Lens character - old or new?

Here's a picture done with my M3 and "new" Summarit lens at 1/30sec and f1.5. Some interesting OOF highlights were cropped out. Cool lens, I think.

It is soft, but in the print, whisker hairs and short hair on his head are individually rendered. This is a flatbed scan of a print I made tonight with my small enlarger.
 
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A comment in another forum about the current Summicron was that one received a dermatology lesson with every picture taken with the lens. I've been through two of the current ones and now use the current Elmar-M 50mm which is a little warmer and not quite as sharp as the Summicron, and the pre-ASPH Summilux 50mm which I think is in a class of its own. What a great lens and boy does it get criticised just because its an old design.

I really like the older designs from the 60's & 70's - they have a little less contrast, may not be as good with flare, and manage to produce beautiful transitions yet still be sufficiently sharp to produce hight quality pictures. I have a Jupiter-8 from 1959 I think and that is also a great lens, so it isn't a question of the cost of the lenses.

 
Excellent DoF, Brian. Did you just focus on the eyes, or did you focus 1/3rd into what you wanted to be sharp?

FrankS - love that portrait!
 
Brian Sweeney said:
The DOF at F1.5 at 3ft is ~1". Seems like more!
Click to expand...
Perhaps good (read: unintrusive) bokeh factors into what we subjectively perceive as sufficient DoF.

Would be interesting to compare the Summarit's performance with the Jupiter-3. I wonder if a good J-3 can match the Summarit in that regard.
 
I kept my first version collapsible Summicron and rigid version too for the reason mentioned above. The lenses are sharp but not too sharp. The collapsible is maybe better for people photography than the rigid version, but both are fine.
 
Seems that lens character is more than sharpness: the way the lens renders transitions between light and dark, tonality, bokeh, highlights, contrast &c enters the overall feeling of the lens' imagery.
 
lens character

lens character

I've been going through the same issues with new vs old glass. For some time I've felt the newer lenses have lost the character that lenses once had. Certainly they render images technically superior to older glass but photography isn't about numbers on a chart or lines per MM. Photography is a viaual art with art being the key. I have none of the new leica glass and find it too harsh for my taste. I have glass form the 70's tot he 90's for general shooting. My 50 is a generation prior to the current one and I like it very well but after printing some of my 60's and 70's images shot with my DR and rigid summicron 50 I might just get another 60's version. My favorite 90 is the elmarit I use from the early 70's. I've had the others and really love the 60-70's elmarit. I also have the non asp elamarit 21mm but like the look of my images from my previous 3.4 superangulon and might trade the 21 elmarit for one. My 35mm is a late non asp summicron but favor the old 35 summilux that I used for twenty years. I have even been experimenting with excellent results with vintage lenses. I particularly love the look that was around in the 30's and 40's. Sometimes I shoot with my IIIC and 28mm Hektor, 50mm elmar 3.5 and 90mm elmar. All are uncoated and give stunnign images. I particularly love the flare around light sources and the slightly softer and lower contrast images. I use Bergger 200 which is the old Kodak Super XX film from the 50's and develope it in the 50's standard developer DK-50. The only way that I've found to achieve the vintage look is to use vintage lenses and film / developer combinations. The look is different than can be achieved with diffusion on the lens or in the computer. The grain of the Bergger 200 and the soft flaring quality of the old glass has a genuine period look.

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/showgallery.php?cat=5045
 
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