27 December 2009
A tale of thirteen lenses
30/12/09 11:44
My Leica M lenses
I am quite fortunate in having been able to use almost every Leica lens since 1925, but I actually own a very small fraction of all the lenses ever made.
The lenses I own and use are:
Elmarit-M 2.8/24 asph. chrome
Elmar-M 3.8/24 asph.
Summarit-M 2.5/35
Summarit-M 2.5/50
Summicron-M 2/50 special 50 anniversary edition chrome
Summilux-M 1.4/50 asph. black
Summilux-M 1.4/50 asph. chrome special LHSA edition
Apo-Summicron-M 2/75 asph
Summarit-M 2.5/75
Apo-Summicron-M 2/90 asph
Summarit 2.5/90
Apo-Telyt-M 3.4/135mm
Tri-Elmar-M 4/28-35-50 asph. chrome
The current range of Leica lenses is quite extensive, going from 16mm to 135mm and covering almost every conceivable assignment. This statement deserves a qualification. The lens range is related to the optical and mechanical limits of the manually focusing CRF. For a modern SLR camera a range from 10mm to 800mm is typical. The lens range for the Leica CRF can be extended with the help form Zeiss and Cosina with wide angle lenses from 12mm to 15mm.
The lenses I own are not necessary the best lenses Leica has on offer. The range is based on the use I have for the lenses and the fact that I dislike using additional finders. The exigency to have to switch your view from rangefinder to auxiliary frame-finder I find distracting. The additional bulk is also an unpleasant consequence. I know that the wide angle lenses have enough depth of field to allow photography in point-and-shoot style, but the new high-speed wide angles deserve careful focusing and framing for optimum effect.
There is still a widespread notion (very difficult to stamp out presumably) that wide angle lenses are required for landscape and architecture and tele-lenses for portrait and landscapes again, with the 35mm and 50mm falling between the two main categories and appropriate for reportage and documentary style of photography.
This is an unfortunate labeling of lens properties. The focal length of a lens determines the overall magnification and the relative proportions in size between foreground and background. The aperture determines the relation between in-focus and out-of focus areas and the combination of focal length and aperture defines the extension of the sharpness plane.
The skillful association of these properties define the photograph and its content and message. This blending of properties is not dependent on the subject matter but on the subjective quality of the photograph. You can create excellent portraits with a 1.4/21mm wide open and fully stopped down and great landscapes with a 2/90 wide open and stopped down to 16.
The focal length of 24mm is for me the wide angle limit as it is the shortest focal length that can be used on the M8 when using the range finder frame lines. On the M9 and all film loading M-bodies the additional finder is required. Both 24mm lenses, the Elmar and Elmarit offer superior performance and they are my preferred lenses when testing sensor or emulsion properties. Owning both is a bit of a luxury, but the Elmarit has a stop advantage (sometimes useful) and has the very classical chrome livery.
The new SX versions in 21mm and 24mm focal length offer a very impressive image quality. The lenses follow the now standard Leica design paradigm with aspherical surfaces, floating elements, special glass types and a Leica typical balance in the correction of aberrations. The ASPH and FLE properties were implemented by Canon around 1975. I would have preferred a restriction of the widest aperture to f/2, because this would have yielded more compact designs, but Leica would have countered that the difference between the existing 2.8 designs would not be enough to generate new sales. This is a fair argument.
The Tri-Elmar 28-35-50 is now out of production and my chrome version is one of only 500 made. The optical quality is most pleasing and this particular version has excellent mechanical operation, smoothly engaging the 28mm framelines. At 28mm the distortion is visible, but this can be used to enhance the message. On the M9 and M7 it makes good company and while you do not need to change lenses physically you avoid in the case of the M9 the possibility of attracting dust.
If you wish to have a set that is almost pocketable, the M camera can be fitted with the Summarit 35mm or the Summarit 50mm. The Summarit range is undeservedly neglected by Leica aficionados. The lenses are admirably compact and even the 90mm fits in a pocket. The four lenses together have a small footprint and two M bodies with these four lenses cover a wide range of subject matter and assignments. The range offers the very classical 35-90mm focal length, the mainstay of Leica CRF photography. The Summarit 50 is a very basic lens which suffers a bit from the fact that it is trimmed to such small proportions and offers one extreme of the range of choices in the 50mm spectrum. The NX 0.95/50mm is an impressive lens in size, price and performance. It has a strong sense of “yes-we-can” thinking and is verging on a luxury that can hardly be justified, unless as a prestige object. If there were only the Summarit or Summicron 50mm lenses the NX would offer a viable extension of possibilities, but the availability of the SX 50mm forces the NX to a more marginal role. The NX is a mechanical marvel and an optical tour de force. The challenges in optical and instrumental demands were such that the lens can be seen as a catalyst for general optical and mechanical design for Leica. The SX 50mm has the same basic design (ASPH, FLE, special glass), but the much bigger size of the lens elements and a new level of manufacturing tolerances plus the demand to keep the overall size as small as possible puts the NX on an elevated platform.
