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Leica M lens - current offering. What should I buy?


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:confused:We do.. 2 Summiluxes to every Summarit.

 

Jaap I am very surprised by this....then I guess people that buy a £3K to £4K camera body have a desire to buy the exotic lenses also.

 

That said the Summarit lenses seem very good for most situations, and I would have believed that at the lower price they were going to sell like hot cakes.....maybe that puts me in the same bucket as Steven Lee, which is not comfortable.

 

I am surprised that the Tri Elmar (f4) 28 / 35 / 50mm did not feature as a really great lens...I use mine a lot and it works very well unless we are talking about available light photography which I enjoy enormously. I am surprised that Leica dropped this item.

 

On the Leica business plan it would be fascinating to know not just the price of their lenses but the cost to make them. If APO base material glass is we are told more expensive than silver, and has to be bought in two year batches, has to be machined as a ASPH rather than as a simple spherical shape....well cost to manufacture may be an issue when compared to the price. I have no idea if this is the case.

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This thread has really been helpful in defining where I am going .....essentially it will definately be for the high luminosity glass and I will get a super wide angle. I suspect this will be a 24mm as this viewfinder is in the M8...however the 21mm (F1.4) is on my wish list also. It is not obvious to me that a viewfinder is a key need at this super wide angle. I doubt that I would buy both the 21 and 24mm.

 

Super-wide on the M8 starts at 18mm or less (equates to 24mm on film). 21mm and 24mm equate to moderate wide angles of 28mm and 32mm on a film Leica.

 

I like your kit at 35mm, 75mm and 15mm ...makes sense.

 

The one thing it doesn't have is a moderate wide-angle (with a film camera I used 21, 35 & 90). One day if the price is right I'll pick up a 24mm or 25mm of some kind.

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I am surprised that the Tri Elmar (f4) 28 / 35 / 50mm did not feature as a really great lens...I use mine a lot and it works very well unless we are talking about available light photography which I enjoy enormously. I am surprised that Leica dropped this item.
I believe the main reason for stopping production was that they could not get the required type of glass anymore for one of the elements, so it was stop production or redesign. Considering the high cost, complexity & small turnover the latter did not make sense apparently.

 

I you have a MATE keep it - it is a rare specimen.

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I believe the main reason for stopping production was that they could not get the required type of glass anymore for one of the elements, so it was stop production or redesign. Considering the high cost, complexity & small turnover the latter did not make sense apparently.

 

I you have a MATE keep it - it is a rare specimen.

 

Thanks for the explanation. I certainly plan to keep my Tri Elmar (28/35/50) as these are very useful focal lengths for general usage when I want to go out with just a single lens and plan to shoot during the day.

 

I am surprised that Leica do not redesign however or find a new source for the glass. Let's face it very many (if not most) amateur SLR users tend to buy one zoom lens that goes from about 35mm to 100+mm and they never buy a prime focus. The MATE is the nearest equivalent to this for a rangefinder camera yet it is very very compact compared to its SLR equivalent.

 

Today I visited Fayence antique fair and I used with success my old 21mm (f3.8) and the MATE in very difficult light conditions....bright intense sunlight with strong shadows.

 

I was surprised by the ability of both lenses to handle this and I had the M8 and the two lens kit in a small bag. My daughter by comparison brought her Canon 50 DSLR and an EF zoom lens .......my gosh this is heavy, huge in volume and it was hardly used as a consequence. I hope the attached photos illsutrate the point.

 

Firemen helmets are with the Tri Elmar at 28mm, the rocking horse is with the 21mm and my wife is using the somewhat cumbersome Canon 50D with difficulty.

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Shouldn't that be "long suffering wife"?

 

She'd find it easier if she supported the lens with her left hand...

I'll tell her....I am sure that she will agree with the first comment, as for the second I am also sure that she knows best.

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Looking through the new lens list there are several that have ASPHERIC elements ...which I can relate to as being better colour corrected etc than a simple spherical lens. Then they have for the 90mm and 135mm APOCHROMATIC elements which are classified as having better chromatic correction. Is this a marketing positioning since I guess both use aspherical elements?

