peter_n said:
Alkis you preferred the ASPH to the E43?
Peter, I never warmed to the preasph. Summilux (NB I am talking about the older E43 version). At the time I had it along the Summicron Dr and the Planar ZM and the preasph was the one I preferred the least: soft corners (a nuisance if you want to put the subject at the edge of the frame), quite low contrast wide open and annoying 1m min focusing distance. Still, I carried it alongside for when I needed f1.4 (which was often). In the end I sold the lot of them to get the Summilux 50 Asph.
Having said all that, I am looking at the photos above and they are all great. Perhaps Leica revised the E46 later version, with modern coatings and such, at the same time as making possible the 0.7m min focusing distance, but what I see here is not what I remember from the early Summilux 50. (I find Todd's photo of the musician particularly striking, surely a testament of his ability as well as the lens' performance).
As for the Summilux 50 Asph., there's a long, long list of superlatives that come to mind but suffice it to say that if I had to have just one lens that would be it. And although street photography is not appropriate to illustrate the strengths of a lens, I think even there there's occasion where the Asph. shines for its uncanny ability to preserve tonality wide open and in very adverse lighting conditions.
Below, a couple of impromptu pics from yesterday. Summilux 50 Asph, TriX @ 1600, DDX 1+4.