For most practical tasks the SX is more than enough and the NX is for my tastes to heavy and big. A real addition to the 50mm stable would be the often rumored 2/50mm with eight elements.
The Apo-Summicron 2/75 is outstandingly good and should be one of the first lenses to buy. It has a much wider versatility than is often assumed and is one of my most used lenses, next to the SX 50mm. The Summarit 75 is the preferred choice when I wish to travel light and that is also the argument for using the Summarit 90mm. For better performance I can select the Apo-Summicron 2/90 which stopped down is almost as good as the superior Elmarit-R 2.8/100mm. The A-S 90 could benefit from the inclusion of the FLE mechanism, but sometimes one needs to ask the inevitable question when to stop improving lenses beyond the level that most practitioners can appreciate and use.
I would plead for a new lens paradigm based on the observation that most high speed lenses are not used at infinity but the optical corrections assume infinity as the plane of sharpest focus. It would be interesting to study the advantages of high speed lenses corrected for let us say ten to twenty meters, so falling midway between the true macro corrections and the classical infinity corrections.
A mostly neglected lens is the Apo-Telyt 3.4/135mm. The once very popular focal length is now forgotten and there is some reason for this state of affairs. Most M cameras are fitted with the rangefinder magnification of 0.72 and 0.68 and the accuracy of this type in combination with the very small patch in the finder discourage the use of the 135. When applying the magnifier 1.25 or 1.4 this problem is mostly gone and certainly when you have the 0.85 rangefinder with one of these magnifiers. The 135mm has a most pleasing perspective and forces one to search closely for a good composition. It is a lens I do not use very frequently but on the M7 and MP loaded with Kodachrome (it still can during 2010) the lens brings unequalled image quality and colors.
I am quite fortunate in having been able to use almost every Leica lens since 1925, but I actually own a very small fraction of all the lenses ever made.
The lenses I own and use are:
Elmarit-M 2.8/24 asph. chrome
Elmar-M 3.8/24 asph.
Summarit-M 2.5/35
Summarit-M 2.5/50
Summicron-M 2/50 special 50 anniversary edition chrome
Summilux-M 1.4/50 asph. black
Summilux-M 1.4/50 asph. chrome special LHSA edition
Apo-Summicron-M 2/75 asph
Summarit-M 2.5/75
Apo-Summicron-M 2/90 asph
Summarit 2.5/90
Apo-Telyt-M 3.4/135mm
Tri-Elmar-M 4/28-35-50 asph. chrome
The current range of Leica lenses is quite extensive, going from 16mm to 135mm and covering almost every conceivable assignment. This statement deserves a qualification. The lens range is related to the optical and mechanical limits of the manually focusing CRF. For a modern SLR camera a range from 10mm to 800mm is typical. The lens range for the Leica CRF can be extended with the help form Zeiss and Cosina with wide angle lenses from 12mm to 15mm.
The lenses I own are not necessary the best lenses Leica has on offer. The range is based on the use I have for the lenses and the fact that I dislike using additional finders. The exigency to have to switch your view from rangefinder to auxiliary frame-finder I find distracting. The additional bulk is also an unpleasant consequence. I know that the wide angle lenses have enough depth of field to allow photography in point-and-shoot style, but the new high-speed wide angles deserve careful focusing and framing for optimum effect.
There is still a widespread notion (very difficult to stamp out presumably) that wide angle lenses are required for landscape and architecture and tele-lenses for portrait and landscapes again, with the 35mm and 50mm falling between the two main categories and appropriate for reportage and documentary style of photography.
This is an unfortunate labeling of lens properties. The focal length of a lens determines the overall magnification and the relative proportions in size between foreground and background. The aperture determines the relation between in-focus and out-of focus areas and the combination of focal length and aperture defines the extension of the sharpness plane.
