Why do you need a better lens ?

[Brad_]

<I>Perhaps you could ask him Brad?</I><P>

 

Cameraphone. He was pressed for time and didn't mention brand or how good the audio

quality is.

[________1]

"How much he was conscious of the possibility of making the same style of work, but much sharper, I have no idea."

 

Between '42 and '46 Robert Frank worked as an assistant to several professional Swiss photographers. By '48 he as an established fashion photographer in NYC working for Harper's Bazaar Magazine. Then he went on a little trip.

[al_kaplan1]

Hey, a year or so ago I started writing here in the Leica Forum about my 85/2 LTM Nikkor. Now I know several people from herewho've managed to snag one on the 'bay, each time for more money! There were some great lenses being made 50 years ago, and not just by Leitz.

[Troll]

My apologies, Anthony.

[anthony_brookes5]

No need to apologise Bill - it was a possible response.

[andy m.]

Please see <a href="http://www.photo.net/photo/1062758" >this image</a> , taken with a Pentax K1000. I think it speaks for itself.

[range_flounder]

This point has been beaten to death, but if the old folks were happy with old lenses, why can't we? I'm not saying that it's wrong to feel like you want the best lens; it's more than ok, however, to like what you have. I just won a $120 auction for a clean Summitar and I'm just tickled.

[rj]

To answer you question "Why do you need a better lens?" you have to define better. I like build quality, durability, and lens signature (look) in a lens. Flare resistance might be in there too. I can't stand flare. These qualities would, for me, define better.

 

I don't think I have ever looked at a lens test and sharpness is never a huge deciding factor of a lens purchase. I would rather look at shots taken with the lenses. I have seen some great shots come out of my collapsible cron, it has a definate signature to it and one that is pretty pleasing to me. Its definately a keeper, (well if I could find one that doesn't have scratch marks all over the front of it I would possibly trade it.) I read an interview with Sally Mann where she talked about the lenses she uses. These things are basically garbage lenses with decemented elements and fungus, but she claims to have searched high and low for just the right "bad" lenses that give her the look she wants. The lenses she use and how she uses them are what give her work the look she wants. These lenses are better for her.

[dan_fromm1]

What? Me need a better lens? Are you crazy?

 

At the moment I most need a better tripod so I can get better results with my longer lenses. I'm thinking Berlebach, not sure which one but it must have a leveling ball. After that, or perhaps before, depending on budget, a better way to carry my kit around so I can easily go farther afield. I'm thinking Ruxxac.

 

Yes, it would be nice to have more and better lenses, even though just now there are few I covet. I'd like to have a 135/3.5 Planar or a 135/8 ReproClaron, don't want to pay either's price, though. My pictures would be improved more by better support and simply being there than by replacing any of the lenses I now use.

 

And I do test my lenses, i.e., shoot comparable ones against each other. And on the emulsions I normally use. That's why, for example, I sold my former 100/6.3 Luminar and still have my 100/6.3 Neupolar.

 

Cheers,

 

Dan

[._._z]

<u><A href =

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00180a>

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00180a</a></u> <p>

 

<u><A href =

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=007l1X>

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=007l1X</a></u>

[roger_hicks1]

Dear Antony,

 

At photokina one of the Zeiss designers told me he kept several different lenses of the same focal length so he could get the look he wanted for a particular shot by choosing the appropriate lens.

 

Makes sense to me. A bit like choosing film or digital because they give different results.

 

Cheers,

 

Roger

[douglas k.]

Most people around here don't need better lenses; rather they need more film/chemistry/paper/processing/storage media/inkjet paper/whatever. They may also need more time to shoot. And most definitely need more time to look at pictures in books, galleries, museums, etc, so they can develop some sense of what works in photos. But they don't need better lenses.

[jtdnyc]

Anthony, I can think of one instance in which I wished I'd had a better lens...and then Leica subsequently produced it.

 

In the early 1990s, a gay activist here in New York was plastering outdoor walls in Lower Manhattan with posters that "outed" public figures who were closeted homosexuals. The posters looked like the "Wanted" posters one sees in U. S. post offices, except that instead of the word "Wanted" over the portrait, there were the words "Absolutely Queer."

 

These posters were usually defaced or torn down shortly after being put up, and it wasn't clear exactly how many different posters there were altogether.

 

One afternoon, while walking with my M6 and 35mm Summicron (4th v.), I came upon what was, I presume, an entire set of the posters -- 27 of them! -- still damp, freshly wheat-pasted to a wall, neatly arranged in 3 rows of 9 posters apiece.

 

This may have been the only occasion on which all the posters appeared, undefaced, in one place, and I was there with my Leica!

 

I made two exposures, both on TMY -- not the perfect film for the occasion, but certainly adequate. I considered going back with a slower film and a tripod, but I knew that the posters were likely to have been ripped down by the time I could return. I knew that my two exposures might be the only ones that would document this, ahem, historical oddity.

 

When I printed the better of the two exposures, I was happy that all of the portraits on the posters were clearly identifiable. And, even at 11x14, the small text on the posters in the center of the image was clearly readable. But, disappointingly, the small text on the posters at the corners of the shot was not well resolved.

 

Now, the 4th version Summicron is a wonderful lens, a great performer in a small package and renown as the "King of Bokeh." But what I needed for that shot was high resolution right into the corners...

 

...which is, of course, the fingerprint of the 35 Summicron ASPH.

 

I now own the ASPH. It's a little heavier than the v.4, and a little larger, and more expensive. But the designers in Solms succeeded in making the lens I wish I had had with me that day a dozen years ago.

 

By the way, in 20 years of Leica photography, that might be the only occasion on which I felt the need for a technically better lens than the one I actually had. A rare occasion, but it did happen.

[jimdesu]

Enlargement seems to make my landscapes. What seems kinda bland at a small size is much more rewarding when it's printed large enough to catch the nuances. Of course, I normally shoot them with my Medalist, but it's a good use of a sharper lens.

[al_kaplan1]

It's a shame that we have to live in a society where homosexuals can't just be open and honest about it. Here in North Miami, FL one of the city counclmen announced at a council meeting a few months ago that he was gay. There was a collective yawn. Some people had suspected it but nobody really seemed to much care. His political posters during the last election had a shot of him done with a 90mm f/2.8 old long chrome Elmarit on one or another of my Leica M bodies. In other elections it's worked just as well on straight candidates.

[ricardoyamamoto]

Because, if it's a "slow" lens and I like photographing under low light conditions (and don't want to use neither tripod nor a flash nor a faster film, etc), I'll have the same mathematical problem to solve every time. So, I'd want to solve it.

 

And if lens "X" gives me octagonal (or whatever) light spots appearing in most photos made with it wide opened and I don't like it, I would look for a lens that could give me rounder spots.

 

Etc...

 

So, although a lens choice can be a very small thing among so many other things to deal with (composition, content, ethic, film, etc etc...) it does matter for me.

 

But yes, I do think sometimes most people give more attention to it than it should have. But I think it's nice the way it is...

 

Regards.

[robert goldstein]

"I wonder if Robert Frank is kicking himself over this, looking at his book, The Americans, decades later. It could have been so much better with sharp contrasty flare-free lenses."

 

So, would Robert Frank would use the same equipment if he were doing this work today. Highly unlikely, I would think. So why should anyone else settle for inferior lenses if he can afford and appreciate better ones? I would be willing to bet that few of those who insist that it is the photographer, not the equipment, that really matters, choose cheap consumer lenses for themselves.

[._._z]

Al's hinting at something about himself?