When does a lens become 'old'?

[charlesphoto99]

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11 minutes ago, roydonian said:

Why? What is going to wear out or need adjustment? Because of the flare problem, this lens has been little used by me, and to judge by its condition when I purchased it, it saw very little use by its original owner.

Nothing one can do to make a lens widely known for its propensity to flare not flare, beyond using a bigger hood or just being careful where you point it, or actually embracing the flare and using it as an effect. Unless it has mechanical issue, I wouldn't CLA it and just sell it if it doesn't work for you. You didn't mention if it was V1 or V2. 

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[willeica]

These lenses made in Dublin in the 19th Century are 'old', but they will never 'grow old'. 

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I have used some of these and they produce fine images, just as do Leitz lenses, which I have, which are nearly 100 years old and a Vest Pocket Kodak which is 110 years old. I did not think of them as being 'old' when I was using them. Age is but a number. Some of the discussions here remind me of this, just substitute 'Small and far away' with 'old' etc

 

I remember Dermot Morgan, the actor who played Father Ted, when he was a couple of classes behind me in our school some 59 years ago, but, to me, he will never be 'old'. I should add that he died aged 45 in 1998, but he would never be 'old' to me as he was younger than me and behind me in school. 

William 

Edited January 20 by willeica

[BernardC]

1 hour ago, roydonian said:

Why? What is going to wear out or need adjustment? Because of the flare problem, this lens has been little used by me, and to judge by its condition when I purchased it, it saw very little use by its original owner.

Whether or not you consider the lens to be "old" is entirely up to you. It's your lens!

From the camera shop's point of view, it's a 25 year old lens of unknown history. Keep in mind that every lens is perfect according to its owner, and has never suffered any abuse (or even use). You aren't even the first owner, so you only know half its story.

What could have happened in 25 years? Lubricants could have dried-up, and/or evaporated. The lens could have been dropped. It could have been subject to heavy vibration (rough road, propeller plane, etc). It could have been stored in a high-humidity environment. It could have been left in a drawer and never used at all (which can be more damaging than regular use).

The most advisable course of action, as far as they are concerned, is to have the lens checked-out by a reputable technician. This means some amount of disassembly, cleaning (and lubricating parts that have been cleaned), and calibration to factory specifications. In other words, a CLA.

 

[kl122002]

Most lenses, I believe, that has been in the market for 5-10 years is enough to consider as old. People want wider zoom range , larger aperature, and faster motor in the auto focusing and that's how the newer lenses keep coming up, and that pushes the " still usable" lenses into old category.

Perhaps it's just Leica or Zeiss would consider some of them  as "still new", since they are manual focusing and that has never been brothered by " fast" &"Zoom power"

 

[roydonian]

22 hours ago, BernardC said:

Keep in mind that every lens is perfect according to its owner, and has never suffered any abuse (or even use).

I've used many of my lenses since the late 1970s, and they have been subjected to journeys on propellor driven aircraft and on the Greek rural buses of yesteryear. I've even accidentally dropped one onto a hard pavement (though after examining it, Leica UK pronounced it to be still OK.)

My 73mm Hektor suffers from the effects of dried-up lubricant (perhaps understandable since it left the Leitz factory in 1932 (a decade before I was born) after being converted from uncoupled to rangefinder-coupled form). But the 35mm f/2.8 Summaron that I inherited from my father half-a-century ago has no such problem despite having been manufactured in 1959. Optically it still lives up to its reputation, and I used it recently in Athens and Venice while my 35mm Summilux ASPH was 'hors de combat'.

While a certain author often considered an authority on Leica lenses pronounced Tri-Elmar MATE flare as being "very well controlled", several of the contributors to this thread have stated that this lens has a well-known problem with flare at the 50mm setting. This matches my experience with the version 2, but Leica Mayfair seems unaware of the problem.

Some of the flare that I'm seeing with this lens is so bad that the image is irrecoverable, and there is no way that this level of flare can be exploited as an 'effect'. In practice, most of the sort of photographs that I take are intended as a visual record. When I work as a journalist, there are occasions where I have no control over where my subject will be, where the light source(s) will be, and where I will be positioned – I just need to get the picture, and my client would not thank me if the subject was obscured by an unwanted 'effect'. So I need to use lenses that I can rely on.

On the concept of what makes a lens 'old', I've always thought of my 50mm Summilux as being a modern lens, given that it was in production until 2004. I'd bought mine in 2011, but keep forgetting that it is more than 60 years old, having been made in 1962!  I also use several lenses that were manufactured in the 1960s and 1970s, while my youngest lenses were made in 2000, 2008, and 2016.