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I understand your logic very well. In fact the best Leica book I have ever read and inspired me towards buying a Leica is "The Leica and the Leicaflex" by Josef Makovec...here he talks about using a 35mm and a 90mm as being his basic kit for all travel using a M4. That is what I used for many years but I liked to also keep a 21mm handy for the occassional wow photo that changes the depth of field significantly.

 

Basically it seems to me that is what Jaapv has done with his kit (24 /50 /90)and it is where I am going I think.

After reading that post, I bid and won on a sample of the book you mentionned. Received it yesterday and this is indeed a wonderful book.

As it was written in 1962, it is weird to see how they described the lens offering at the time. Roughly the year of launch of the 35mm Lux-M and Noctilux 1.2 He mentions their heavy price tag, superlative performance and even the "snob factor" ;)

The part on 90mm lenses is also a surprise, Makovec basically tells beginner to learn to use the M system with that lens because it forces one to carefully frame and compose the picture. He also think this is what best represent the M system, because of the ability to isolate and compress subjects....

As you mentionned, he basically suggest a 35mm as the next lens.

For once, the book has a focus on use of lenses and the impact of choice on composition, perspective, etc. Little is said about sharpness, light falloff, etc.... Contrast is not even mentionned. Finally, ISO400 was considered as super-fast. So really, a great reading that still applies to today's photography with the M8 (of course, keeping in mind the crop factor) and certainly helps refocus on the essentials of photography and forget a little about the current technology race.

Thanks for mentioning it !

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After reading that post, I bid and won on a sample of the book you mentionned. Received it yesterday and this is indeed a wonderful book.

As it was written in 1962, it is weird to see how they described the lens offering at the time. Roughly the year of launch of the 35mm Lux-M and Noctilux 1.2 He mentions their heavy price tag, superlative performance and even the "snob factor" ;)

The part on 90mm lenses is also a surprise, Makovec basically tells beginner to learn to use the M system with that lens because it forces one to carefully frame and compose the picture. He also think this is what best represent the M system, because of the ability to isolate and compress subjects....

As you mentionned, he basically suggest a 35mm as the next lens.

For once, the book has a focus on use of lenses and the impact of choice on composition, perspective, etc. Little is said about sharpness, light falloff, etc.... Contrast is not even mentionned. Finally, ISO400 was considered as super-fast. So really, a great reading that still applies to today's photography with the M8 (of course, keeping in mind the crop factor) and certainly helps refocus on the essentials of photography and forget a little about the current technology race.

Thanks for mentioning it !

 

Glad that you enjoyed it. I agree the writer talks with passion about using a limited "humble" kit of lenses with great effect. He then talks about Leica factory lending him this or that special lens and he has a day of magic with the loaned item......As a Leica fan you can imagine that special day with a loaned lens and you see the result of his day in the book.

 

By contrast the new Leica book by Brian Bower is a dialogue about the Leica lenses range (old & new) and reads like a Leica catalogue with a chapter on the M8 features. If it does anything it seems to me to suggest that there is a lot of lenses to buy at Leica and beyond and that if you do buy there is likely to be more product emerging soon to buy.

 

There is no passion in the new book about using the Leica kit to actually take photos, nothing about composition, or as you put it the essentials of photography. The flavour of how great photos can be taken with just two lenses and the joy of travelling with such a compact yet profesional quality camera is simply not addressed. ...yet for me this is the essence of Leica photography. It is not about the technology which is a necessary evil to achieve the objective.

 

It would be great if someone took the 1962 book and brought it up to date for the M8 but kept the passion and basics about using the fabulous Leica items that we all enjoy.

 

Thanks for the feedback

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Right, photography is about capturing the picture. All the rest is secondary. Even those of Ansel Adams' pictures that will survive and become canonical are captured pictures, not technical exercises.

 

For me, the M8 recaptured much of the passion in photography, simply because of the instant feedback.

 

The old man from the Age of the Box Camera

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