cameron_sawyer

If it's a gift, then a used 50 'cron, latest type, mint condition. It will go with the camera and make a nice set. If you were using it for yourself, I would say a Nokton 50/1.5.

 

The older Elmar or even the current Elmar is not really the best thing for an only lens -- the great thing about the M is shooting available light; you'll want something at least as fast as a 'cron.

I like it a lot on my M6. Heavy brass construction. Optically very nice. Quite a bit fatter than a cron, but nothing awkward. Slight intrusion into the 50mm frame.

Hey Dan: Just write me on cfsremote *at* lycos *dot* com.

 

Your e-mail address, the one which I have (at watercresspress) does not seem to be working.

 

Regards, Cameron

Mark, why is it a problem? Do you need the money? If not, then forget about it.

Why would anyone buy a Cosina (branded Rollei) Sonnar 40/2.8 for several hundred dollars when a real Leitz Summicron 40/2, a full stop faster, and a historical benchmark lens, can be had for $200 or so? The Summicron, to boot, is incredibly compact.

I like my CL better than any of the many cameras I've owned over 33 years. Its viewfinder is not nearly is good as that of a Bessa, not to speak of an "M" Leica. It is not nearly as well made as a Leica "M". It is likely to be less reliable than either the Bessa or the "M" (although I have not had in problems in a year of hard use). It is an old-fashioned light meter cell which is notorious for problems.

 

But is has these overwhelming advantages:

 

1. Much easier to carry than any other RF camera. Combination of compactness, vertical carry, and ingenious pouch. Only manual film camera (other than perhaps an Olympus XA) which you can carry all day without noticing, always at the ready.

 

2. Superior ergonomics -- shutter speed in the finder, shutter dial at your fingertip, you can set exposure without removing the camera from your eye. Head and shoulders better than other M's, except possibly the M5 (which I have never used).

 

3. Wonderful standard lens -- the 40/2 'cron is fast, sharp, beautifully made, and incredibly compact.

 

 

I bought it because I needed a travel camera. I liked it much more than I expected and my other M's have been largerly gathering dust ever since.

 

The 40 'cron and 90 elmar make a splendid travel kit. You can also use a standard 50 'cron on it if you want; there are 50 framelines. Add the Voigtlander micro 28/35 finder, and you can use the VC 28/3.5 which is almost exactly the same size as the 40 'cron.

 

Top ISO is 1600, but there's no problem using Delta 3200 -- just set the shutter up one speed from the meter reading.

 

I have not had any problem focussing mine; no more missed focus shots than with any of my other M's. But you will not be able to use a fast long lens like a 90 'cron, and a fast normal like a 50 'lux or 50 VC Nokton may be asking too much of the narrow RF base. Use an M with these lenses.

 

Make sure you buy one which has had a CLA and meter cell replacement, or buy one in need of service (at a corresponding price) and expect to spend several hundred $$ with Sherry or DAG.

 

 

The CLE has many devotees, but has a couple of, for me, fatal disadvantages -- no metered, fully manual operation; no replacement circuit boards (when, not if, this fails, you may have to throw the expensive body away); much less easy to carry than the CL. The built-in 28 framelines are awful nice, however.

The CL is a fabulous camera, but NOT because of any particular smoothness of wind or brightness of finder. No Leica winds on like the ball-bearing F3, certainly not the somewhat crude CL. The finder is dim-ish, and the shutter is louder and harsher than other Leicas.

 

Still, it's the best travel camera ever made. It has splendid ergonomics, better than other Leicas. If all manual exposure cameras had had the CL's handy shutter speed dial, which can be adjusted with one finger while you're observing the speeds and meter through the finder, AE would never have needed to be invented (it's weird, though, that more light makes the needle go DOWN in the finder, instead of up). It is significantly lighter and much more compact than other Leicas. You can carry it all day in its cleverly designed pouch and never notice it until you need it, the only Leica (other than, maybe, a screw-mount) you can say this about. It has outstanding lenses, the equal or pretty nearly so of any other optics ever made by Leica. It is inexpensive.

 

Go ahead, Robert, your wife won't notice. Mine bought me one for Christmas last year ;)

 

Just be careful about the condition -- if the meter cell has not been replaced, don't buy it. Make sure it's been adjusted for non-mercury batteries. If it has not had a full CLA recently, it would not be worth $700, which is about the going rate for not only pristine but recently rebuilt ones (mine cost exactly that, was mint, and had just come back from a full overhaul by Sherry).

