Non-Leica 50mm Recommendation

[kmonroe99]

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This if for an SL2. Looking for recommendations for a non-Leica L or M mount (I have adaptor) lens between 35 and 50 mm.  Looking for something light - the Panasonic seems to be the lightest in the L mount series.  It would be nice to maintain some electrical info between body and lens but manual focus is fine.  Something that works well with the SL2 color science and still has some character.

Thanks

[Chris W]

The Sigma L mount 45mm is very, very good. It's small and light.

Probably not up to Leica APO standard, but I would personally prefer it to Panasonic.

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[frame-it]

26 minutes ago, kmonroe99 said:

This if for an SL2. Looking for recommendations for a non-Leica L or M mount (I have adaptor) lens between 35 and 50 mm.  Looking for something light - the Panasonic seems to be the lightest in the L mount series.  It would be nice to maintain some electrical info between body and lens but manual focus is fine.  Something that works well with the SL2 color science and still has some character.

Thanks

for landscapes/portraits/street/macro/still life?

what do you plan to shoot?

 

[kmonroe99]

Landscape/street.

[Stuart Richardson]

The 45mm Sigma is a good candidate. It is a bit soft wide open and close up (on purpose, apparently), but stopped down it is sharp, and it is inexpensive and compact. Another option would be the Panasonic 50mm 1.8, which apparently has a more plastic build, but it has a 1.8 stop instead of 2.8, which is quite a big jump. If you want maximum optical performance for a reasonable price, the 50mm APO Lanthar from Voigtlander will give you extremely high quality (closer to the 50mm APO Summicrons) for a very reasonable price. The only sacrifice in that case would be that it is manual focus without lens information transferred to the body, and you need to use an M adapter.

Based on landscape and street and lightness, I would give the panasonic a try. It is quite light and inexpensive, while still having good speed when you need it for isolation or low light. When I tried the 45mm, I was not convinced, as it is quite slow, and not very sharp wide open, so you don't have as wide a usable aperture range if that is your consideration. I would go for the 35mm f2 from Sigma before the 45mm 2.8...I think it is a more useful lens.

 

Edited July 28, 2022 by Stuart Richardson

[BernardC]

I can highly recommend the ZM Planar 2.0/50. It's nearly flare-proof, which means it has great colour saturation, and it's sharp all over. I use it as my "modern" 50, and use a 1970s 1.4 Planar for a vintage look.

[Guest]

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6 hours ago, kmonroe99 said:

This if for an SL2. Looking for recommendations for a non-Leica L or M mount (I have adaptor) lens between 35 and 50 mm.  Looking for something light - the Panasonic seems to be the lightest in the L mount series.  It would be nice to maintain some electrical info between body and lens but manual focus is fine.  Something that works well with the SL2 color science and still has some character.

Thanks

The Panasonic 50mm 1.8 seems to be an amazing deal for the weight (300g !!!), size, and money (<$450).

Here is a highly complementary and detailed YouTube review of that lens (in German, you may have to turn on subtitles and auto translate ...).

Seems like a 'no regrets' purchase.

[SJH]

I know it’s not 50mm but the Sigma 65mm f2 is stunningly good and has great build quality. 

[FrankI]

I am using the Voigtlander LantarF2 on my SL2S. Fantastic lens is an APO Lanthar on sale now to form Cameraquest the US distributor.   dude.

[huwm]

Sigma 35 or 65 f2 are both great

[satijntje]

Voigtländer 50mm APO Lanthar without discussion.
By far better compared to the 45mm Sigma which is also not a bad lens 

[hansvons]

As Bernard said, the Zeiss Planars are a perfect choice if saturation, sharpness and some character are wanted. Zeiss Planars and Distagons were the staples in cinematography in various iterations, from Super Speeds to Ultraprimes. I shot tons of projects with them, and the results were always what was expected. However, some of Leica‘s R lenses, especially the 50 Summilux, show less contrast and more delicate colour and skin-friendly sharpness to my eyes. Plus, their flair is close to perfection. I also own a Voigtländer 35mm f1.5 that’s supposed to show vintage virtues, and it delivers, albeit much too soft and glowy wide-open. The great thing about that lens is its tiny size.

All modern AF glass I know is either very good in terms of sharpness and dimensionality (Leica) but misses character and is expensive, or they are relatively inexpensive, and it shows on multiple levels. It could be that Sigma managed to break that rule with their Contemporary Primes line. 

