Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/08/30
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]B. D. Colen continues his anti Leica rant: > Well, ain't that a hoot! Summilux! Summicron! Summaron! Leica! Leica! Leica! > And both shots were taken with Japanese glass - one a 50-year-old design, > the other a modern lens which sells for $489 NEW at B&H. <<snip>> > > B. D. > B.D. PULEEZZ, I really hate to see you keep making a fool out of yourself with your constant anti-Leica stance. This Summilux 50/1.4 shot at f1.4 blows away Peter's Nikkor and Cosina lenses by any measure you can think of: http://www.streetphoto.net/images/im120.jpg With apologies to Peter, who takes very good pictures. sl > > OK, folks, here's the results of the Guess The Lens contest. Only one > person correctly identified one of the lenses, but he matched it to the > wrong picture. The person who thought one picture was taken with a Summar > and one with a Summicron had the right idea, but the wrong lenses. > > This picture was taken with an early-1950s 50/1.4 Nikkor, wide open at 1/60: > http://www.2alpha.com/~pklein/temp/marianne-4.jpg > > And this one was taken with a nearly-new 50/1.5 Voigtlander Aspheric > Nokton, wide open at 1/60: > http://www.2alpha.com/~pklein/temp/marianne-5.jpg > > The 1/3 stop difference in apertures is insignificant for black and white > film. The reason why somebody thought the Nikkor picture was exposed less > is because the Nikkor has significantly less contrast. > > As far as delivering detail to the negative, the Nokton is clearly the > better lens wide-open. However, the Nikkor is kinder to women over 30. My > wife strongly preferred all the Nikkor's "portraits" to the Nokton's, > having no idea which was which. > > For those who thought that camera shake or focusing mistakes played a part > in which lens looked better, sorry, but I don't think so. I shot several > pictures of two different people with each lens, and the differences > between the lenses are apparent in all of the shots. One thing about the > Nikkor is that at this distance, wide open, it has a "hump" of decent focus > rather than a sharp "peak" of razor-sharp focus like the Nokton. I focused > very carefully on an eye in all cases. > > Remember, neither picture has any sharpening applied. And all lenses are > less than perfect at f/1.4, where abberrations abound and the depth of > field is a whopping two inches. > > Perhaps a couple of more pictures will demonstrate things a little more > clearly. Here's a Nikkor shot of another colleague. This is a full frame, > shown for scale. It's is a normal Web-JPEG with curve adjustments and > sharpening, reduced from my printing > file: http://www.2alpha.com/~pklein/temp/susan.jpg > > Now here's a detail of just the face with each lens. No size reduction, > *no* sharpening and *no* curve adjustments. These pictures were both shot > at 1/30 and f/1.8. Warning: These are approximately 140K files. > > Nikkor: http://www.2alpha.com/~pklein/temp/susan4-detail.jpg > Nokton: http://www.2alpha.com/~pklein/temp/susan5-detail.jpg > > Anyway, I hope this has been useful to somebody. It's unscientific, may > not apply to your lenses, and may have been influenced by the moon, swamp > gas, or the fact that I saw Cirque du Soleil last weekend. BUT it does > show what these two lenses do, hand held, in available light > conditions. The differences show up on a 2700 dpi scan, so they're not > academic. > > --Peter Klein > Seattle, WA > - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html