Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/03/31

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Not Leica quality
From: Christer Almqvist <christer@almqvist.net>
Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2001 09:16:52 +0200
References: <200103312218.OAA19326@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us> <0B684C41.1714BACE.0021EE48@netscape.net>

>     On Thursday I bought a 15mm Heliar. On Friday, I shot photos 
>with it, developed the film and printed (via Photoshop) the results. 
>On Saturday, I returned the lens and got a refund.
>     Sharpness/resolution was pretty good in the center, contrast was 
>OK--but vignetting was worse than I thought possible. Photoshop 
>managed to lighten the corners and edges (the left edge exhibited 
>very bad vignetting) but the the overexposure was so great that 
>there was little detail there and what there was, was very fuzzy. In 
>my opinion, this is an overrated lens.
>     Steve

Steve,

that was a clever move. I waited too long to get rid of mine  and had 
to use it as a trade in. I lost more money on that lens than on any 
Leica lens I have traded in. OK, I had bought all the Leica lenses 
second hand and the Heliar new, so the comparison is not 100% fair.

The main advantage of the Heliar was that it taught me to use my 21mm 
Leica lens much more frequently than I had been doing before. Other 
advantages: it is compact, and it is cheap. But it is not a lens to 
put on a Leica M body

BTW, I guess that you mean underexposure (of the negative) when you 
write overexposure. Or is this Photoshop language, with which I am 
not familiar, I have to admit?

Chris
- -- 
Christer Almqvist
D-20255 Hamburg, Germany and/or
F-50590 Regnéville-sur-Mer, France

Replies: Reply from "Tom Schofield" <tdschofield@email.msn.com> (Re: [Leica] Not Leica quality)
In reply to: Message from rshuntl@netscape.net (Steve Huntley) ([Leica] Not Leica quality)