Edited January 21 by roydonian

[lct]

5 minutes ago, roydonian said:

Some of the flare that I'm seeing with this lens is so bad that the image is irrecoverable, and there is no way that this level of flare can be exploited as an 'effect' [...]

Ditto here but the MATE is not the worse Leica lens from this viewpoint. The snaps below have been shot with a MATE and a Summicron 50/2 v5. Which is which? I won't give the solution here* but newbies, if any, should be aware that any lens can flare more or less, it is just a matter of experience to provoque or avoid those "effects".

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*Don't cheat with exif data folks 😄

[BernardC]

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2 hours ago, roydonian said:

This matches my experience with the version 2, but Leica Mayfair seems unaware of the problem.

Did you ask them? Maybe they are aware of the problem, and some of their customers' lenses have been improved by a CLA. It's a complex lens with known issues, maybe their techs (or Leica's techs) have learned a few tricks over the years.

[UliWer]

vor 1 Stunde schrieb lct:

it is just a matter of experience to provoque or avoid those "effects".

… and to gain this experience the camera‘s display is your friend - but any M-…-D is a honorable camera… .

Perhaps I might add that examples of more or less flare require identical settings at identical times of the day (usually it‘s the stupid sun which causes the flare) and of course one has to tell if a hood was used or not, and if it was used, which one. I fear your examples in #27 leave a lot of questions open in these respects.

Though the thread‘s topic is old lenses and not flaring lenses. Try to provoke flare with the oldest lens you can attach to any Leica model: the 1:3.5/50mm Elmar. I think you won’t be too successful with flare on an old Elmar - even if it is uncoated.

Summars, Summitars or early Summicrons are different stories when it comes to flare. Though these lenses had hoods specially designed for them. The hoods are as ugly as any barnstore - but they are effective. Just use them if you decide to use an old lens. 

[farnz]

1 hour ago, UliWer said:

Try to provoke flare with the oldest lens you can attach to any Leica model: the 1:3.5/50mm Elmar.  I think you won’t be too successful with flare on an old Elmar - even if it is uncoated.

Sorry to continue the distraction but to answer UliWer here's an example of flare with my coated 1:3.5/50 Elmar on my M10.

Pete.

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[willeica]

12 hours ago, UliWer said:

Though the thread‘s topic is old lenses and not flaring lenses. Try to provoke flare with the oldest lens you can attach to any Leica model: the 1:3.5/50mm Elmar. I think you won’t be too successful with flare on an old Elmar - even if it is uncoated.

I have never seen flare from any of my many 50mm Elmars going back to examples from 1926. It hardly needs a hood at all. Going back to the topic of this thread there is nothing wrong with being old, many of us here fall into that category ourselves. For younger people being up to date seems to be much more important, but as I often told my 2, now middle aged, daughters, when they were growing up, there is nothing so out of date as what was up to date just yesterday. Sometimes it takes a long time to find out what is truly valuable.

Meanwhile the Leica will celebrate its 100th anniversary or birthday, if you wish, in the first week in March this year. So no more talk about 'old' as if it were a vice. Age should rather be regarded as a virtue. The Leica company will be celebrating the centenary of its most famous product throughout the coming year.

William 

[roydonian]

I wonder if the flare problem is at least in part caused by the changeover from film to digital. I used film M cameras from 1963 until 2009 and don't recall losing pics to flare. Film had a matt surface, but digital sensors have a glass cover that could be reflecting light back into the lens.

[lct]

I seem to recall flare appearing in the eighties, soon after the M5 debacle, i have no idea if this is related. Was not veiling flare that much but flare coming from reflections, typically when strong light sources like the sun stand outside the frame, like in my snaps above. The culprits were lenses like Summicron 50/2 v4 or Tele-Elmarit "thin" 90/2.8. Now, as i suggested above, pretty well all lenses can flare more or less, even a reputed lens like the Planar 50/2. It's just that flare is less pronounced with this lens.

[roydonian]

19 hours ago, BernardC said:

Did you ask them? Maybe they are aware of the problem, and some of their customers' lenses have been improved by a CLA. It's a complex lens with known issues, maybe their techs (or Leica's techs) have learned a few tricks over the years.

I told them that I was having a flare problem with the Tri-Elmar, particularly at the 50mm setting. Their response - if I understood them correctly - was that they were unaware of any issues with that model of lens, and that a CLA (costing £500 and taking six months) might not prove a solution to my problem.

[Alberti]

On 1/18/2025 at 3:07 PM, farnz said:

Is a new Old Delft lens old or new?

Pete.

Which Chinese company is making such a new Old lens?