Analog/Vintage/Film lenses on Digital M?

[mgrinnan]

Hello,

Over the past two years I’ve managed to acquire several lenses... 21mm f/4 Color Skopar, 28mm Elmarit v3, the 35mm Summaron, the Minolta 40/f2, a 50 Summarit f1.5, a DR Summicron, as well as a 90 Elmar f4.

Shooting on film, I’ve been happy with the results of all of these lenses. But seeing as how the price of M9s is dropping, I wonder if I could use the above mentioned lenses on such a camera. Digital M shooters -- do you get good results from vintage glass?? If I buy an M9, should I plan on dropping crazy cash on modern glass? I’d love to know.

Thanks

 

[Ko.Fe.]

It depends. If you like soft and glowy images which some even modern lenses gives, you'll be happily calling it as vintage rendering on M9. It also depends on condition of optics. Haze will make it even more glowy on M9.

From what you have I have on M-E:

Elmarit-M 28 2.8 III was very good from 2.8.
Rigid, which is same as DR was good from 2.
Elmar 90 f4 M collapsible is good from 5.6.

I sold original Summarit and Summaron before going digital. And I don't remember if you could select them in M9. Three I have tried and mentioned above are listed in M9 lens selection.
I was reading about Rokkor 40 a lot lately and at least CLE version is reported to be fine.

The main thing is clean optics. I have old, but clean Russian Biogon and it is sharp enough on M-E. While esterday on-line I observed some not so overwhelming results from the King of Bokeh on M9.

M9 is great if you use film M. My film usage dropped twice after getting of M-E and M8. No reason for color film anymore. Took M3 and M8 today for local event. Should have couple of frames to try to print and already posted color digital M image at community forum, while event was still on.

 

[sepiareverb]

Summarit-M 1.5 on M9

 

[Richard G]

They all work: it's one of the reasons to get a digital Leica and not change formats. You don't need new lenses. You might want the haze cleaned from a few, however, especially that Summaron if it's the 3.5, and the 90 Elmar. And you'll be more fussy about resolution and focus, once you recover from the inability to check either of those on the M9 LCD. I happily used a tabbed Summicron 50 for close to thirty years until I discovered on the M9 that it back-focused by a couple of centimeters. I had it corrected.