the white makes the image appear lighter along the edges, so a good photographer compensates for this by carefully burning in the edges of the print. 

[Ouroboros]

The only time I use a centre graduated nd filter is on my Fuji GX617 when I use the 90mm SWD lens or on a Cambo Wide 470 where the SA 47mm XL lens vignettes to the extent that it is  detrimental rather than an enhancement, especially on 6x12 format.

My take is that the aesthetic quality of wide angle lens fall-off is largely dependent on the format and usually more pleasing at 3:2 and 1:1 than 3:1 & 2:1 etc.