The special character of Leica‘s APO lenses

[nthomas]

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I would say the recent APO lens has incredible characteristic, including nice pop-up effect, great detail description at 100% and nice micro-contrast. The images show amazing quality when zoom into 100%. It's better to view the photos taken by APO lens with higher quality and bigger screen to enjoy all the advantages. 

[yanidel]

I owned the 50mm Lux Asph  (which is APO) and 75mm Cron. Always thought their rendering to be quite different from other lenses. In my opinion the differentiating factors were 1) intense clarity 2) more contrast 3) warmer colors

I liked them a lot but I could always spot the pictures taken with them when in series mixed with my 35mm Lux Asph pre-FLE. For the sake of homogeneity, I sold them and use either the 50mm Cron v4 or 60mm Hexanon with it.

 

Edited November 9, 2023 by yanidel

[Stuart Richardson]

I think the justification for me is about removing veils between the portrayed scene and the final print. I appreciate that many photographers like lenses that introduce their own effects on the scene -- for example swirly bokeh, extremely shallow DOF, vignetting, softening for portraits etc, but for me it is often the opposite...I want to portray as naturally as possible.

I do a lot of landscape work in low light conditions or in conditions of great contrast. Wherever there are mountains there tend to be brightly lit areas and deep shadows. It is my experience that the APO lenses (particularly the SL lenses) are excellent at disappearing when you want them to. By that I mean that they do not tend to have veiling flare, they maintain extremely high contrast (which does not mean the scene has to be contrasty, only that the lens does not decrease the contrast), and very few aberrations. This allows me to render the scene very close to how it looked as I stood there. As noted above, when bokeh is called for they tend to have very smooth and pleasant bokeh. I also like that the SL APO's at least have extremely low incidence of longitudinal chromatic aberration (a great example above where the bokeh is green and magenta...I really dislike that effect as it is very unnatural to our visual experience and so immediately kicks in a Brechtian estrangement effect...great if you are looking for that. I am not.).

I am not sure any photo I can post is really that illustrative of this effect, as it is hard to see on a small screen, and harder still when compressed on this site. But will throw in an APO image anyway...

Here is one taken about ten years ago on the M9 with the 75mm APO Summicron. It is not a particularly superb photo, but I think it does a good job of capturing the color and feeling of the spectacular day...a crisp and clean rendering. As a side note, it is always disconcerting to go back to the M9 and S2/S006 files. The color just looks nicer. Full stop.

The rest are taken with the SL2 and 50mm APO, which is a remarkable lens. This is a good example of it holding contrast throughout the scene and handling flare well, while still rendering very subtle colors both in the highlights and shadows.

The snowy pines at night are an example where chromatic aberration or bokeh fringing (longitudinal CA) would be really obvious and problematic. Here it is totally absent.

The final image is just representative of the high contrast (lens, not scene) and very precision rendering. Everything is clean, clear and sharp.

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Edited November 9, 2023 by Stuart Richardson

[Jan1985]

vor 6 Stunden schrieb costa43:

I’ve owned and sold the 35mm Leica APO and still own a Voigtlander APO 50mm that I’ve tried across 4 different digital Leica bodies. Some pics below on the mm1, m10r and M9p 

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Wonderful pictures! Why you sold it?

[Jan1985]

vor einer Stunde schrieb Stuart Richardson:

I think the justification for me is about removing veils between the portrayed scene and the final print. I appreciate that many photographers like lenses that introduce their own effects on the scene -- for example swirly bokeh, extremely shallow DOF, vignetting, softening for portraits etc, but for me it is often the opposite...I want to portray as naturally as possible.

I do a lot of landscape work in low light conditions or in conditions of great contrast. Wherever there are mountains there tend to be brightly lit areas and deep shadows. It is my experience that the APO lenses (particularly the SL lenses) are excellent at disappearing when you want them to. By that I mean that they do not tend to have veiling flare, they maintain extremely high contrast (which does not mean the scene has to be contrasty, only that the lens does not decrease the contrast), and very few aberrations. This allows me to render the scene very close to how it looked as I stood there. As noted above, when bokeh is called for they tend to have very smooth and pleasant bokeh. I also like that the SL APO's at least have extremely low incidence of longitudinal chromatic aberration (a great example above where the bokeh is green and magenta...I really dislike that effect as it is very unnatural to our visual experience and so immediately kicks in a Brechtian estrangement effect...great if you are looking for that. I am not.).

I am not sure any photo I can post is really that illustrative of this effect, as it is hard to see on a small screen, and harder still when compressed on this site. But will throw in an APO image anyway...

Here is one taken about ten years ago on the M9 with the 75mm APO Summicron. It is not a particularly superb photo, but I think it does a good job of capturing the color and feeling of the spectacular day...a crisp and clean rendering. As a side note, it is always disconcerting to go back to the M9 and S2/S006 files. The color just looks nicer. Full stop.

The rest are taken with the SL2 and 50mm APO, which is a remarkable lens. This is a good example of it holding contrast throughout the scene and handling flare well, while still rendering very subtle colors both in the highlights and shadows.

The snowy pines at night are an example where chromatic aberration or bokeh fringing (longitudinal CA) would be really obvious and problematic. Here it is totally absent.

The final image is just representative of the high contrast (lens, not scene) and very precision rendering. Everything is clean, clear and sharp.

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

What you mean is what Thorsten Overgaard once said: "The APO lenses render as if they are not there!". They have an amount of clarity and show this kind of "presence" that no other have. BTW really nice photographs.

[costa43]

8 hours ago, Jan1985 said:

Wonderful pictures! Why you sold it?

Thank you. This is a snapshot of my daughter with the Voigtlander 50mm APO on the MM1. I still own both. I sold the 35mm APO purely based on its cost. I just couldn’t justify it to myself, the image quality was great but I prefer vintage lenses in general and having it sit there as a secondary option was bothering me I guess.