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What defines "Modern" Leica M Lenses for the M10-R?


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22 minutes ago, lct said:

Not the same focusing it seems. For valid comparisons focusing and exposure must be exactly the same.

Good point. I had thought I had focused on the front edge of the glass in both cases, but re-adjusting for a number of retries due to ensure everything else was the same (iso etc, focus mag) I must have cocked that up from version to version. As much of a PITA as doing this was... sigh... I'll redo it.   

 

Edited by Tailwagger
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8 minutes ago, lct said:

Sorry to bother you this way... 😟

No, no no!!!! Not at all, you are 1000% correct. The last thing I want to do is provide misinformation to others let alone myself. I'm glad for the peer review. As my M10 is gone and couldn't do a direct comparison, when I woke up this morning, it occurred to me to use the SL2. Clearly I should wait until after my 3rd cup. Give me a hour or so. 

Edited by Tailwagger
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Okay.  Here we go again.  Apologies and a tip of the cap to LCT for noting the flaw in my initial post. I'd say this confirms his view that its all lens. (I wont dare now mention what I see in the corners 🙂) Same methodology... a lot easier the second time around.  I should mention that after setting everything up, its change aperture, press the shutter release. No refocussing  in the interim.   

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I loath testing my gear, even worse retesting! Unfortunately I see it as a necessary evil particularly when buying new gear or noticing a problem otherwise.

Nonetheless, super helpful. Picture vs 1000 words and all that. Thank you again 😎

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10 minutes ago, lct said:

Thank you for the hard work ;).

No worries. It's just really easy, as I so clearly demonstrated, to inadvertently screw things up, mislabel an SL file when it's an M, etc.

As an early adopter, former high mileage M10 owner and the rather eye watering price tags involved, I feel a genuine obligation to try help inform (and not mislead!) those considering making the jump from 10 to R. Given some of the angst lies with how their current cache of older Elmarits, 'crons and 'luxes perform with the new sensor, I'm just trying to generate a few files for others to consider.  

So to atone for this morning's mess up... heres a couple shots from the same walkabout with '56 Summarit.  

f5.6  1/60" ISO 100

f1.5 1/500" ISO 100

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17 hours ago, Tailwagger said:

A second problem I encountered, specific to the 35mm, was the appearance of some rather ugly striations in the corners which, given they are concentric and consistent in the two lower corners, are possibly original to the manufacture of the lens rather than some artifact of cleaning.

And in the lower right corner we see the stria...

That looks like a typical 35mm pre-aspheric Summilux to me - the corners are about the same on mine on the M9 at fast apertures, I just don't have so many MPixels to show the aberrations quite as effectively. The glow is typical too. Its an oldish design from the days when glass types were more limited and aspheric surfaces were ground and expensive so it didn't have any. I use mine a lot at the moment and its on a camera at the moment. Enjoy its quirkiness.

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19 hours ago, adan said:

Wonderful, jd! Although the progression breaks down a bit with

Two Exposures

1 is awesome

In the early days it was only one shot and it needed to be awesome. Imagine Carleton Watkins in Yosemite with his Mammoth camera, 18" x 22" glass plates which had to be processed as soon as taken and then transported away by mule (and not broken) and yes, many were awesome: https://carletonwatkins.org

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Just now, pgk said:

That looks like a typical 35mm pre-aspheric Summilux to me - the corners are about the same on mine on the M9 at fast apertures, I just don't have so many MPixels to show the aberrations quite as effectively. The glow is typical too. Its an oldish design from the days when glass types were more limited and aspheric surfaces were ground and expensive so it didn't have any. I use mine a lot at the moment and its on a camera at the moment. Enjoy its quirkiness.

It had been a while since mine had been out of the box. It's not a lens, of late, that I generically carry around. I just had not encountered that level of ghosting before, or at least that I recalled and found it a little disturbing.  But I'm now aligned with those that feel these really nothing new here. It some what bolsters my earlier comment to the effect that 'if you like what you see from your optic on the M10, you'll just see more of it on the 10-R.'  Just have to add '...and vice versa' to that. 

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I've written this before but FWIW two lens designers from Elcan wrote a paper on the pre-aspheric Summilux in which they concluded that Mandler had designed to the limits of available glass types, and that even using modern design techniques (within the constraints of the original glass types available) it would not be possible to design a better lens! Given its size this was an outstanding achievement and yes it is now seen as a compromise with significant performance limitations.. But if you add in new glass types and aspherical surfaces then you will get better correction at wide apertures. Go further and add a close range corrective mechanism and performance will improve at shorter focus distances (the original Summilux lens is actually quite good wide open at infinity). But then you will have the current FLE version and the trade-off is that it is significantly bigger and probably more expensive to produce. I'd like to see Leica re-introduce the original as a tribute to Mandler myself😉.