Boys, boys! You don't understand each other. The Gypsy urchin gangs of Europe are NOT panhandlers. Albert didn't advocate whacking panhandlers; he was talking about defending himself against vicious armed gangs. Whoever objected has never been attached by them -- I was attacked just last week, not in Moscow where I livev, but in Rome. A scything blow with a tripod would be just elementary self-defense, and perhaps not enough. Personally, I would prefer an AK-47, but you can't get a permit for that.

 

So yes, Albert, you should watch out for them in Russia, where they cause probably MOST of the street crime. They are nasty little buggers and no one will blame you if you get in a blow. All Roma people (Gypies) are not criminals, but the gangs of knife-wielding children that terrorize people all over Europe are 99% Roma. If you see a group of Roma kids, run!

 

Have fun in Russia. Some of the advice you've gotten here is good; some of it is a little out of date. Russia is NOT like a third world country at all. The standard of living in Moscow is on a normal European level; St. Petersburg is much poorer but not "third world". Moscow is a lurid boom town with many great photo ops. Average people live fine but there are also an amazing number of extremely rich people -- the same number of billionaires as New York. So conspicous consumption is the rule and you will NOT want to dress down. As someone said, don't wear shorts. Bring your best casual clothes and you will want a coat and tie for the fantastic restaurants in Moscow and St. Pete (Pushkin Cafe, Oblomov, and Vogue Cafe are just three of the dozens of great ones in Moscow; try Nobles' Nest in St. Pete).

 

No one will pay much attention to your photo gear but you will want to roam far and wide so really I think the advice to ditch the R gear and travel light is good. A CL is best of all for a trip like that.

 

If you want to have a beer when you're in Moscow give me a call at 723-4816. I live 500 meters from the Kremlin.

If 3 MP is enough and she can live without an optical finder, consider the Casio EX-S100. It is tiny -- the size of a credit card, solidly built, has a 3x optical zoom, and produces great images.

 

See: http://www.steves-digicams.com/2004_reviews/ex-s100.html

Hi Frank:

 

Like many others, I'm scratching my head wondering why you bought a CL if you really wanted something completely different, namely a CLE. They are different things altogether.

 

I never wanted a CLE because it's too close in size to late M's with no particular advantages, and besides that not at all cheap and expensive to keep working.

 

Instead I bought a CL because I wanted something to travel with, something I could carry all day without it getting in the way.

 

And here the CL serves admirably -- it is superbly designed for just this task. Carried vertically in its little soft case, you hardly notice it's there, until you see a shot. The viewfinder is not as good as that of an "M", and you're limited in framelines (40, 50 and 90 only), but the ergonomics are the best of any RF camera I have ever tried, and the 40 'cron is a wonderful lens in a package hardly bigger than a body cap.

 

I love mine, and I bet you will too with time. To answer your question about why Leica is no longer making the CLE -- maybe because they never did make the CLE -- it was purely a Minolta product with no Leica involvement.

Ikonodul, not -klast, if they like them.

"the best zoom or telephone lens ever invented was a good pair of boots. You just step forward to zoom in or step backward to zoom out."

 

Absolutely! In my opinion, you get a meaningful change of perspective only by approximately doubling or halving the focal length. A 28, a 50, and a 90 (maybe a superwide for variety) is really all you could possibly want in terms of different perspectives.

 

And if you're trying to frame, rather than change perspectives, your feet are a lot faster than changing lenses. So I don't see the use of a 75 for anyone who has a 50 and a 90.

Eh, it's a crap shoot in any case; on this board as well. I have bought gear from the 'bay described as "very good condition" which in fact was absolutely mint; indistinguishable from new. A recent case like that from this board, too -- a modestly described (and priced) Noct' which although missing a hood turned out to be absolutely mint. And then on the other hand I bought a Nokton from someone here a couple years ago described as having "usual brassing" which in fact looked like it had been dragged behind a car; some time later a body described as "mint" which was scratched and heavily worn.

 

That's just the nature of buying stuff sight unseen. Get pictures and talk to the seller. I have NOT had better luck here than on the 'bay, but I would say that I'm generally satisfied with both marketplaces.

Marc, that is an absolutely fabulous image!!! Now just don't tell us any fairy tales about not cropping it . . .

I don't quite agree with Donald -- chromogenic B&W film has wider latitude even than silver, and even tends to look a little muddy in flat lighting. There is plenty of detail in those negs! Just need to adjust contrast in PS.

 

Of course, Tri-X, pulled or otherwise, will also look nice. In any case, the problem is not the lens.

The PC Nikkor will give you better coverage but this is not such a nice lens (I have one). I would think that the Elmarit or Distagon would give more pleasing images, even if you have to put up with light falloff at the long edges of the panoramic image (would not bother me too much I think). You can crop a bit top and bottom to give an even more radical panoramic format. Or if you don't mind spending a bit of money (and the camera itself looks pretty pricy), why not the Schneider Super-Angulon PC in Leica or Nikon mount? That's the one you're asking about. Now that's a beautiful optic.

