Leica Summilux 1.4 / 35

[herzie]

Hello,
the question to the Summilux users, which model is best and why? Tell me - Thank you.

 

[FrozenInTime]

Never tried the pre-aspherical lens, but I believe they were famous for producing outlandish coma. The lens is very small.

The Aspherical ( as opposed to the ASPH ) was a limited run edition with corresponding price tag.

The current ASPH was the first lens I every bought new : it was really ground breaking in it's performance.
Wide open the coma is virtually insignificant; the image sharp and flare is well controlled ( in indoor lighting situations ).

It's down sides is reportedly focus shift of the M8/M9 - but I've not seen this as I only have film cameras.
It's also not really a lens for shooting into the sun or extremely bright sources against a dark foreground - that will produce frame filling internal reflections.

(the white and blue streak on the RHS is the comet Hale-Bopp)

 

[sepiareverb]

The pre-ASPH versions have a lot of variation within the series- I've had two, made about ten years apart, and they performed very differently up close.

 

[x-ray]

Never tried the pre-aspherical lens, but I believe they were famous for producing outlandish coma. The lens is very small.

The Aspherical ( as opposed to the ASPH ) was a limited run edition with corresponding price tag.

The current ASPH was the first lens I every bought new : it was really ground breaking in it's performance.
Wide open the coma is virtually insignificant; the image sharp and flare is well controlled ( in indoor lighting situations ).

It's down sides is reportedly focus shift of the M8/M9 - but I've not seen this as I only have film cameras.
It's also not really a lens for shooting into the sun or extremely bright sources against a dark foreground - that will produce frame filling internal reflections.

(the white and blue streak on the RHS is the comet Hale-Bopp)

Flare is one of the big issues of the current asph summilux 35. This is why I selected the 35 1.2 Nokton over the asph summilux. 1/3 stop more speed and virtually the same performance at 1.4 minus the flare.

Back in the 70's my brother owned an early chrome version of the 35 summilux and I had the black version. At the time I purchased my sample they were very scarce and there was generally a three month wait to get one. I bought my lens new in 1968 from Ritz in Washington DC for a whopping $330. The lens was very nice at the time. I worked my way through school as a photojournalist and the summilux certainly allowed me to capture images that would have been a problem with a slower lens but the internal reflections, flare and coma killed a number of critical shots too. My sample behaved exactly the same as my brother chrome version and from what I've read it is claimed to be the revised version since it had a focus lock. I've also read that Leica claims no such revision of design and my conclusion from the these two lenses and another that a friend bought new in the mid 70's that there was no difference in any of the lenses. I suspect some of the differences could be due to sample variations rather than a formula update.

As a side note I have a current chrome asph summicron and feel it suffers from flare more than other lenses. My version is the retro that came with the old style round metal hood. I found the effectiveness of the hood to be very poor and purchased the plastic rectangular hood normally found on the regular version of the summicron which took care of most of the flare problem. Given a good lens hood the asph summicron performs extremely well.

 

[35mmdelux]

Hello,
the question to the Summilux users, which model is best and why? Tell me - Thank you.

The 35 Lux ASPH is the best 35 Summilux IMHO. At this speed there aint any contender that comes close overall. The Lux pre-asph has its "character' -- meaning propensity to flare and somewhat soft at full aperture. On the other hand, the Lux pre-asph is very compact which some shooters prefer to the ASPH.

 

[35mmdelux]

35 Lux ASPH flare shooting into the sun? Ive not had any flare problems with my 35 or 50 Summiluxes ASPHs. The again, I dont shoot into the sun.