ZM Biogon 35mm or Summaron for that look?

i had the voigtlander ultron 35/1.7 and the voigtlander nokton 35/1.2 but wanted something that was sharper across the field and had less distortion. those two lenses are great for bringing attention to stuff near the middle with their vignetting, softer corners and shallow depth of field but didn't work well for me when wanting to stop down more and produce a flatter image.

after a bunch of recommendations i narrowed it down and agonized obsessively over two lenses - the zeiss 35/2.8 compared to the voigtlander color-skopar 35/2.5 PII and in the end decided on the color skopar.

i have had no regrets with it at all.

some B+W examples;



and all my color skopar shots on flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/nome_alice/tags/voigtlandercolorskopar35mmf25pii/
 
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But isn't 50mm too tight for landscapes? I can get Summicron DR for the price of Summaron but I'm worried that it will be too tight. What's the difference between 35mm and 50mm in practical landscape schooting? I think there's more control of what will be in the picture with 50mm.

Nome_alice, great photos on flickr.
 
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JohnFilmore said:
But isn't 50mm too tight for landscapes? I can get Summicron DR for the price of Summaron but I'm worried that it will be too tight. What's the difference between 35mm and 50mm in practical landscape schooting? I think there's more control of what will be in the picture with 50mm.
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Dear John,

No. I often use 135. Much less trouble with 'wasted' foreground and too much detail that's too small to see.

But everything depends on what you want and how you shoot.

Cheers,

R.
 
There's no right or wrong answer to this and no lens offers more or less control wrt to whats in the frame really. Its a question of how you tend to see. even ardent wide angle users will pull out long lenses and the other way round, but photographers are often characterised by where they tend to gravitate twds for most shots. I'm a medium/mild wide person most of the time, but use 21 and 200+ at times. Most tend to be shot on 24-35 though. In fact most of everything is shot with a 35mm.

JohnFilmore said:
But isn't 50mm too tight for landscapes? I can get Summicron DR for the price of Summaron but I'm worried that it will be too tight. What's the difference between 35mm and 50mm in practical landscape schooting? I think there's more control of what will be in the picture with 50mm.

Nome_alice, great photos on flickr.
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JohnFilmore said:
But isn't 50mm too tight for landscapes? I can get Summicron DR for the price of Summaron but I'm worried that it will be too tight. What's the difference between 35mm and 50mm in practical landscape schooting? I think there's more control of what will be in the picture with 50mm.
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The thing is, with anything wider than 50, you have to work hard to limit (or use) too much sky or too much foreground in most situations, John. Of course, it depends on what you want to shoot and what style you are developing. Here are two examples for 35mm landscapes:

195928625_sxHh8-L.jpg


252934494_dNqAP-L.jpg


People recommend 35 as a first RF lens because it's good for people shooting. Few RF users focus on landscapes; we are in the minority 🙂
 
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Ok, thank you all, you convinced me 🙂 So I will start with 50mm. My first thought is Summicron DR but there's also collapsible Summicron for half the price, size and weight and for not much more than DR there's also Summicron v3. Which would be best for b&w in your opinion? Is DR much bulkier in size and feel than the collapsible Summicron?
 
No question, the DR Summicron. It's a great lens, sharper in the corners than the collapsible, very well built and not big at all; when you stop down to f8, it's one of the highest resolution lenses Leica ever built. The v3 is a good lens too, more contrast, etc., but I find for B+W lower contrast helps.

And if you know and like Adams, sometimes when you are out shooting, the close up capability of the DR is helpful for details ...
 
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Another way to look at this is what works for most people and I think if you do some research you will find that 28-35mm probably covers the majority of famous landscapes with short to med teles (75-100 equiv) claiming most of the rest. The standard lens is used relatively little by many well known landscape photographers, not only Ansel. IMHO one of the key skills of a landscape photographer is to bring together elements of the landscape. the wide angles allow this by allowing the arrangement of components in space from the foreground to the distance, creating shapes and a sense of flow (and allowing changed emphasis). Teles allow this through layering, by compressing elements together and layering them on top of each other in visually pleasing ways or through isolation. Standard lenses allow neither terribly effectively and while a standard lens can be the perfect lens for a given landscape, it will not IMHO allow such dynamic and creative use of the tools I have mentioned and I suspect this is the reason why few use it. I spent many years shooting landscapes with a 5x4-10x8 and my FL choices were the same as they are with 6x7 and 35mm, roughly. in 5x4, I can count on one hand the number of shots using a 150, but I have plenty shot just on the wide side (135) or long side (200+).

IMHO the 35mm is a much, much more versatile lens for landscapes and arguably the most versatile FL full stop. It also has the added convenience of giving very nice frame line sizes in everything from CV R2M/Aa through to M2s, M6s etc.

So there you go, another perspective. For docu work, salgado evidently feels the same way. He shot 28, 35 and 60 with his Ms/Rs and to my knowledge used 50mm very little.

As another aside and this is not intended to upset anyone, people go on and one about what an amazing lens the 50 lux asph is yet I have seen so few really good inspired shots with that lens it is painful, so I guess what I am saying is that it gets worse when people use faster standard lenses 😉 Those who use them a few stops down and love 50mm for its FL (and therefore composition possibilities) tend to produce far better images IMHO than those who seek primarily to control DOF.

The problem with any of this personal optinion or comment on what most people seem to succeed with is that you might not be typical at all. You might find that 25mm is where you are happiest. Or 135!
 
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i tend to see choice of FL this way for landscapes: increase the FL when you want to reduce the number of elements in the frame. (you will find yourself wanting to limit subject matter in landscape shooting.) there are other considerations of course: you may pick a FL in response to a limit on where you can position yourself, for example. it's not that one FL is better than another. it's how you use the length that matters.

for 35mm format, 50mm is normal, maybe very slightly tele. that's a fine place to start. when you've photographed the type of landscapes you prefer with the 50mm for awhile, you can always acquire a wider or longer lens.

edit: by the way, the DR or rigid summicron is a nice lens for this purpose. it's very sharp at f5.6-8.0 with moderate contrast, favorable characteristics for landscape work.
 
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Too much foreground in Hill's photo for a 200, Cron, IMO.

Here is another 50mm shot:

126040059_KZhGb-L-1.jpg


I am guessing, using an M2, the OP will end up with both 35 and 50 anyways, so it's just a matter which one to pick first 🙂

John, before you buy the DR, check for haze with a flash-light, many of these older Leica lenses suffer from that. Can be cleaned, usually, but is additional effort.

Cheers,

Roland.
 
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roland, that's a very nice example of excellent composition, imho. a 50 seems to have been the perfect choice. masterful!
 
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