ed_schwartzreich

<p>I did an extensive review of the wonderful lens, versus the Leica 50/1.4 ASPH in 2006. I use this lens regularly.</p>

<p>http://imagere.com/edsarticles/fast50shootout.htm</p>

I have a 1955 Jupiter-12 which acquits itself wonderfully on M bodies, including my R-D1 and M8. I once had another, later black Jupiter-12 in Contax mount which I tried on my Nikon S2. Focus here was off at all distances. Perhaps Dante Stella is correct, but this is the first time I have read anything like his arguments about back-focus on FSU lenses.

Try shooting a yardstick with the camera tripod-mounted. Is the lens focusing short or long, or just not sharp. Is the lens equally unsharp at all distances wide open, or are there only point in the focus range that are unsharp?

 

As prior posters have suggested, there are several difficulties possible. I have had collapsible Summicrons with OOF areas close up and at infinity, where I carefully reground the cam. I have had another lens which was worked on and the backfocus was off at all distances.

 

You need more diagnostic information.

Greg Metzcar appears to have suffered a Shintaro-like syndrome many years ago, and I have not heard anything about him for perhaps 8 years. He repainted an early 50 Summicron for me about a year after he had done an M2. It took the better part of a year to get the lens back -- he wouldn't answer phone calls -- and only when I learned that he was having Don Goldberg (DAG) reassemble his lenses, did I get results, through Don's intervention. There must be a real burn-out factor in repainting, or perhaps the fumes involved in the process affect their brains.

I have both an R-D1 and am M8. The latter gets more use because of it 10.2 MP, but the R-D1 is nicer to use, I tend to use my R-D1 for monochrome images, street shooting, being inconspecuous, and the like. Most of the time no problem up to 11x14 size full frame images.

Got mine Thursday and used it at a school concert that night. Not only is the auto WB much better, but shooting at ISO 2500, which I rarely do, seemed smoother. Perhaps the latter it is my imagination.

I use a MDa on my Reprovit apparatus, FWIW. It cost me about $200, but yours is in much better shape.

Nice shots, Alex. Here is a pan in IR of Crateer Lake, stitched from 5 M8 shots.

I was the person a year ago who wrote about the new 50 Lux, but the comparison was to the 50./1.4 Nikkor on the Millennium S3. The problem with DoF wide open in the close range turned out to be rangefinder focus error. This was after I had personally asked everyone knowlegible I knew of, incl Erwin Puts and even Peter Karbe, the designer of the 50 lux.

 

Lens compatibility with the Leica's rangefinder depends on exact tracking between the lens's cam and the camera's cam follower. It is not that infrequent to find a particular lens sample that does not track exactly perfectly with one's camera, even in this day of CNC machining. It turns out that the 50 Lux I had borrowed for my test tended to back focus just a smidgen -- not enough to be really "off", but enough to show differences with the Nikkor 50/1.4, and later with my 50 Nocti.

 

The DoF business is mostly a mathematical one. You need to check very carefully on your conjoint len / camera's focus accuracy before proceeding further. Try photographing a ruler obliquely, and find a third fast 50mm lens to compare the other two with.

 

Hope this helps.

Alex,

 

I am rather late in writing compared to the others here, but your article was quite well done. But what should please you as much, I hope, due to your profession, is that the writing was better than 90% of what the Viewfinder receives. I know this, since I am one of the associate Editors and have to correct other people's prose.

 

 

Regards,

 

Ed

I have been in contact with the people at Pixo who make the C1 universal battery

charger, in the hopes that this small, sophisticated charger would work with the

M8 and allow me to retire the OEM large brick charger for all than home-based

use. Unfortunately, no dice. It does not work with the M8 battery, the first

battery on their negative list.

 

Ed

I have both cameras, although my M8 died suddenly 3 weeks ago and Leica USA is replacing (!) it.

 

There is no contest on the files. The M8 puts out quality that looks like medium format. Period.

 

The R-D1s (actually an updated R-D1) is for me a much more ergonomically satisfying camera, more Leica-like if you will. Its output, especially in monochrome, has a Tri-X feel. And I have gotten significant magenta issues with the R-D1 as well as the M8.

 

Bottom line -- I'll keep both cameras, thank you.

 

Ed

Have used a 21/3.4 SA (works fine), and just about everything up to a 135/4 Tele-Elmarit. My 75/1.4 focused wrong -- the lens's fault -- and a 90/2 was fine. The 135/4 is best used with a Viso in short mount (needs a vertical chimney finder). The CLE is a versatile camera indeed. Best RF / VF of any camera I've ever owned.

 

Ed

Anybody have a Zunow f/1.1 to lend Raid? I always wondered how that lens's images looked.

I think it was on aperture priority, but there was no initial click of the shutter opening, as there would be with, let's say, a body cap on.

I actually very carefully tried the 21/3.4 on the preproduction M8 I had for a few days. It would mount, but the shutter wouldn't fire.

Answer is old stock. I had some left in the freezer. I'm mostly shoot pixels these days, but get this urge now and then . . .

 

Ed

I have used the removable take-up spool in my M5 many times, when I was shooting a short sequence for publication, and idn't want to sacrifice a whole roll of film. It is easy to remove the film in the darkroom with both spools attached, and then cut it off.

 

Ed

Here is one I took two days ago at a fair in Vermont, T400CN. Shot with a Nikkon S3, 50/1.4 Nikkor.

I will try to post the image.

I was not only present at the LHSA meeting last October in San Francisco when Peter's gem was sung, I was actually one of the singers! Somewhere there is a photo of us doing this, and I will try to find and post it. Mark Davison (who is, I believe a poster here) played the piano. There was no chorus line, unfortunately.

 

Ed

My choices are 25/2.8 Zeiss Biogon (using the Cosina 28/35 minifinder), either pre-aspheric 35/1.4 or 35/2.8 Jupiter 12 (depending on what sort of image I am looking for - my Jupiter 12 gives glowing pastel-like images), and either the Millennium Nikkor 50/1.4 with a adapter (see my review at http://www.imagere.com/edsarticles/fast50shootout.htm), the Cosina S Heliar 50/3.5, or a Noctilux, depending on the speed needed. I rarely use wider or longer lenses with the R-D1.

I have emailed Erwin Puts to ask his thoughts. He has written extensively about this lens.

 

The Minolta 24/2.8 VFC was the type of thing I had in mind when I felt that it made more physical sense for the optical engineers to change the plane of focus, curving it forwards, than to merely (somehow) just extend the DOF.

 

One further thought: from my understanding, floating elements can change the focal length of the lens (shorten it), thus increasing DOF. But even if this was the case, it would not explain why I found the DOF greater in front.

 

Ed

I have now reshot and replaced the 6 images in question, and it is uploaded onto the website.

 

Ed

Robert,

 

Thanks for the heads up. Indeed the center of focus on the f/1.4 image with the Summilux is off. However, things are more complex than you would think. I retook these images, and also altered the Summilux's focus by small increments both behind and in front of the observed focal point on the left can. In each case, the the can on the right was in better focus than the same scene shot with the Nikkor. I'll replace the out-of-fous Summilux image on the web shortly.

 

Mu surmize is that the floating elements on the Summilux do indeed change the depth of field, but not beyond the laws of physics. You will see when the picture is posted that the dof BEHIND the can is sacrificed in order to create greater dof IN FRONT. This makes optical sense.

 

Ed