15mm Heliar II vs. III

[ferider]

Can somebody explain the difference to me, please, on a digital Leica ? I understand vIII was made for the Sony a7*, among others. Does vII show "Italian Flag" on M9 or type 240 ? How do you code either ? Thanks,

Roland.

 

[Alfonso B]

Old version had 8 elements in 6 groups, new one has 11 in 9. So it's a complete optical redesign designed to increase the angle of incidence of light rays hitting the sensor stack, so the light passing tru a green filter wouldn't hit a red-measuring pixel etc. I think leica sensors have less issues than Sony with the II as they knew people are going to mount all kinds of biogons and super-angulons and designed the stack accordingly. I have no first-hand experience other than mk. II on fuji, but someone will surely chime in on that.

 

[jarski]

I remember folks using CornerFix software earlier with RF wides and M9. haven't tried personally. sounds like v3 is better alternative these days.

 

[kj_]

I've shot version II quite a bit on the M9 & on film as well as some Sony cameras. It's a great little lens. I've even reviewed it on my site.

On the M9 there's a bit of colour shift ("Italian flag") and none of the built in profiles cleans it up completely. However with Cornerfix or the DNG Flatfield plugin for Lightroom it's very easy to correct. Possible to correct single images or batches very easily.

The main tradeoff vs the third version is that there's a little bit of smearing in the corners on the M9 and you need to stop down a little to get the best performance. Version III is better in this regard, with more even performance from what I've seen. To me the difference is not worth the larger size and weight of the newer lens though (never mind the higher price and worse ergonomics IMHO).

 

[maggieo]

I've got the LTM version, with a six-bit coded M adapter, set to the WATE code. I enter the 18mm setting on my M9-P and it works as well as cornerfix without the hassle.