21mm f4 Super Angulon M vs 21mm Elmarit Pre Asph M

[pippy]

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On 2/8/2020 at 2:43 AM, ash13brook said:

I'm getting ready to buy a 21mm....Will the SA damage either the M7 or 262? Or is it just a metering thing?

Of course the SA is legendary, but I really would like the capability to use the lens on all 3 cameras "normally". Also, I thought I read that the Elmarit might display a little distortion because of the design, which I sort of like in a 21mm. But, I also don't want the viewfinder blocked, even though I'll be using an external most of the time.

Late to the party but FWIW...

The 21mm f4 doesn't sit deep enough to touch the shutter blades. The physical incompatibility is just the metering thing.

One other thing to bear in mind though; as you no doubt know the f4 version is notorious for the amount of colour fringing and vignetting it exhibits. I'd seen examples on-line of the magenta cast but as I was byuing mine purely to use on a Monochrom I didn't think it would be an issue. Not quite the same when shot on the M-D 262 and converted to monochrome, though. As far as I have been able to judge without doing lab. test stuff (with both bodies) the density of the fringing can also be affected by the colour of the original subject matter - i.e. a green subject (such as foliage) will render darker than a subject which is magenta (erm...). Furthermore the shape of the vignette itself wasn't what I was expecting to find. It manifests itself more as a dark band rather than a smoothly transitioning circle darkening as we get to the limit of the lens' covering power. As an example here is a snap of an evenly-lit white wall. Image is SOOC with no PP whatsoever (apart from DNG-JPEG conversion & image-size reduction);

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I can't tell if it's just my sample of lens or whether it's typical of the breed along with extreme angle of rear-projection / sensor-character physics-stuff but it's always the left-hand-side where the width of the vignette is more pronounced.

That aside, however, I can't fault the lens in terms of its actual performance considering it's a 60-y-o+ design! Sharpness was much better than I'd been led to believe from reading reviews (apart from Rockwell who absolutely loves the thing for use with film). In practice it's also almost 100% rectilinear; there is absolutely no finder blockage (through the camera's finder) if the hood is dispensed with(*); it's as solid as you might expect from a lump of hewn brass; it takes 39mm filters and it really is tiny. One drawback is that the whole body of the lens turns with focussing meaning that the aperture index mark isn't always where one would like but, doing as best they could, Leica (well, Schneider) provided two marks 180 degrees apart so at least one should be visible. Sort-of...

I can't be bothered trying to rescue images made in colour but with the Monochrom (mine is a Mk 1) it routinely produces images with a lovely 'Old-School' filmic quality.

Philip.

(*) With the hood attached it encroaches roughly to the edges of the 75mm frame-lines.

Edited February 11, 2020 by pippy

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[ash13brook]

A little late, but...

Thanks for the responses. I did go downtown Chicago to Tamarkin Camera to check out both lenses. The Elmarit sounded huge because of the filter size, but in reality wasn't large at all. I had been in love with the idea of the classic Super Angulon, but decided having more a trouble-free lens to use on all of my cameras was more important to me. I bought it to use for with street photography, but, of course, street photography is sort of out of the question right now for those of us in the U.S. I would have to travel by train downtown, which I'm not willing to do at this point. I did shoot it on the way back to the train after  I bought it, and am going to be very happy with it.