2nd best lenses

Joshua_G:

The CV 28 Ultron is more classic in signature in my opinion. The contrast is slightly lower than the 28 Summicron but that's not a bad thing. The resolution is everything you could want and the tonality is very open and smooth. Shadows are full of detail and the highlights are clean and very printable. Film plays a part in this as well as developer and technique but my technique and film developer combo works very well for my style of shooting. I shoot delta 100, 400 and adox KB25. I use Ilford HC for the Ilford films and Rodinal for the Adox. I print mainly on Ilford warmtone MG FB. The Ultron makes stunning images. The mechanics are smooth and the aperture has just the right degree of click stop to keep it in place. Mechanically it's very good. I've had some bad luck with mechanical issues in 3 leica lenses and would stack my CV lenses up against the 80's generation leica mounts.

The V 28 Ultron is the first 28 that I've shot or owned that I like and I've had three Leica 28's of which none of them impressed me. I shot a friends 28 summicron and was quite impressed but found it to have little if anything over the CV.

As to 90mm lenses I'm a big fan of the v1 Elmarit (not tele) over all the others with the exception of the current Summicron asph. I have no experience with the new Elmarit-M but feel it's probably as good or better than even the asph summicron (no experience though). The v1 Elmarit is another of those classic lenses wit the same qualities as the CV 28 Ultron. Round open tonality with full shadows and excellent resolution and nice contrast. It's very sharp and performs better under 8 ft than the apo asph summicron. I'm quite unhappy with the apo summicron in that regard.

I'm not the kind of person that really cares what name is on my equipment as long as it delivers. I have no bias one way or the other and can make the same quality of image with almost anything on the market, japanese or german. There are very few bad lenses and camera bodies today. So much of the reputation of leica is dased on 1930's to 1960's performance when there was a difference but today with computer aided designs the difference is very small if any. The big limiting factor is the photographer not the equipment. One thing I've learned in the past few years is Leica doesn't have the market cornered on quality.

As to whether you will see a difference between what you have and the mentioned lenses I can't say but if I had your selection I probably would not rush out to replace them. You 90 Elmar is probably the least of all but the 85 Nikkor is very good. All your others including the Canon and Nikkor are classics and very fine.
 
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You might want to look at a 90mm Elmar-C (or Rokkor), made for the Leica CL/Minolta CL. It is very compact, durable, and images are wonderful. If you start using 90mm a lot but don't want to spring for an Elmarit, look for this little lens on the used market. It is a lot more modern than the 90mm Elmar--a very different formula.
 
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I forgot to mention the C/V 75mm/2.5 lens. All things considered: price-size-construction-image quality-price, it is certainly not "2nd best." As a matter of fact, I purchased all 3 of my "modern" RF lenses for less than the cost of 1 of the current Leica lenses of the same focal length. In my book that makes a lot of sense. YMMV. 😀
 
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