Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/05/16
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]The Rev'd. Cason writes: I am in the market for a 180mm lens for my r6. I have decided on an APO lens because I will want to use the APO extender from Leitz later on. There are two lens for sale on Ebay. One is "for Leica R" Angenieux DEM 180mm 2.3 APO-R and the other is the well known LEICA 180/3.4 APO- R.-ROM. Does anyone have any experience with the Angenieux lens. I want to use this for wildlife photography and sharpness and contrast is important. All things being equal, I would opt for the faster lens because of the extender, but I don't really know if all things are equal in this comparison. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Rev'd Cason: I have the 180 APO-Telyt-R f3.4. It's a classic lens made originally by Leitz Canada for the US Navy in the mid to late 1970's. It was extremely advanced for the time using very expensive low dispersion glass. It's one of the best second generation lenses made by Leitz/Leica and the best 180 short of the newest APO's. In my experience, the f3.4 aperture is effectively a 2.8 aperture on another lens due to the brightness of the light transmission of the lens. I can recommend it without hesitation. I also recommend that you don't use either lens with an extender unless you already have one. It will not give you a very close focus or give you good ergonomics for handling. Instead, I recommend that you get a 400mm f6.8 Telyt for about the same price (or less) as an APO extender. I don't know anything about the Angenieux, sorry. You can see some recent shots taken with my 180 with the LA LUG at: http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=121017 You can't see the full spectacular performance of this lens on a JPEG posted to the web - but I assure you that it's there. Good shooting, Doug Douglas F. Landrum Laguna Beach, California dflandrum@earthlink.net