Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/02/18

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Subject: RE: [Leica] FS: 35 1.4 aspherical (1st ver)
From: Austin Franklin <austin@darkroom.com>
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 17:34:28 -0500

And I quote:

"The first Summilux 35mm ASPH possessed two aspheric surfaces, polished 
with the normal technology available. It had 9 elements and had a limited 
production run of 2000 lenses at a price in 1990/91 that made Leica lovers 
faint. In 1994 The second version has been inroduced, now as a normal 
production lens. Still 9 lenselements, but a different design (different 
surface and different technique, pressed). pressing is cheaper than 
polishing, but the change from two to one surface has been explained by 
Zeiss, who maintain that two aspherics generate more problems than they 
solve. Leica now seems to agree.

So...either both Zeiss and Leica are lying, or the first version IS 
optically inferior to the second version....


Austin Franklin wrote:

> Right, but they supposedly aren't as optically good as the second 
version,

This simply not true.

Lucien