 

If you just want to play with handheld panoramic photography, try the Zenit "Horizon", which costs peanuts and has a good lens, and shutter speeds up to 1/500. It uses 35mm rather than 220 film, but still gives plenty of negative area. The XPan is not a rotating lens panoramic like the Roundshot or Horizon, but still gives a nice wide format, has wonderful lenses, and is relatively inexpensive.

 

Be warned in any case that it is a holy b**** to scan panoramic negatives; and to print them in a chemical darkroom is also no walk in the park. You will have to buy a special negative carrier or use a hard to clean glass carrier, in a large format enlarger.

Generally nice images and gorgeous tonality (maybe you'll share your digitization technique with us). "Max: Montreal" is a perfect portrait. But if you don't mind some constructive criticism on the other shots:

 

1. "Young Love" is nice and moody but in my opinion is severely compositionally challenged. The lamp post dividng the picture exactly in half makes the composition static. The blank wall at the right of the frame is empty and static. You might try different crops to create more tension in the composition.

 

2. "Pino & His Family" again has beautiful tones and the faces are interesting. But your camera is not level!! And again, the composition lacks tension.

 

3. "Chinese Gourmet" again, unlevel camera!

 

4. "Elvis: Delray Beach" -- could use a good crop from the left. Also, the lady and her child -- closer and just as sharp as the main subject -- distract. More light on the main subject (probably out of your control) or at least selective focus would have helped there.

 

5. "Barmaid" -- lovely image with the four washes of light on the back wall providing a perfectly composed backdrop. A wider aperture for more selective focus to "pop" the subject would have really helped, however, as would a bit more light on the subject.

 

6. "Legs" -- splendid image; might benefit from a little tighter cropping but still lovely with its unexpected pose and juxtaposition with the dog looking out the opposite side of the frame. Nice one!

Concerning the "overarched limb and rumpy look" -- whew, that's a wide load! It usually does in such cases to avoid such unflattering angles. That can be quite a challenge! But she looks fine in your fourth shot so we know it's possible.

What Lutz said. The LAST place you want to lose contrast is in the optical system. A lower contrast lens is lower contrast because it loses information due to poor transmission or veiling flare. Your 'cron puts all the tonal information onto your film; you can't blame it for that. It's up to you to adjust the tonal scale (choice of paper and development time if chemical; curves if PS) to fit your final output medium.

 

If you have a scene so contrasty that it even exceeds the film's ability to record (which is many tones more than either paper or computer screen), then you can pull process or choose a lower contrast film.

 

Your example image has plenty of detail at both ends of the tonal scale; it just needs to be adjusted.

They ought to set up in Krasnogorsk, a suburb of Moscow, next to the Zenith factory, where there are probably more workers skilled in hand-making fine optics than anywhere, at a fraction of the cost of such labor elsewhere. Land for a factory will be pretty expensive, but tax rates are good -- 24% corporate; 13% personal (flat rate). And everything is denominated in dollars, not euros.

Another film versus digital thread. Nothing like it to get things hopping here even if the same things are said over and over again.

 

Like many here, I am a film addict who just doesn't like the way digital looks at its present state of development. But guys, two words: "Moore's Law". It is inevitable that in just a few years we will have say 1 gigapixel APS-size (or smaller) sensors which cost like $0.29 each, which will capture fine details and subtleties of tone which film never dreamed about. No one will ever develop full frame sensors to any great extent because the smaller sensors allow a smaller camera and better, faster, more compact lenses. Digital and film will diverge, and film is toast.

 

Film has even less chance against digital image capture than 33 rpm vinyl had against CD's, because the CD format was fixed at a certain bitsream rate (to this day) a bit lower quality than the best vinyl sound, while digital image capture does not demand a standardized digital image format, allowing manufacturers to increase image density every year just like Intel increases the speed of computer CPU's. Even though CD sound never quite reached the quality of the best vinyls, vinyls have virtually disappeared, relegated to a tiny niche for a few fanatic connoisseurs.

 

If an 8 megapixel image looks a little artificial compared to an analogue film image, how do you think a 20 megapixel image will compare? 200 megapixels? 2 gigapixels? There is no inherent limitation.

 

Leica is toast, too, unless it manages to reinvent itself as a manufacturer of superb optics for digital cameras. Given the large amount of capital needed to do this, I consider this quite unlikely. Zeiss, which makes reference-quality superspeed cinema lenses (35mm for cinema is quite close to APS format), is a much better candidate for this niche (regular wide format cinema is 22mm x 16mm; APS-C sensors are 22.7mm x 15.1mm -- the required image circle is exactly the same).

