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Love for that "Least Loved" 35


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Red Dot cameras are selling this eight element for £3400!!  I bought one for around £400 in 1998, and was astonished to get £1650 for it in 2011. Sky is the limit for out of production Leica lenses. Hang onto those 24mm Summiluxes.

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6 minutes ago, colint544 said:

Red Dot cameras are selling this eight element for £3400!!  I bought one for around £400 in 1998, and was astonished to get £1650 for it in 2011. Sky is the limit for out of production Leica lenses. Hang onto those 24mm Summiluxes.

I think the best of the old Leica M like the 35 8-element, 50 Rigid, 35 Summaron ƒ/2,8, 21 SA and the like are increasing in value because finding a clean copy is becoming increasingly difficult with the passage of time. The corpulent 24 Summilux? Been around since 2008. Not a best seller. 

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Yup i bought mine for around 3500eur two years ago, it now costs 5000eur for a mint copy in JP/HK...rigid also is becoming more expensive indeed....and even the v4 has increased in price recently. A trend I’ve been seeing is that there are way more Chinese buyers than even a year or two ago here in Japan, so the stock of old lenses has fairly decreased.

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5 hours ago, shirubadanieru said:

Yup i bought mine for around 3500eur two years ago, it now costs 5000eur for a mint copy in JP/HK...rigid also is becoming more expensive indeed....and even the v4 has increased in price recently. A trend I’ve been seeing is that there are way more Chinese buyers than even a year or two ago here in Japan, so the stock of old lenses has fairly decreased.

The Chinese are still buying despite the Wuhan plague?

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What's clear of the prices on some of these lenses is that the train has left the station! 🤐

 

 

 

M10  -35mm Summicron v3

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've never understood all the love for the V4 "bokeh king." Let's be honest--and most of us here are and understand this by now--it's nothing special in that department. It's probably a little sharper than the V2 (which I have and love) or the V3. But if we're using Leicas they way we're supposed to--shooting on the run, "capturing the decisive moment" (huge eye roll), shooting in atrocious light--how are you ever gonna see that the V4 is sharper?!! I mean, my god, when you're pinned down by deadly sniper fire, you're not setting the camera up on a tripod, using a cable release, employing a focusing magnifier, using the finest grain film possible. And the tiniest bit of camera shake--in a Leica photograph!--conveys the sheer terror of the situation far better than an image pin-sharp into the farthest corners. 

Not only that, the V4 is mechanically inferior to the V1/V2/V3. The tube containing the lens elements is, for god's sake, made out of plastic. (I actually have heard of more than one breaking/coming loose.) Let's see you scoop your bokeh king out of the imprint left in the mud by the tread of a tank that has just run over it, and casually mount it on your M and carry on shooting. As I have done several times with my V2.

Yeah, let the suckas shell out huge collectors' premiums for the V4. Keeps the prices down for proper shooters, which is just what the unloved V2 and V3 are. 

 

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