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Help! Need to avoid Summilux 50 ASPH
- Thread starter colinh
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furcafe
Veteran
Exactly, particularly when you're trying to stop motion. It doesn't matter if you can take a reasonably sharp photo of a stationary object @ 1/4th sec. or whatever if your subject is moving even a little (e.g., someone engaged in conversation or laughing @ a joke). And the "just use faster film" argument doesn't hold water when you're in the middle of a roll.
That said, you do pay a significant premium for fast lenses & if you don't do a lot of "available darkness" shooting or have a real need to minimize DoF, a photographer will probably be better off using the extra money on other things. Even if 1 does want or need fast glass, others have already pointed out that there are many good, lower-priced alternatives to the ASPH 'lux, especially @ Leica's current pricing.
That said, you do pay a significant premium for fast lenses & if you don't do a lot of "available darkness" shooting or have a real need to minimize DoF, a photographer will probably be better off using the extra money on other things. Even if 1 does want or need fast glass, others have already pointed out that there are many good, lower-priced alternatives to the ASPH 'lux, especially @ Leica's current pricing.
Harry Lime said:
aizan
Veteran
changing film midroll doesn't hold water? aside from being easy to do, you only blow one frame, if even that.
furcafe
Veteran
Just my opinion. Changing film midroll is a significant PITA to me, regardless of whether any shots are lost (& yes, I've had to do it on several occasions, but only when a body was experiencing a mechanical problem). If your experience is different, knock yourself out.
aizan said:
colinh
Well-known
memphis said:
Are the Canon and Nikon and whatever screw mount lenses still being made, or does one have to look for second hand ones?
colin
furcafe
Veteran
The Canon & Nikon LTM lenses are all over 30 years old, but that doesn't mean that they can't meet your needs/expectations. Konica & Leica itself made some fast LTM lenses more recently (like 7 years ago), but they tend to be expensive & relatively rare.
colinh said:
kevin m
Veteran
Do you have any shots you'd care to share of 'living' human beings you shot at 1/8 sec? In my experience, 1/15 is pretty dicey, nevermind 1/8th and below...
All factors being equal, there's no substitute for speed. The old Summilux is lovely shot wide open, at a distance of 10 ft. or so. I'll take that over the sharper Summicron (Hexanon, etc.) if it means I have to shoot at 1/8th, or use 800 or 1600 speed film.
ywenz
Veteran
FrankS said:
lug a hassey+tripod to dinner with you just to get shots of sharp interior but blurry people? I don't think it's worth the effort.
Tom A
RFF Sponsor
I find it amazing that the "old masters" of photography managed to get any images of merit given their lack of the latest aspherics from Leica 
[/QUOTE]
Hear,hear! And let us not forget that they used films where 40asa+ was considered "super speed"! Look at Brassai's shots "Paris at night" and imagine what he could have done with a Noctilux and 3200 asa speed.
[/QUOTE]Hear,hear! And let us not forget that they used films where 40asa+ was considered "super speed"! Look at Brassai's shots "Paris at night" and imagine what he could have done with a Noctilux and 3200 asa speed.
kevin m
Veteran
Leica's engineers and its customers are chasing ever diminishing returns for ever greater sums of money. Long term, neither is profiting in the exchange.
furcafe
Veteran
I'm w/Kevin on this 1.
Fireworks aren't a good example because you're supposed to use long exposures to capture the light trails.
I, too often am forced to go down to 1/8th sec. Here's an old example @ f/1 & ISO 400:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/furcafe/37827926/
Heck, I went down to 1/4th sec. (@ f/1.4 & ISO 3200) for this shot:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/furcafe/326652826/
But that doesn't mean I wouldn't much prefer to shoot @ higher speeds anytime I'm shooting candids of people (portraits are much easier to do @ lower speeds because they're holding still).
Fireworks aren't a good example because you're supposed to use long exposures to capture the light trails.
I, too often am forced to go down to 1/8th sec. Here's an old example @ f/1 & ISO 400:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/furcafe/37827926/
Heck, I went down to 1/4th sec. (@ f/1.4 & ISO 3200) for this shot:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/furcafe/326652826/
But that doesn't mean I wouldn't much prefer to shoot @ higher speeds anytime I'm shooting candids of people (portraits are much easier to do @ lower speeds because they're holding still).
memphis said:
Ben Z
Veteran
kevin m said:
Actually Leica is profiting quite well from it. I just got the latest Leica Society (UK, not to be confused with the US-based LHSA) journal and Leica's sales figures show them making an amazing turnaround from 4th Q '06.