[PDP]

Am 28.7.2022 um 16:38 schrieb BernardC:

I can highly recommend the ZM Planar 2.0/50. It's nearly flare-proof, which means it has great colour saturation, and it's sharp all over. I use it as my "modern" 50, and use a 1970s 1.4 Planar for a vintage look.

I fully agree, I use it for landscape and it performs extraordinary. No need of autofocus in landscape, the focus peaking delivers. The sharpness is great, colors are fine and micro contrast works well.

Voigtländer offers a bunch of 35 to 50 mm lenses, some are stellars in performance, some have characters (the vintage line).

I use both a lot. On my SL2.

A recent test of neunzehn72 (in German) shows that the expensive Leica lenses are not much better than alternatives.

[robb]

I’m a fan of the voigtlander 50 f1.0. It has aspherical lenses and even wide open is very sharp.  Has a lot of character obviously and is lighter and smaller than the Leica noctilux lenses.  I also like the old school focusing ring.  

Robb

[malbooth]

14 hours ago, robb said:

I’m a fan of the voigtlander 50 f1.0. It has aspherical lenses and even wide open is very sharp.  Has a lot of character obviously and is lighter and smaller than the Leica noctilux lenses.  I also like the old school focusing ring.  

Robb

Robb, I guess there's no AF with that lens on the SL2. What adaptor do you use. I am considering a 50mm lens, but not terribly keen on another really heavy, large Leica lens (I already have the 24-90 & 90-280). I lighter, smaller lens like this would be easier for travelling I think.

[molto1]

I am also enthusiastic about the Voigtlander Nokton 50 1.0. Processing is incredibly good and the image quality is very good even at 1.0.

molto 1

[robb]

10 hours ago, malbooth said:

Robb, I guess there's no AF with that lens on the SL2. What adaptor do you use. I am considering a 50mm lens, but not terribly keen on another really heavy, large Leica lens (I already have the 24-90 & 90-280). I lighter, smaller lens like this would be easier for travelling I think.

I use the oem Leica M to SL adapter.  
the lens really isn’t much bigger to me than an m50 1.4 so it’s great for me.  Much lighter than any of the SL lenses also.  I think I would pick it over the SL 50 1.4 because of size.  And it’s fairly reasonable cost at around 1800 usd

Robb

[PeterGA]

Higher megapixel cameras like the SL2 allow for cropping - so the flexibility of focal length choice increases if perspective change does not detract from your end composition. 

I have moved my preference from 50 to 35 to 28 and wider for 'street' photography in order to maximise the benefit of a wider field of view without necessarily sacrificing required resolution for a final print if I decide to crop - even significantly eg I like to shoot in XPan crop mode on the SL2 which allows for a 25MP final size file after the significant crop is employed.

APO designated lenses  maximise the detail that can be captured by higher resolving sensors - the L mount Summicrons have become the 'benchmark' lenses form Leica. These lenses are outstanding but come at the 'cost' of size ( and dollars). In M mount APO Leica's 50  and 35  are close enough to the performance of the L mount APO lenses as to make them the same - the (significant) benefit  for smaller size comes at the cost of not having auto focus and almost double the price.

If you are interested in and can use the resolving power of APO lenses for your landscape work and are interested in spending a lot less money for (in real world use) similar if not same results to Leica M APO lenses - you will not likely be disappointed with the Voigtlander 50 APO Lanthar or the 35 APO or the 28 Ultron Version 2 - all f2 lenses .

That said I have failed to come across a very poor performing lens from any manufacturer for a very long time - and both Sigma and Panasonic as mentioned previously offer very good alternatives in your chosen focal length preferences to the higher cost Leica benchmark lenses - if you want to maintain autofocus capability when using your SL2.

 

[Jeff S]

2 hours ago, PeterGA said:

Higher megapixel cameras like the SL2 allow for cropping - so the flexibility of focal length choice increases if perspective change does not detract from your end composition. 

 

 

Cropping won’t change perspective, nor will changing focal length unless your feet are moving as a result.

Jeff

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[PeterGA]

2 hours ago, Jeff S said:

Cropping won’t change perspective, nor will changing focal length unless your feet are moving as a result.

Jeff

Yes indeed - technically 'field of view' should have been used.

 

Edited August 2, 2022 by PeterGA
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