[Leica] Bokeh - 35mm lenses!!

["Richard W. Hemingway" <rheming@attglobal.net>]

I am posting part of an e-mail that I sent to a friend of mine as I thought
it might be of some minor interest to the group:

I have gotten my pictures back finally.  I hooked up my projector this
afternoon and looked at them and also several boxes of other slides that I
have taken before.  In the recent slides I tried to take pictures that
would reflect on the out of focus areas but was not too successful.  I have
compared the 35/2.0-M pre apsh, the 35/2.0-R, the 35/1.4-M asph and
35/1.4-R.  Mostly I tried to look at the backgrounds of a lot the slides
that I have taken and this is not scientific at all.

My conclusions:

1) 35/2.0-M, pre asph,  This is the queen of out of focus areas.  Very
smooth and almost liquid sometimes. No double images that I could find.
This was the lens that started me on my Leica quest and still is probably
my favorite in many respects.  I moved from it to the 35/1.4 as I take a
lot of pictures inside and don't like to use flash.  Shooting 64 ASA slide
film indoors takes a large f sometimes.  

2) 35/2.0-R.  Quite close to the 35/2.0 in my opinion.  Smooth and
sometimes I found that almost liquid aspect.  A hint of double images at
times.

3) 35/1.4-R  Fairly smooth but somewhat below the first two.  Some double
in the background sometimes but not harsh.  The lens that I use most of the
time.  My all around favorite lens.

4) 35/1.4-M, asph.  Close to the 35/1.4-R but a little more double
sometimes and a little harsher.  No coma.  

5) 35/1.4-M, older.  I have never used this lens but from the lens diagrams
I would imagine that the OOF areas are similar to the 35/2.0 pre apsh.  

6) 80/1.4-R. Very smooth and not harsh.  Probably about the equal of the
35/2.0-R.  My second favorite all around lens.  

I think that the 35/1.4-R and 35/1.4-M asph suffer from the number of glass
elements they contain and may have something to do with the little bit of
doubling that I see.

With all the above lenses that I have used I found that it was no easy
thing to find pictures that demonstrated much of anything about the OOF
areas and I think that they all are pretty good performers.  The 35/2.0-M,
however, has the "look."  As does the 35/2.0-R to a lesser extent.

Well, so much for analyzing the lenses.

Dick Hemingway
Plano, TX