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Focussing 75mm or 90mm


noshtalja

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I am thinking about getting a longer lens for my M9 which I love but I am wondering how easy they will be to focus ? I am mainly interested in street type photography. Is focussing in the rangefinder easy enough and is there a significant difference between the two focal lengths in terms of focussing ease ? Appreciate any advice. 

 

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I have an M9 and a Canadian 2.8 90mm. It's a great lens and you can see very clearly what you're getting in the frame lines of the M9, but I would find it a bit long for street photog if that was my thing. 75 sounds good, but 50mm summicron works great.

Edited by antigallican
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I’ve had the AA 75 Summicron, AA 90 Summicron and the 75 Summilux, all on my M9.   I found the AA 75 difficult to focus reliably, and I never gelled with the 90mm field of view.  I have possibly been lucky with my lens, but I’ve had a higher hit rate with the 75 Summilux.  I suspect there’s little difference in depth of field between the 75 and 90 wide open.

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In my use of M decades long and 75mm almost as long time, I'd avoid 90mm for "street type pictures".

Passing by portraits (in street ...) is possible with some "panning technics" with M+75mm ( then I close my 75 Summilux to f/5.6 or 8 ! ).

Static "street pictures" can be done easily with 75mm (not at f/1.4 I fear) 😉.

 

Now I use with more confidence my "new" Summarit-M 2.5/75mm very nice little 75mm "too" quick focus ring.

Edited by a.noctilux
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When I saw the question I thought to myself 'street photography with a 75mm.... nah'. But then I remembered that I bought my 75mm Summilux from someone who used it just for that.

His website http://www.yanidel.net/ has issues right now but still works and there are some examples of his 75mm street photos there as well as his use of the lens he bought to replace it, the 60mm Hexanon.

He's also on flickr and instagram as well as interviews all over the place (search'yanidel photography')  but to see his 75mm Summilux stuff you'll have to look pre 2010.

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Apart from focusing, how do you like the respective frame lines?  Assuming your M has a preview selector, you can try out viewing and composing within the lines.  I’ve never liked the 75 frame lines...dashes inside the 50... but one gets used to it, and the frame lines are only accurate at a certain distance anyway.  

In any case, with M focusing, best results occur when the RF and lens are well calibrated, and when one’s eyes are corrected to clearly see the focus patch, which is set at a virtual distance of 2m.  This includes correction for astigmatism.  I find that a +.5 diopter, in addition to my glasses, provides optimal viewing for these aging eyes.  

Nevertheless, I now use the SL2 for focal lengths 75mm and above, but that’s mostly because I sold my 75mm and 90mm M lenses. Some people prefer putting their ‘trickier’ M lenses on the SL/2 for easier focusing, but it’s really not necessary if everything is working well, gear-wise and vision-wise.

Jeff

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Back in the days it was possible to focus 90mm even on Leica LTM. :) It did this as well, but on M:

 

Evoke yourself. by Kostya Fedot, on Flickr

 

Untitled by Kostya Fedot, on Flickr

 

Street photography with manual focus 90 means - take time to focus or pre-focus. 75 should be still OK for zone focusing at f16.

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The first lens I bought with my M4 in 1968 was a 90 2.8 "Fat" TeleElmarit. I used it for everything - street, sports(!), etc. Although the M9 has slightly lower finder magnification, I don't have any problem focusing a 98 2.8 with it either, or with a 2.5 Summarit 90.

However, a faster 90 or very fast 75 may be a different story.

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