75mm or just crop a 50mm?

[Rayt]

I used to own a 75mm Summilux but to play it safe always shot it stopped down to f2 or f2.8 due to mis-focusing. And then I got the 1.25x and things got easier but had to unscrew the damn thing whenever I changed lenses. So I sold it. Now I am thinking about a Summarit or used Summicron but since I am now shooting digital with a 40MP sensor why not just shoot a 50mm and crop it to a 75mm? What is the real advantage to a 75mm for street and portraits when I have enough resolution to crop a 50mm Summilux?

 

[shimokita]

I am mainly a 50mm shooter...

but a big fan of 85 and 105 on Nikon manual focus body

Not sure how much compression plays a part with the 75mm as I don't own one, IMHO significant difference with the longer focal lengths.

Casey
.

 

[CLAdictic]

Based on my experience with both a 50 and 75 I find that I use the 75 most of the time. When I was shooting professionally, editorial and stock, I found my summilux 75 f 1.4 did most work, followed by my 28 and 35 WA's. Today I still use my 75 most of the time. It's big, heavy, but incredibly sharp, with wonderful color rendition.

 

[dof]

The mild telephoto compression effect of the 75 can be a real advantage for portraits.

 

[Sonnar2]

There is no difference in cropping a pic taken with a 50mm f/1.4 to a genuine 75/2 pic.
Other than with a 75/1.4 which has smaller DOF (but it's harder to focus).

The same goes with cropping a 35/1.4 compared to a genuine 50/2.

Effective with higher resolution lenses and cropping you need less lenses than traditionally.

 

[kshapero]

I used to own a 75mm Summilux but to play it safe always shot it stopped down to f2 or f2.8 due to mis-focusing. And then I got the 1.25x and things got easier but had to unscrew the damn thing whenever I changed lenses. So I sold it. Now I am thinking about a Summarit or used Summicron but since I am now shooting digital with a 40MP sensor why not just shoot a 50mm and crop it to a 75mm? What is the real advantage to a 75mm for street and portraits when I have enough resolution to crop a 50mm Summilux?

I say just shoot the 50mm and crop when necessary. It is very freeing to just shoot one lens, (although I do shoot a 21mm now and then)

 

[jsrockit]

As long as you don't mind throwing resolution away and you can pre-visualize 75mm (which rangefinders have an advantage with), I don't see why it wouldn't work. On any other camera other than a high res rangefinder, I would rather have a 75mm. I'm a composition nerd, so I need to see exactly what is in my viewfinder. But if you see 50mm and 75mm frame lines at the same time, it would work well. Not for me, but it could work.

 

[raid]

I often use the 75/1.4 side by side with a 35mm/1.4 lens, and this set is all I need for most cases. I more often find myself carrying a 50mm lens plus a 35mm lens but not the 75mm lens due to its weight. I don't own a 75mm Summicron. I wish I had such a lens.

 

[Rob-F]

The 75mm Summicron is nice and small, no harder to carry or shoot with than a 50. It outperforms most 50mm lenses; probably all of them except maybe the 50 ASPH.

 

[Benjamin Marks]

75, if you can afford to keep it. The 50 is more versatile, but the 75 is a great specialty lens. But this really is a question about how you see the world. 50 used to be my go to lens. Over the last 10 years or so my own "default" has gotten wider. So a 35mm on the camera and a 75 in the bag is not an uncommon combination for me, and it is enough of a jump in focal length that it feels like a real difference compared to the wider lens.

 

[Godfrey]

I used to own a 75mm Summilux but to play it safe always shot it stopped down to f2 or f2.8 due to mis-focusing. And then I got the 1.25x and things got easier but had to unscrew the damn thing whenever I changed lenses. So I sold it. Now I am thinking about a Summarit or used Summicron but since I am now shooting digital with a 40MP sensor why not just shoot a 50mm and crop it to a 75mm? What is the real advantage to a 75mm for street and portraits when I have enough resolution to crop a 50mm Summilux?

I have the Summarit-M 75mm f/2.4 lens. It is a delightful lens and produces superb FF photographic captures, and is reasonably light and compact at the same time. The f/2.4 maximum aperture is fine to work with since with a lens this long I'm almost always set at f/4 to f/5.6 for exposures all the time anyway.

If you want to use only a 50mm lens and crop to the 75mm FoV, your total pixel count will be reduced to about 18.4 MPixel from a FF native 40 MPixel sensor. The resulting image size crops the 36x24mm format to about 16.5x11.0mm. (In pixels, 6000x4000 to about 3965x2643 for a 24mm sensor ... I don't have a 40Mpixel sensor and don't have the dimension spec handy.)

(Doing the same thing on the 24Mpixel, APS-C format Leica CL, using a cropped 35mm capture to simulate the FoV of capturing with 50mm, it nets an 11Mpixel image.)

Depending upon what your intended use of the photographs might be, the 18.4 Mpixel image should be just fine for most uses (just like the 11 Mpixel image with my CL is usually just fine when I crop to the 50mm FoV). The biggest thing you're giving up is the rendering qualities of the individual lenses ... the 50mm lens and 75mm lens will invariably have nuances and subtleties in their rendering qualities that are different, beyond the simple notions of DoF differences. This is often the reason why many people have several 50mm or 75mm lenses—to choose different rendering qualities. 🙂

G

 

[Retro-Grouch]

Godfrey makes a very good point. Often, the most interesting part of the signature of vintage lenses is what's going on in the corners and edges. You lose all that when you crop, and only get the more "perfect" central portion.
I loved my old Nikkor S 50mm on full frame. As a portrait lens on APS-C, it was just boring.

 

[Ronald M]

The mild telephoto compression effect of the 75 can be a real advantage for portraits.

Second one of these so far. Lenses do not compress, only limit the field of view. Now that we have photoshop, you can compare two photos taken at same time, SAME PLACE with tele and wide. Crop the wide and image will be exactly same as tele. Quality will be less because of magnification, but one will overlay the other exactly.

Ref Walther Benser Leica book from 1960. You should know Walther Benser the renowned Leica rep.