Canon LTM Canon 1.2 vs. 1.4 vs. 1.8 LTM, a technical comparison

[wilsonlaidlaw]

Thank you for doing all this work. I recently re-acquired a Reid and Sigrist Model III type 2 LTM camera, after a gap of 50 years. Eventually I would like to get the correct Taylor Hobson 2 inch f2 Anastigmat lens but good copies of these come very expensive.

My alternative was a collapsible Summicron but all the ones I looked at had horrible cleaning damage to the front element. Contrary to what the sellers claim, this will affect the image quality, reducing contrast and increasing both flare and veiling glare.

I eventually decided on a chrome Canon 5cm f1.8 and have found a near mint one from Japan at just £135. I assume Canon's coating must be harder than Leica's as all the lenses I looked at seemed to have far less cleaning damage than the Summicrons or maybe Japanese owners look after them better! Supposedly the earlier chrome models of this lens, suffer less from separation and fogging than the later black barrel models.

BTW if you need a lens hood for the older Canon lenses with a 40mm filter thread, JJC now do a ventilated hood for the Fuji X10 camera, which has a 40mm filter thread. Part no. for the chrome model JJC LH-JX20S.

Here is a picture of the Reid with my 5cm Summitar attached, while I await the arrival of the Canon, currently stuck in French customs at Paris airport.

Wilson

 

[ray*j*gun]

I have a mint 1.8 and alas when i looked using a bright led lite this morning i see some smudges which I think may be the beginning of fungus. Who is the go to lens guy for these beauties? Or, is it an easy lens to work on?

Thanks!!

 

[newst]

I have a mint 1.8 and alas when i looked using a bright led lite this morning i see some smudges which I think may be the beginning of fungus. Who is the go to lens guy for these beauties? Or, is it an easy lens to work on?

Thanks!!

Two suggestions...

Youxin Ye http://www.yyecamera.com/

Clarence Gass http://gasscamerarepair.com/

 

[sebastel]

hi wilson,

thanks for the hint to the hood.

cheers,
sebastian

 

[ray*j*gun]

BTW if you need a lens hood for the older Canon lenses with a 40mm filter thread, JJC now do a ventilated hood for the Fuji X10 camera, which has a 40mm filter thread. Part no. for the chrome model JJC LH-JX20S.

Wilson

I have one of these hoods for my 1.8 and it does fit but the thread pitch is slightly different and it does not screw in all the way. It works but one has to be careful about its stability.

 

[wilsonlaidlaw]

I have one of these hoods for my 1.8 and it does fit but the thread pitch is slightly different and it does not screw in all the way. It works but one has to be careful about its stability.

I guess the Canon 40mm thread will be the older fine thread pitch of 0.5mm which ran right up to 43mm filter thread diameter whereas now 0.75 pitch starts at 37mm and larger diameter. Leica just to be different used 0.5mm on 43mm diameter until not very long ago.

 

[Jdi]

These are almost 70 year old lenses, one copy of each. Would people say this would be representative of Serenar 50's in general? Never had one though they are frequently considered.

 

[wilsonlaidlaw]

I think the one of the main problem with older lenses, if they are in good condition is the reduction in optical quality arising from gas bubbles in the glass. Now I know that some say this does not affect the image quality but if this was the case, why did Leica for some of their raw glass materials, stir the molten glass for up to 6 months in a platinum crucible under very low pressure helium atmosphere. Schott glass (part of the Zeiss Foundation), who now make the lens blanks for Leica, has developed methods of treating glass in a special way, to remove most of the bubbles much more rapidly, thus avoiding the very laborious, slow and expensive platinum crucible batch method. http://www.schott.com/advanced_opti...-bubbles_and_inclusions_optical_glass_eng.pdf

Obviously lens computation and design has also advanced enormously from Nikkor's 200 ladies with abacuses (abaci?) sitting in a room for 6 months, re-computing the Zeiss Sonnar 5cm f1,5 to the Nikkor 5cm f1,4 and in the end, coming up with a lens which only works well up to about 7 metres distance.

 

[mcfingon]

I have a mint 1.8 and alas when i looked using a bright led lite this morning i see some smudges which I think may be the beginning of fungus. Who is the go to lens guy for these beauties? Or, is it an easy lens to work on?

Thanks!!

I have cleaned a 50/1.8 Canon of fungus by removing the rear element group and reaching through the aperture with a cotton bud dipped in alcohol. In this case it was relatively simple to clean as the fungus was only on the two dished surfaces either side of the aperture. So it depends if you are happy to do this sort of work and have a pin wrench to undo the holding ring at the back of the lens, and on the location of the fungus or smudging.

 

[Mackinaw]

I think the one of the main problem with older lenses, if they are in good condition is the reduction in optical quality arising from gas bubbles in the glass. Now I know that some say this does not affect the image quality.............

Believe it or not, having air bubbles in optical glass was once considered a sign of quality.

From an article written by Andreas Feininger in a Popular Photography magazine back in 1946,” Air bubbles will be found in most high-class lenses and are a sign of quality, rather than a defect, since at present it is impossible to make certain optical glasses absolutely bubble-free, their presence doesn’t affect the quality of the image in any way.”

Jim B.