 

How would you like to shoot with a set of Zeiss aspherical Master Primes -- twelve of them at focal lengths ranging from 16mm to 100mm, all of them F/1.2 lenses (!) with T-stops of F/1.3 (!!!). And just the right image circle for digital sensors! Of course they're huge, bigger than Noctiluxes, and cost $20,000 -- $30,000 each. But that's not the point -- the technology exists, and will be easily adapted to digital capture as soon as high resolutions sensors are developed.

 

See: http://www.arri.com/entry/products/mp.htm

Noctilux to compliment -- not replace -- a 'cron is fine. As others have said, it's very much a special purpose lens which makes sense only for use at F1 and F1.4. But it's more interesting than the 'lux with a much more distinctive look -- it looks a little like large format and has weird, beautiful out of focus rendering. But as to performance? What, you want it to look like your 'cron? What's the point? The Noctilux vignettes tremendously wide open -- three stops or so out to the corners, and the Summilux is soft, but why would you care? Sharpness is not the point of such optics; they are made for extreme subject isolation and special effects.

 

Consider also the 50/1.5 VC Nokton. Vastly cheaper than either Noctilux or any version of the Summilux, has a really nice look

wide open (and is actually quite sharp, unlike the 'lux), and can be used as an excellent general purpose normal lens when stopped down. It's a little bulky compared to the Summilux, but nothing like the Noctilux, which is a real bazooka. If you want a fast normal which is also sharp wide open, then besides the unaffordable (and unavailable) 'lux aspherical, this is your only choice. But again, query whether you need a fast normal which is very sharp wide open, when you have a 'cron.

If you bought it already, why do you want others' opinion? Use it and form your own opinion.

 

But since you asked, I, for one, love this finder. I think it's the single most useful M finder, because unlike the M3 finder, 35mm is usable (at least without glasses), and for 50 and above is worlds better than the 0.72. Pop on the VC 28/35 minifinder (which is so small you hardly notice it, unlike other accessory finders) and you're good to go with the 28, whose framelines you lost when going to the 0.85 finder. It's great!

 

By the way, the same minifinder gives a great boost to the versatility of the CL, which is very sweet with the little VC 28/3.5 lens.

"Contrary to the 40mm lenses the 90mm Elmar and Rokkor were both made by Leitz and feature identical glass and built except for the filter size. I had a Elmar-C and now have a thin T-E, but I do not think it was a step up."

 

Only the first generation Rokkor (serial no. on the filter ring). The later 90/4 Rokkor for the CLE (serial on barrel) is a different optical formulation and was made in Japan by Minolta; Leitz had nothing to do with it. Gandy says (http://www.cameraquest.com/mlenses.htm) the second version is slightly better. It is supposed to be multi-coated, but I've heard that the earlier CL lenses were multi-coated, too, just not advertised as such.

 

I have the later lens and have had excellent results with it. It's the only 90 I know that will go in your pocket for travelling (besides the expensive Macro-Elmar), and it's cheap, too.

Absolutely -- if you want it and have the money, why not??!! Buying an a la carte MP is not really an equipment acquisition -- it's the acquisition of a beautiful thing made just for you which will last a lifetime.

 

You'll have to configure it according to your own taste (that's the whole point!), but consider the following: black paint = very pretty, but prone to wear, but then again, so what? I love my BP LHSA M6, which is definitely a user. Black chrome: most functional; looks a bit like gunmetal. Maybe you like the look of it? Leatherette: definitely. Everyone hates the bathtub strip standard finish of the MP. Engravings: according to your taste.

 

Viewfinder: for 50mm, 0.58 is marginal, 0.72 is OK, and 0.85 is optimal. 35mm is reasonably comfortable with 0.85 if you don't wear glasses. So if you don't wear glasses and don't plan to use a 28mm heavily, then 0.85 is best.

 

0.85 is a wonderful finder, not quite appreciated in my opinion, because unlike the legendary 0.92 finder of the M3, it is just wide enough to take in the 35mm view. So it is more usable than the M3 finder. It is optimal for 50mm, so if 50mm is your usual normal lens, you will really want this finder (maybe delete the 75mm framelines). Obviously, the 0.85 is very helpful for the 90mm.

 

0.58 is good if you wear thick glasses and don't see even the 35mm frame very well with the 0.72 finder and need a little extra eye relief. Or, if you use mostly 28mm and 35mm. It is quite poor with the 90mm.

 

0.72 is a good universal finder for someone who mostly uses 35mm. Occasional use of 28mm works, and 50mm is not too bad, if not quite optimal.