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New Summarits - Puts review part II


thrid

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How much?

 

:D

 

Ruben,

 

It is about 6 months old and I paid the GBP equivalent of €250 for it, so I think I would want about €175 for it. However, I am not going to make any decision until I see how I get on with the Megaperls.

 

Wilson

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I'd willingly give up the ability to use a Visoflex - an anachronism if ever there was one, goggled lenses and the macro adapter in return for being able to focus more accurately.

 

Hardly necessary. All that is needed is an in-built variable viewfinder magnifier. Crank it up when you mount a longer/faster lens, crank it down when you need to see the wide-angle framelines. They could've even retained the 135mm framelines if the magnification went to 100%.

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Hardly necessary. All that is needed is an in-built variable viewfinder magnifier. Crank it up when you mount a longer/faster lens, crank it down when you need to see the wide-angle framelines. They could've even retained the 135mm framelines if the magnification went to 100%.

 

Exactly - they do it all the time on little digitals with zoom lenses and optical viewfinders e.g. the Canon Ixus 850, so it can neither be expensive nor rocket science.

 

Wilson

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Happy to know that others have put themselves the same question that sometime intrigues me : "given that lot of unexpensive cameras have had decent zoom VFs for years, is it really so damn difficult to have something similar on a M body ?" OK, the RF Leica style adds some problem... but I refuse to think that some solution is impossible, given their price tag !

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It doesn't matter what the magnification is, all that will ever do is allow you to set what you think is the correct focussing position more accurately and more repeatably. Even if you get it perfect, there's no guarantee the image will be in focus if the lens and/or camera alignment is wrong.

 

The desirable solution is to sense focus on the image plane directly and feed that back to the viewfinder.

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Here is one today taken with my replacement 75 Summarit. It s a nice length of lens for playing these sort of games when it is so wet, even our working dogs did not want to go out today.

 

Wilson

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...so it can neither be expensive nor rocket science.

 

Nor very pleasant to use IMHO. I imagine the problem would be scalling the tiny, tiny, dim viewfinder on one of those cameras (I have a Canon S70 with a similar viewfinder) to something as large and bright as the M viewfinder - not withstanding the issues of optical distortion. Plus the fact that the whole shooting match would have to work with the existing rangefinder mechanism.

 

I'm not saying that it can't be done, just that it may well be more difficult that it appears at first glance. And in general 'more difficult' translates to 'more expensive'.

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Purists might not be happy but let's be clear. The current focussing method of the M8 is not consistently good enough to get the image quality out of the camera the lenses are capable of providing.

 

I used to shoot my Noctilux at f1 and close up on a .72 M6. No problems nailing focus, but then again Sherry Krauter had adjusted both the lens and camera to match.

 

The problem is probably due to the lower magnification of the M8 viewfinder, especially with the 75 and 90. Focusing a Noct on a .58 M body is tricky and wasn't a good idea wide open and close up. But in theory the extra DOF, due to the cropped M8 sensor should help balance things out.

 

There are a lot of variables involved in this and I don't think it's necessarily time to dump the RF unit. It would help if Leica could figure out a way to bump the magnification, but that would mean either a full frame sensor or they would have to take a slightly different approach than copying what's in the analog M. QC also seems to have taken a hit as Leica is overwhelmed with work, but I believe things will improve as the workforce matures.

 

On a personal note I think the issue is overblown. The vast majority of great pictures taken in the last 150 years are slightly out of focus. Heck almost all prints I have ever seen by HCB are out of focus, sometimes grossly. That shouldn't be an excuse for Leica QC to drop to unacceptable levels, but maybe should remind us to concentrate more on content than technical issues.

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The cropped sensor of the M8 doesn't give extra depth of field. If anything, if my understanding is correct, one gets less or at least less COC.

 

Film will always be more forgiving of focus errors but people that's why you need to work with the files sometimes to make them more film like. A bit of grain, some dodging and burning, some creative sharpening, etc all go a long way. Too much pixel peeping at 100% .

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The cropped sensor of the M8 doesn't give extra depth of field. If anything, if my understanding is correct, one gets less or at least less COC.

 

Technically speaking you are correct. The DOF characteristics of the focal length remains the same, but due to the crop factor the field of view (FOV) changes.

 

As an example on an M8, the DOF of a 28 remains the same, but it shows the FOV of a 37.24mm. So, you are getting the reach of a 35, but the DOF of a 28.

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...As an example on an M8, the DOF of a 28 remains the same, but it shows the FOV of a 37.24mm. So, you are getting the reach of a 35, but the DOF of a 28.

It's a bit more complicated than this i'm afraid as the crop factor reduces the circle of confusion as well so with a 28mm lens on the M8 one get a 37mm FoV and a 32mm DoF roughly.

Online Depth of Field Calculator

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