Leica Summar 50 2.0 Lens

I bought a 1937 Summar the other day that had little bits of paint inside. The paint inside the barrel had flaked

off and was floating around in there. Opening it was fairly easy and I cleaned the glass w/ regular lens cleaning

fluid and lens paper. Here's a few pics. It has a 34mm UV filter (uncoated) and a generic slotted hood and I

couldn't get it to flare at all. It can't resolve detail like my 50 R Summicron, but it is pretty sharp. The pic

of my cat was shot wide open. Many people speak badly about this lens, but it looks ok to me.<div></div>

Shot Two.<div></div>

Shot Three.<div></div>

Nice job, pictures appear sharp and with good color rendition. Thanks for sharing.

Yeah, it looks like a nearly new lens, except for the edge being oddly OOF... which I really like. I have a half dozen lenses that are the best of my kits that others pan as being bad lenses. I wouldn't pay much attention to the bad reviews.

it resolves a lot more detail in colour with good contrast compared to my 1936/37 elmar 9cm. i don't shoot colour at all with my elmar. in black and white it is not a bad lens.

Thanks for mentioning the OOF edges. I assume you mean the pic of the cat. Guess there is a certain amount of vignette wide open. Funny, I didn't even notice it. Easy enough to fix in PS, but it works for this "portrait". These are from low res Walgreen's scans, so I think any oddness at the edges is from that. Here's another pic from that roll and it looks sharp all the way across.<div></div>

Nice job on all shots, what is the film, f stop, shutter speed?

It doesn't make much sense to pan a 1937 lens, does it? They are mostly valued for their smooth, classic rendition.

It wouldn't be fair to expect it to compare to today's lenses for resolving power or contrast.

 

As to flare: I have a Summar. What I see is a fairly low contrast image that can have a bit of veiling flare. I have not

yet noted any diaphagm images, refelctions, etc.

 

You have some nice shots there, Steve. Looks like you have a really good example of this lens!

The film is cheap Fujifilm 200 and I am glad you asked because I had assumed it was 400 and had been shooting it at that! Fortunately color film has a very large exposure latitude, so shooting it off by 1 stop apparently works fine. Keep in mind that the shots have been edited in Photoshop. They didn't look like this out of the camera, but a few adjustments to Levels and Contrast brought out the good stuff. A small amount of Sharpening was applied, but wasn't really that necessary. The cat was shot at F2, all the others were shot around F8. I say around F8 because the Summar doesn't actually have an F8 stop. No aperture clicks either. It goes f2, f2.2, f3.2, f4.5, f6.3, f9, and tops out at f12.5. An odd progression. The scans would have been better if I had used my local good lab, but they don't do 1 hr on Sat so I went to Walgreen's. Monday I get the Tri-X shots back. B&W is what I actually bought the lens for, but I wanted to shoot a roll or two of color just for fun. My Elmar 50 3.5 does a better job w/ the color, but I think I prefer the Summar's rendition of shadows and forms and limited color palette. I think that opening the lens up and cleaning it probably helped a lot.

The corners do vignette which is why the Summitar was developed. While the vignetting was acceptable with the black and white film, the new color film required more even illumination.

 

enjoy your Summar. I like mine.

Steve,

 

nice shots! Obviously you are also a first class camera lens repairman. Congrats.

If you have the glass edges where that paint fell off of cleaned and painted black again, you will reduce the flare of the lens. As you saw, it's not hard to get the front lens cell out to do that, the rear group by comparison is very hard to get out, requires a custom ring wrench. Well worth paying for a professional CLA of a Summar -- if the front glass is clear.

 

Lots of Summars and Summitars are ruined by careless cleaning of the front glass, which is a hunk of very soft flint (lead crystal) glass.

 

Shooting into back-lit trees is how to make a dizzying picture with a Summar.

 

Indeed, the light falloff of the Summitar is less than the Summar, and the original Kodachrome was so incredibly contrasty that it exagerrated this defect.

 

With modern color print films (like my favored Portra 400NC), the Summar is a fine light-weight travel lens, at least if the target is 4x6 inch prints.

The Summar can flare in direct sunlight, but when carefully used, it can produce very nice looking images. I bought a Summar as a replacement for a stolen one, and this image was from the first roll:

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/6171378

On my shot there's obviously some sharpenning, from being put onto a CD, but it gives a good idea of the tonal qualities of the Summar<div></div>

Adrian,

Your shot shows exactly why a good Summar is a fine lens. Definitely has an older, more classic look.