Do you like the Canon 50/1.2 ltm?

pepeguitarra

pepeguitarra

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About two years ago, I bought a mint Canon 50/1.2 ltm for a lot of money. However, I was not able to shoot anything good with the lens. I was giving up and took it to a guy name Steve Choi in Southern California. He cleaned for $350 ( I was new, did not know much DAG, or Youxin) and the lens was shooting very nicely for while. Then I found out that this lens develop haze and that it needs cleanup every year. I also found a video on Youtube that teaches how to clean it up. I got the tools ($50) and with the video, I cleaned the lens myself in 15 minutes. I am enjoying this lens so much, that I do not think I can use another 50mm lens. Now, that I can clean it whenever I want, I really like the lens on the M9 and M8. I will be trying it on the M5 and M3. What is your experience with this lens?

Here are some shots taken with the Leica M8.u.


Canon 50mm f1.2 LTM by Palenquero Photography, on Flickr


Model by Palenquero Photography, on Flickr
 
Yeah, it's kinda weird going there. They fixed a Rolleiflex GX that noone else would touch for $200 for me. I was ecstatic about that. But then they go and do something like what they did to you.

Anyway, congrats on doing it yourself now.
 
Another detail about the lens:

Another detail about the lens:

My lens did not have any marks on the glass at all. However, I have noticed that the UV/IR cut filter, the UV filter, the ND filter, any filter will affect the behavior of the lens wide open, and even stepped down, even if not by much. So, the best shots are with no filter at all and a good shade (hood).
 
I've had a couple I have a black one at the moment that I got quite cheap because of the haze but as you say it's quite easy to clean. It's a good idea to make sure you get the aperture blades completely oil free which in my experience stops the haze coming back.
 
Fraser said:
I've had a couple I have a black one at the moment that I got quite cheap because of the haze but as you say it's quite easy to clean. It's a good idea to make sure you get the aperture blades completely oil free which in my experience stops the haze coming back.
Click to expand...

I did not mess with the aperture blades, so I will be cleaning often. I would think that the professional I paid for earlier could have done that, but apparently he did not. Bottom line is: I want to communicate my happiness with this lens, it is unbelievable.
 
I've shot one for years. It has never developed haze - which makes me wonder what lubricant he used.

At any rate - it's a fantastic lens. I'm quite fond of it.
 
Could it be that the $350 repair was not just to remove haze? I once had DAG repair my Canon 50/1.2 that behaved very strangely in that some parts in each image were out of focus (not necessarily in the back of the image). Don found out that internal glass elements had moved around.


143001-R1-21-21.jpg


143001-R1-19-19.jpg


rffcanon5012.jpg
 
I'm on my 3rd and best 50/1.2. I've gotten great shots with it over the years but now it sits, waiting to be sold now that I have a C-Sonnar and a A7s. Hate that the market for them has pretty much dropped out over the last few years, think it's going to be the first piece of gear I sell for a loss.

That aside, I was surprised at how great of a lens it is. All the articles/forums online complained about it because a dated design and a mediocre lens at best. The only thing I found to be true from online reading is that it is heavy (for a rangefinger lens), though it does balance very well on a digital body.
 
Mephiloco said:
I'm on my 3rd and best 50/1.2. I've gotten great shots with it over the years but now it sits, waiting to be sold now that I have a C-Sonnar and a A7s. Hate that the market for them has pretty much dropped out over the last few years, think it's going to be the first piece of gear I sell for a loss.

That aside, I was surprised at how great of a lens it is. All the articles/forums online complained about it because a dated design and a mediocre lens at best. The only thing I found to be true from online reading is that it is heavy (for a rangefinger lens), though it does balance very well on a digital body.
Click to expand...

Did the market drop out?
It's a $350-$500 lens last I noticed.
I still feel it's a viable lens and easily worth the price (and cleaning routine).
My current one is the parts of two lenses that had different flaws.
One with unrepairable rear elenents. One with scratched front element.
It's the best copy I've owned out of 3 tries now. (In yhe end the most expensive as well).
 
Good point!

Good point!

I took two lenses the Canon and a mint (bought in this forum) CV Nokton 35mm f1.2 Asph II. I could not focus with this last one. I could focus with the Canon, but the image quality was horrible. He looked at the lenses and did some test shots, amplified the results and asked me to leave the lenses do an estimate. I left the lenses and he was supposed to call me, he told me the Canon needed focus adjustment because it was front focusing, and clean up. I wanted to focus 0.5 m with the Nokton, not the 0.7 the camera allowed. As it turned out, when I picked up the lens, he did nothing to the Nokton and said so. But gave me the Canon clean and nice. Later after few days I realized that the one needing the collimation was the Nokton, which I asked Youxing Ye, he referred me to DAD because he did not do collimation. Dag charged $180 for the collimation and the lens is perfect since then. The Canon "went back to black". So, I concluded that the Canon did not need collimation but clean up only, but was charged for it anyway. Since the time had passed, I did not asked for adjustment and let it go. The problem is that this thread is becoming about it, not about the nice quality of the lens.
 
It's a cool lens. Unique in design, size and pictures that come back. It took me 3 copies to get a clean one that doesn't fog up. Here are some tests:

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=155193

and here a couple of film samples:

r1-Scan-140301-0011.jpg


r2-Scan-140302-0004.jpg


r2-Scan-140302-0017.jpg


One of the nice features of this lens is that you don't have to worry about cosine error (due to field curvature, focus and recompose is easy).

Roland.
 
I've actually owned this lens twice.

The first copy was excellent, and produced wonderfully dreamy images at f/1.2.

The second copy was this exact lens (http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/tag/canon-50-1-2-ltm/). It was absolutely florid with haze on the rear element. Youxin was going to clean it for $90, but I decided to simply return it to the seller.

Unfortunately, haze is just a fact of life with this lens, and it needs to be cleaned every 12-18 months. Contrast this with the MUCH better 50 f/1.4 LTM, which is a stellar performer (far better at 1.4 than the 1.2 ever was) and doesn't suffer from the same haze issue (at least I've never had an issue with it on any of the 3 copies I've owned).
 
I have used Steve several times. I always found his prices to be fair. What I really liked is that he could tell you when the repair would be done. It's hard to know if $350 is too high because it isn't stated what he had to do. The fact you could not get any good photos suggests there were more problems with the lens than just haze. $350 is less than 4 hours of labor.

I have used this lens once and found it unacceptable at f1.2 and only acceptable at f4.0 and f5.6, but I would not condemn every example of the lens because I can't tell if one I used was properly adjusted or not.

I used DAG only once and had a major problem with him business model. In the end I was just happy to get my equipment back after its 18 month stay in Wisconsin. But then again, if I had special equipment that I was really concerned about, I would sent it to DAG.
 
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