The skillful association of these properties define the photograph and its content and message. This blending of properties is not dependent on the subject matter but on the subjective quality of the photograph. You can create excellent portraits with a 1.4/21mm wide open and fully stopped down and great landscapes with a 2/90 wide open and stopped down to 16.
The focal length of 24mm is for me the wide angle limit as it is the shortest focal length that can be used on the M8 when using the range finder frame lines. On the M9 and all film loading M-bodies the additional finder is required. Both 24mm lenses, the Elmar and Elmarit offer superior performance and they are my preferred lenses when testing sensor or emulsion properties. Owning both is a bit of a luxury, but the Elmarit has a stop advantage (sometimes useful) and has the very classical chrome livery.
The new SX versions in 21mm and 24mm focal length offer a very impressive image quality. The lenses follow the now standard Leica design paradigm with aspherical surfaces, floating elements, special glass types and a Leica typical balance in the correction of aberrations. The ASPH and FLE properties were implemented by Canon around 1975. I would have preferred a restriction of the widest aperture to f/2, because this would have yielded more compact designs, but Leica would have countered that the difference between the existing 2.8 designs would not be enough to generate new sales. This is a fair argument.
The Tri-Elmar 28-35-50 is now out of production and my chrome version is one of only 500 made. The optical quality is most pleasing and this particular version has excellent mechanical operation, smoothly engaging the 28mm framelines. At 28mm the distortion is visible, but this can be used to enhance the message. On the M9 and M7 it makes good company and while you do not need to change lenses physically you avoid in the case of the M9 the possibility of attracting dust.
If you wish to have a set that is almost pocketable, the M camera can be fitted with the Summarit 35mm or the Summarit 50mm. The Summarit range is undeservedly neglected by Leica aficionados. The lenses are admirably compact and even the 90mm fits in a pocket. The four lenses together have a small footprint and two M bodies with these four lenses cover a wide range of subject matter and assignments. The range offers the very classical 35-90mm focal length, the mainstay of Leica CRF photography. The Summarit 50 is a very basic lens which suffers a bit from the fact that it is trimmed to such small proportions and offers one extreme of the range of choices in the 50mm spectrum. The NX 0.95/50mm is an impressive lens in size, price and performance. It has a strong sense of “yes-we-can” thinking and is verging on a luxury that can hardly be justified, unless as a prestige object. If there were only the Summarit or Summicron 50mm lenses the NX would offer a viable extension of possibilities, but the availability of the SX 50mm forces the NX to a more marginal role. The NX is a mechanical marvel and an optical tour de force. The challenges in optical and instrumental demands were such that the lens can be seen as a catalyst for general optical and mechanical design for Leica. The SX 50mm has the same basic design (ASPH, FLE, special glass), but the much bigger size of the lens elements and a new level of manufacturing tolerances plus the demand to keep the overall size as small as possible puts the NX on an elevated platform.
For most practical tasks the SX is more than enough and the NX is for my tastes to heavy and big. A real addition to the 50mm stable would be the often rumored 2/50mm with eight elements.
The Apo-Summicron 2/75 is outstandingly good and should be one of the first lenses to buy. It has a much wider versatility than is often assumed and is one of my most used lenses, next to the SX 50mm. The Summarit 75 is the preferred choice when I wish to travel light and that is also the argument for using the Summarit 90mm. For better performance I can select the Apo-Summicron 2/90 which stopped down is almost as good as the superior Elmarit-R 2.8/100mm. The A-S 90 could benefit from the inclusion of the FLE mechanism, but sometimes one needs to ask the inevitable question when to stop improving lenses beyond the level that most practitioners can appreciate and use.
I would plead for a new lens paradigm based on the observation that most high speed lenses are not used at infinity but the optical corrections assume infinity as the plane of sharpest focus. It would be interesting to study the advantages of high speed lenses corrected for let us say ten to twenty meters, so falling midway between the true macro corrections and the classical infinity corrections.
A mostly neglected lens is the Apo-Telyt 3.4/135mm. The once very popular focal length is now forgotten and there is some reason for this state of affairs. Most M cameras are fitted with the rangefinder magnification of 0.72 and 0.68 and the accuracy of this type in combination with the very small patch in the finder discourage the use of the 135. When applying the magnifier 1.25 or 1.4 this problem is mostly gone and certainly when you have the 0.85 rangefinder with one of these magnifiers. The 135mm has a most pleasing perspective and forces one to search closely for a good composition. It is a lens I do not use very frequently but on the M7 and MP loaded with Kodachrome (it still can during 2010) the lens brings unequalled image quality and colors.