The new 24mm Quadro-Tele-Elmar

[UliWer]

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As Leica decided to abandon all their 24mm lenses for the M, I decided to "design" my own lens. It is based on the Elmar-M 1:3.8/24mm asph, but my aim was to use it for more than wide angle purposes. Until now I tried it in the range of 50, 90 and 135mm, so in this pre-production stage of the development I'll call it the "24mm Quadro-Tele-Elmar". I'd like to present the first results in comparison to some "prime" lenses with the longer focal lengthes. All examples on the M10 Monochrom with all lenses at f/4. Some correction of exposure was done in Lightroom, but no extra sharpening.

First the Elmar-M 1:3.8/24mm asph. at full field of view:

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[UliWer]

Now the 50mm Summilux asph and the photo shown above cropped to the same fov:

Summilux:

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Elmar:

Edited May 16, 2020 by UliWer

[UliWer]

Now the 90mm Summicron Apo Asph and the 24mm Elmar photo cropped to the same fov:

90mm Summicron AA:

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24mm Elmar:

 

[UliWer]

Now the 135mm Apo-Telyt and the 24mm Elmar photo cropped:

 

Apo-Telyt:

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24mm Elmar:

[a.noctilux]

👍

Impressive demonstration of the Vario-Elmar 24mm to X 👌.

Vario because the cropping can be made continuous 👍.

How about ending the range to more than 200mm ( or 280 mm ? ).

Benefit of M10 Monochrom sensor is quite big here with these croppings.

[UliWer]

The name "Vario-Elmar 24mm to X" is a good idea, though I fear, some customers will be put off, thinking that "Vario" stands for sub-standard.

At the moment I won't bother you with examples from the M10 with 24 MP sensor - they might be disappointing for any  40+MP users, since I never managed to see a difference...

 

[jankap]

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What about Q-Elmar 24mm or QM-Elmar 24mm?

[james.liam]

The 135 crop is a "Bridge Too Far". 

Is it my imagination or the 24 Elmar images are noticeably lower in contrast?

....and before anyone jumps for joy, this is an M10M the OP is shooting with.

Edited May 16, 2020 by james.liam

[SiggiGun]

I think, in th enear future with news sensor (i.e. M10-R), high density, high resolution, a Bi-Elmar 24-50mm will be the right travel tool. I am using the MATE mainly with 28 or 50mm.

[a.noctilux]

In the same idea as Vario 1.4/35-350 (?), I've had experimentation (to see if it works)

with 24Mpixels sensor and Summilux-M 35mm asph. some years back

 

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M(typ 262), Summilux-M 35mm asph. at f/6.8

full image

...

Then the crop of the top part

 

 

Maybe a bridge too far, here

but for me not as bad as I first thought

 

 

[adan]

All well and good on the internet - but how about full A2 prints from each crop?

For web-use, my 135 has served as a 135-600 Vario-Tele-Elmar at times. But what pays for my photography are large prints.

[onasj]

UliWer's experiment highlights that for the vast majority of image viewing these days, which is (sadly) on a screen ~200-300 dpi that typically ~5" and rarely above ~16" in size, the very best of current sensors and lenses can already generate images that lose little quality even when cropped heavily.

Even more transformative—for better or worse—in my opinion is the use of machine learning models (AI) to upsize or sharpen images with little loss of quality by actually filling in pixel information that wasn't present to begin with.  This isn't like old-fashioned unsharp mask—it's completely different, and used carefully can be very effective and virtually impossible to detect.

Photography is a wonderful blend of art, technology, nostalgia, and memories.  Its evolution is inevitable, but bittersweet for me.

[UliWer]

Am 18.5.2020 um 15:40 schrieb adan:

All well and good on the internet - but how about full A2 prints from each crop?

I am horribly bad at calculating file sizes for print sizes, and even worse in manipulating the files so that they fit this Forum, so I tried to do the following:

The crop from 24-to-135mm was exported from LR at a file size of 4928*3259px which should work for an A2-print at 200dpi. 

Since this file was much too large for the Forum I selected the lower right part of the picture to reduce it to 1092*722px. It looks like this and I could imagine that an A2 print of the whole 24-to135mm-crop would not look completely different:

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[UliWer]

Same procedure with the original file from the 135mm Apo-Telyt:

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[adan]

Thanks for that effort. I would say, though, that even my 10M-pixel M8 images (also at 180-200 ppi) have better resolution on A2 than that cropped/upsampled 24mm image.

But it depends on the image style. Fuzziness is more obvious and distracting with fine architectural details and textures that with, say, Robert Capa's D-Day images, or the average street photograph.

[UliWer]

vor 3 Stunden schrieb adan:

...that even my 10M-pixel M8 images (also at 180-200 ppi) have better resolution on A2 than that cropped/upsampled 24mm image.

Yes, of course. If you look at the original 24mm photo, the crop to 135mm field of view is much, much less than 1/4 of 40MP, and the upsized section less than 1/10.