Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/05/03

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Subject: [Leica] In praise of the 50mm...
From: Isaac Crawford <isaac@visi.net>
Date: Thu, 03 May 2001 22:28:23 -0400
References: <NBBBIDNIGLFOKNLJCPLHAEGLFPAA.danh@selectsa.com>

Dan wrote:


> > The irony is that I used to just go out with the M6 and 50/2, and my hit
> > rate with that one camera, one lens kit was better than I'm getting now.
> > And the < $1k 50 summicron is a real sleeper lens: produces images that
> > rival both of the others (each > $2.5k)!  For my style of shooting, you'd be
> > hard pressed to do better than the 50 cron.
> 
 	I agree completely. My 50 cron gets about 90% of the usage with the 90
coming in a distant third. I don't know if I've used the 35 since I got
the 50... I think right now my ideal set up would be my 50 cron, a
noctilux, and a new 50 cron for my IIIf... I use a pentax rig
occasionally. Guess which lens I use... that's right, 50mm f1.4...
	I am constantly amazed at how many truly wonderful 50mm lenses there
are out there. My 50mm summicron-m is certainly the best overall 50 I've
ever used, but my Pentax 50mm f1.4 is great. specially since it cost me
$10! I love how my Jupiter-3 (a sonnar rip off) renders pictures, and my
old Konica I rangefinder has a lovely collapsible 50mm (I'm guessing its
a Tessar design).
	I remember looking at one of my professors (Janice Levy, anyone heard
of her?) pictures in college. I thought they were beautiful. Luminous,
fairly fine grained, and of course the picture itself was wonderful. I
knew that she shot 35mm exclusively. I asked her what her film and
developer was. "Canon 50mm FD f1.4, Tri-x in D-76 1:1". Huh? I shot
tri-x and processed it 1:1 in D-76 too, except my stuff looked pretty
bad in comparison. The thing that really stumped me was that I had a
better lens, a 28-80 takumar zoom...:-) Ah youth...

Isaac

In reply to: Message from "Dan Honemann" <danh@selectsa.com> (RE: [Leica] 75 Summilux question)