That said, I had the pleasure of Tom A's company as well as the short-term loan of his Summilux-ASPH a couple years ago and I don't doubt I'd prefer it if I were shooting ISO 100 E-6 of landscape or architectural details, on a tripod, at f/5.6 or wider, but for those occasions I would just as soon use the lighter Summicron which is very hard to tell from the Lux-ASPH. Shooting handheld (well, with a little help from a table or wall) at <1/30 at f/1.4 with 400-speed b&w, I'm well served by my $600 "bargain" Summilux E43. Maybe my opinion will change now that I've begun using the M8, so even though I'm a guy I reserve the women's prerogative to change my mind
colinh
Well-known
kevin m said:
I'm pretty sure they design to a price point.
INCREASED LEICA PRICES ARE DUE TO STUNNINGLY WEAK DOLLAR. NOT GREEDY LEICA MANAGERS.
colin
Gid
Well-known
colinh said:
Maybe, but that argument falls down when you consider the GB£ performance against the euro - M8 price going up in the uK.
kevin m
Veteran
I said nothing about greed or exchange rates, just that Leica is chasing smaller and smaller optical gains that cost more and more money.
Compare the VC Nokton to the Asph. Lux under whatever conditions you normally shoot and see if it's worth the difference in cost to you.
Harry Lime
Practitioner
Tom A said:
Yes!
Everytime I look at something like the work of Brassai at night, I'm dumbfounded by how he managed to pull it off. I believe he mainly used 25asa film (I think Barnack started out with 12asa...).
I know that Brassai did a lot of 'optical printing', but still it is amazing. Even going back as recent as Capa its amazing. These guys were shooting with 100 asa film on a good day, no built in meters and manual everything.
As I matured as a photographer it was this body of work that made me shape up and get out fo the magic bullet / gear arms race. At the end of the day, all that counts is the content of the photo. If you take a great picture, no one will care what it was shot with.
I always get a good laugh when I hear DSLR shooters yammering that they can't nail a shot because their camera will only do 5fps and the lens doesn't feature shake reduction on top of eveything else those black boxes do.
Then you look at what someone like Doug Herr does with a beat up Leicaflex and manual lenses....
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Ororaro
Well-known
Summarit-M 5cm. My favorite lens. 300-500$.
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colinh
Well-known
kevin m said:I said nothing about greed or exchange rates, just that Leica is chasing smaller and smaller optical gains that cost more and more money.
Compare the VC Nokton to the Asph. Lux under whatever conditions you normally shoot and see if it's worth the difference in cost to you.
Sorry. Didn't mean to shout at you, as such.
It's just that I'd read too many posts, saying the price increases are outrageous. The falling dollar has a lot to do with the price increases. I know you didn't mention it.
I thought you meant that they were going after the tiniest increases in quality and costs be damned. I don't think they do that. I'm sure (based on I can't remember what
) that there are designs they could realise, but that no-one would buy due to the cost - and that therefore are not manufactured.I'm also pretty sure that their price increases are well-considered. I don't think they raise them for the fun of it, or to make a quick buck. I got the impression they were more interested in putting the company back on a more solid footing - which is what we want, isn't it?
colin
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x-ray
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Tom A said:I find it amazing that the "old masters" of photography managed to get any images of merit given their lack of the latest aspherics from Leica
Hear,hear! And let us not forget that they used films where 40asa+ was considered "super speed"! Look at Brassai's shots "Paris at night" and imagine what he could have done with a Noctilux and 3200 asa speed.[/QUOTE]
Tom you're dead on. I've said this many times too.
As to CV lenses vs Zeiss vs leica, I own and have shot a number of CV lenses including the 50 Nokton and have the 35 Nokton, 28 Ultorn and 15mm. Despite what a few say these are not second rate lenses. I now shoot a mix of all three brands and have been shooting them under very difficult conditions. There's nothing second rate about construction or performance. I''ll go so far as to say that if the 35 Nokton had the Leica mane on it it would be praised as the mopst revolutionary 35 on the market. I owned the 50 Nokton and tabbed summicron prior to the Zeiss planar and asph summilux. I have no regrets buying the Planar and do regret selling the Nokton and buying the asph summilux.
Get over your problem with CV and forget the price vs performance. Price has nothing to do with performance. The performance is better than many lenses currently made. And as to signature, yes it exists but few people on this forum have the skills to exceed the performance of any of these lenses. The lenses are better than WE are! We are the weakest link in this process.