 

[ferider]

(1)

I have cleaned a 50/1.8 Canon of fungus by removing the rear element group and reaching through the aperture with a cotton bud dipped in alcohol. In this case it was relatively simple to clean as the fungus was only on the two dished surfaces either side of the aperture. So it depends if you are happy to do this sort of work and have a pin wrench to undo the holding ring at the back of the lens, and on the location of the fungus or smudging.

(2) You can also access these two surfaces from the front. There is a tiny lock screw in front of the aperture on all Canon 50mm lenses. You unscrew it, and then you can unscrew the front half of the optics by hand.

And if you need to clean the aperture you can do both (1) and (2).

 

[ferider]

These are almost 70 year old lenses, one copy of each. Would people say this would be representative of Serenar 50's in general? Never had one though they are frequently considered.

Canon made these lenses for a long time. Like I said in the OP, my 50/1.4 is from the 70s, the 50/1.8 Serenar was first manufactured in 1951. I'm sure at least coatings changed in these 20+ years, and probably performance factors like flare, contrast and bokeh, too. Then again, basic design-cause aberations like field curvature, distortion, etc., likely remained similar. And as always, center resolution will strongly depend on how the lenses and your camera work together.

 

[ray*j*gun]

Thanks guys. I will generally not risk doing work my self but I am going to look at this operation more closely.

 

[johannielscom]

(1)

(2) You can also access these two surfaces from the front. There is a tiny lock screw in front of the aperture on all Canon 50mm lenses. You unscrew it, and then you can unscrew the front half of the optics by hand.

And if you need to clean the aperture you can do both (1) and (2).

Same principle used on many Canon RF lenses, including the 1.2 50mm, which you can quite easily clean from haze yourself:

http://www.johanniels.com/index.php...anon-diy-cleaning-a-1-2-50mm-rangefinder-lens

 

[ray*j*gun]

Thanks johan.... I just need to get a spanner.

 

[pepeguitarra]

When the 50/1.2 is clean from haze, it is a very sharp and nice lens. Here is an example wide open:

Boss by Palenquero Photography, on Flickr

Here is at f4:

Boss 2 by Palenquero Photography, on Flickr

 

[wilsonlaidlaw]

Well after a bit of a fight getting French Customs to release it, My Canon 50mm f1.8 has arrived. The parcel was not opened nor was I charged duty, so the Customs had just been hanging onto it for 10 days, just because they could.

The good news is that as described by the seller, on shining a UV rich light source through it, nothing fluoresces and it looks as clean as a whistle (are whistles especially clean?). Unlike all the collapsible Summicrons and f1.5 Summarits I looked it, the front element has not been scrubbed to death and has virtually no cleaning marks at all. I have checked the RF cam with my Leica M240 against optical focus at various distances and it seems accurate. I then checked its optical quality on the M240.

Well all I would say is that I have been rather spoilt by modern Leica and Zeiss glass. Now this is a pretty early example of the Canon lens with a low serial number of 97476 and maybe they got better later. It is pretty soft in the corners at f2 and I would class it as maybe on a par with my 1952/3 hex diaphragm Leica Summitar (a coated version of a pre-war design, with a weird convex diaphragm to try and reduce aperture shift). It is not as good as my 1954 Zeiss Contax Opton Sonnar 5cm/f1.5 but I suspect my father may have been lucky enough in 1954 to get a very good example. I would guess the Canon is not as good as a clean example of a Rigid Summicron.

The Canon will do just fine on the Reid for the moment until I source a TT&H Anastigmat 2 inch f2 lens.

Wilson

 

[Monochrom]

great!

great!

Thanks for the review, very nice.

The 1.2 lens is really a superb glass!

Renders beautiful images at 1.2 and even it´s quite sharp in the centre at that aperture.
Stopped down to 5.6 is excellent +,

I sold mine only because it´s focus throw was too long!

 

[ferider]

Well all I would say is that I have been rather spoilt by modern Leica and Zeiss glass. Now this is a pretty early example of the Canon lens with a low serial number of 97476 and maybe they got better later. It is pretty soft in the corners at f2 and I would class it as maybe on a par with my 1952/3 hex diaphragm Leica Summitar (a coated version of a pre-war design, with a weird convex diaphragm to try and reduce aperture shift). It is not as good as my 1954 Zeiss Contax Opton Sonnar 5cm/f1.5 but I suspect my father may have been lucky enough in 1954 to get a very good example. I would guess the Canon is not as good as a clean example of a Rigid Summicron.

The Canon will do just fine on the Reid for the moment until I source a TT&H Anastigmat 2 inch f2 lens.

Wilson

I have a very late 1.5 Sonnar and a clean rigid, and I concur with your assessment - on the 240 that is. Both latter lenses are outstanding wrt resolution though, and do beat even some of my modern 50mm lenses. Not sure I would see the difference on film (meaning my typical HC110 or Rodinal developed TMY, for instance).

Thanks !

Roland.

 

[Sonnar2]

What a nice test, thank you, ferider!

From what I found, the 50/1.8 is the best "landscape lens" and has a very high resolution from center to corner even wide open, and very low CA's. At f/5.6 it is *very* sharp. The 50/1.5 (later version, brown coating) is very soft wide open, but at f/5.6 it catches the 50/1.8 except from the outer corners. It has "warmer" colors than the later "chrome-black" series.
The 50/2.2 is also very sharp and has few CA's, but it isn't as good in the outer corners than the 50/1.8. It performs still better than the "newish" C/V Color-Skopar 50/2.5 though! Plus it is even smaller, weights less and is a bit faster...