Re: Cardish/Aspherical (2)

[Edward Meyers <aghalide@panix.com>]

About the 50mm f/1.5 Summarit... Already owning the 50mm Summilux
and 50mm DR Summicron, I bought a 50mm f/1.5 Summarit about three years
ago and began using it. Why? Because I remembered the wonderful look
of a photograph I made in 1956 with one I borrowed from a fellow
student, Don Nichols. At wide-open it has a special character. I 
choose the look I want and use the lens that gives it. Bob Schwalberg
once told me that the 35mm f/3.5 Summaron (first version) that I have,
used wide-open, gives better sharpness at the corners than at the
center. I've never tested it for this feature, but use it with this
in mind. The 50mm f/2 Summar I also own gives a wonderful low-contrast
relatively high resolution result. Remember the Eisenstadt photos
of the 1930s? The one shot above the Atlantic ocean from the top of
the Graf Zep? Probably shot with a Summar. Not a bad image.
I also have a 50mm f/2 Carl Zeiss Sonnar with the British Leica
adapter. This lens produces very high contrast and sharpness. I
got it when I want it...
So, improvements in optics are not always improvements in optics,
I say.... Ed Meyers

On Tue, 2 Sep 1997, Patrick G. Sobalvarro wrote:

> On the topic of the "Leica glow," I just wanted to say that my various
> Leica lenses have really very different looks to their out-of-focus
> regions, even when open to the same apertures.  My older 28/2.8 Elmarit-R
> has what Photo Techniques would call "complex bokeh," and while I like the
> look of its out-of-focus regions very much, they are a very distinctive
> element of photographs and must be accounted for in composition.  They
> aren't anything like the very smooth out-of-focus regions that my
> screw-mount 50/1.5 Summarit yields.  I would say that at f/4 the Summarit
> has the most pleasing out-of-focus rendition of any of my lenses, certainly
> more so than the sharper 50/2 Summicron-R.
> 
> The half-dozen or so other lenses I use regularly all have quite different
> characteristics.  I don't have enough experience with Japanese lenses to
> know where they would come in on this spectrum except that since I started
> paying attention to out-of-focus rendition, I've come to dislike the very
> obvious pentagons and hexagons one gets with lenses that have only five or
> six diaphragm blades, as is true of most newer Japanese lenses (and some
> Leica lenses).  But in rendition of out-of-focus regions there's so much
> variation among Leica lenses that I'd expect the same to be true with
> Japanese lenses.
> 
> 
>