Perhaps we've come full circle. It is not a 'modern' lens but it will certainly work well enough on new cameras despite its imperfections.

Edited by pgk
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4 minutes ago, pgk said:

I'd like to see Leica re-introduce the original as a tribute to Mandler myself😉.

Tribute or no, it would indeed be quite exciting if they did a retrospective version with a couple of tweaks. Forgive my ignorance, I've never looked into it, but are the CV Noktons a knockoff of that design?

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It has been stated before but it seems it can't hurt to be repeated:

The performance, the characteristic, and the shape and value of the flaws of a lens do not—repeat: DO NOT—depend on the sensor's pixel count. A good lens will be a good lens on any sensor (as long as the sensor size is what the lens was designed to cover). And a poor lens will perform poorly on any sensor.

In the last two decades, this thread's topic has been discussed every single time—here and elsewhere—when a new digital camera came out with a pixel count higher than usual at that point. And every single time it died down as soon as the higher pixel count became the new standard. When everybody has 40 MP cameras then everbody will happily use the same lenses we are using today, which are (basically) the same we were using yesterday—Mandler lenses, Karbe lenses, Berek lenses on adapters, Apo Asph lenses, Voigtländer and Zeiss ZM lenses, etc pp.

And when a Leica M with a 60 MP sensor comes out, the whole pointless discussion will start over. :rolleyes:

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To get back to the original title subject (while including the 35 'lux pre-ASPH):

It should be noted that, stopped down, the 60-year-old lens has marginally higher MTF in the center than the "modern" ASPH (54% vs 50%) and roughly comparable MTF across most of the rest of the frame (just different patterns of "highs" and "lows" on wavy lines). And less distortion at any aperture.

Despite Peter Karbe's mantra, it is not required that lenses be used only at their widest apertures.

The charts, including the pre-ASPH lens, can be found at pages 38-40 in this document, a useful tool for considering/comparing lenses 1-2 generations back.

https://www.overgaard.dk/pdf/Leica-M-Lenses-Their-Soul-and-Secrets_en.pdf

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25 minutes ago, 01af said:

It has been stated before but it seems it can't hurt to be repeated:

The performance, the characteristic, and the shape and value of the flaws of a lens do not—repeat: DO NOT—depend on the sensor's pixel count. A good lens will be a good lens on any sensor (as long as the sensor size is what the lens was designed to cover). And a poor lens will perform poorly on any sensor.

In the last two decades, this thread's topic has been discussed every single time—here and elsewhere—when a new digital camera came out with a pixel count higher than usual at that point. And every single time it died down as soon as the higher pixel count became the new standard. When everybody has 40 MP cameras then everbody will happily use the same lenses we are using today, which are (basically) the same we were using yesterday—Mandler lenses, Karbe lenses, Berek lenses on adapters, Apo Asph lenses, Voigtländer and Zeiss ZM lenses, etc pp.

And when a Leica M with a 60 MP sensor comes out, the whole pointless discussion will start over. :rolleyes:

If it is of any consolation I have been researching into early photography and going through early photographic magazines from the 1850s and 1860s. Back then they didn't have MTF charts, didn't understand about depth of field, and could only use the blue component of light with their (in)sensitive materials. So they argued over lens distortion and which lenses were suitable for landscapes as they distorted, and which were ok for architecture because they distorted less. They also argued over how to test for distortion and comparability of lenses (field angles). Nothing basically changes. Apparently photographers have to be able to discuss their equipment and argue about it and have done since photography was invented.

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3 hours ago, pgk said:

In the early days it was only one shot and it needed to be awesome. Imagine Carleton Watkins in Yosemite with his Mammoth camera, 18" x 22" glass plates which had to be processed as soon as taken and then transported away by mule (and not broken) and yes, many were awesome: https://carletonwatkins.org

Understood and agreed. But we ain’t in the old days anymore.

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4 hours ago, pgk said:

In the early days it was only one shot and it needed to be awesome. Imagine Carleton Watkins in Yosemite with his Mammoth camera, 18" x 22" glass plates which had to be processed as soon as taken and then transported away by mule (and not broken) and yes, many were awesome: https://carletonwatkins.org

And he spent the last six years of his life at Napa State Hospital For The Insane.  
 

Jeff

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