David Bailey likes Nokton 40/1.4

[lars_bergquist]

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I think that the point of the thread is, should we imitate the gear decisions of one photographic celebrity or the other, in the hope that some good mana will seep across? Or should we weigh the facts and make our own decisions, in the light of our own need and wants (hopefully not "I wanna be David Bailey")?

 

In the old days there was precious little hard fact around. Even experts -- the kind that wrote books -- fifty or seventy years ago were hard put to explain in what sense a Zeiss Tessar was better than a shitty three-element Cooke Triplet. So people who had to make purchasing decisions made them by imitating those they regarded as their photographic betters -- or at least as more experienced.

 

An illustration of the ignorance at that time was the sales of the staple item, the folding roll film camera. This was a modular apparat: A camera body on the front standard of which the manufacturer could mount various shutters, from a cheap 'Moment' to a classy Compur Rapid. And into that shutter they could screw a range of lenses, from the above triplet to a Tessar or even a Biogon. But people with money did mostly buy a Compur with the triplet no-name 'Anastigmat'. Why? They did not understand lenses, but shutters, being mechanical, were more understandable.

 

But now we have quantitative information, we have tests (Sean's, for instance) and we should be better able to make decisisons that suit ourselves and not others. So why run around hunting for something like the King's Touch against photographic scrophules?

 

The old man from the Age of Steichen ;-)

[lars_bergquist]

Oh well, there is a secondary theme here. Leica versus Cosina versus Zeiss -- seen it before? I have owned a couple of C/V lenses. I do own a couple of Zeiss lenses. I do own them because of a cost-benefit analysis that clearly said "Zeiss" in those particular cases. In other cases the analysis said "Leica". In other words, I am not a Leica loyalist who will buy anything with a red dot on it. I am a cynical old man who like to make photographs.

 

The old man from the Age of PCB

[nugat]

The point of the thread was for me as the OP only the influence of nostalgia on buying decisions. "Blow-up" being one of my favourite films and the "swinging London" the place I'd rather be... I thought this whole portal being one big nostalgia tribute might be undertanding. Alas, it was not to be so...

[wlaidlaw]

As this has become a lens manufacturer thread, I thought some people might be mildly interested in test shots all taken with 3 very different 35 mm lenses on the M8. Now I have to admit that I did not focus bracket these as Sean does, so that is another variable to take into account. The 35 Color-Skopar Classic is by far the easiest and smoothest to focus with its small cylindrical tab. My chrome 35 ASPH Summilux is still after 2 years of much use, still quite stiff and the 28-35-50 2007 vintage Tri-Elmar in between.

 

Interesting the color balance is quite different with the Summilux being much warmer. They are all using Leica UV/IR filters. All taken in DNG and processed in C1 v4.8, with no processing other than crop, down mode to 8 bit and save as JPEG.

 

The Color Skopar was at f2.5, the Summilux at halfway between f2 and 2.8 and the Tri-Elmar at f4. I think it bears out my point that I have not got a good Color-Skopar, as I hope they are all not like this.

 

Wilson

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