Re: Angenieux

["Charles E. Love, Jr." <cel14@cornell.edu>]

At 01:24 PM 12/18/96 -0800, you wrote:
>Angenieux never made a 35-70 for Leica but I'm sure the 45 to 90 was a
>quality lens.

I'm sorry, but they did.  They made both a 35-70 and a 70-210; they were
discontinued fairly recently.  Both got excellent reviews.  The 45-90 was a
quality lens in its day, but its day is long passed--it came in 1969, and
zooms have improved greatly since then.


 The Vario Elmar 35-70 was originally made by Minolta, and
>then in 1988 was produced in Germany. The lens is exactly the same
>optically but the German lens does not have a rotating front element,
>thus polariser friendly. The 35-70 is supposed to be an amzing zoom
>lens.

I think it is excellent (I have the early Minolta-made version).  I've made
some very big enlargements from slides done with this lens.

>I believe that most, if not all of the lenses built by other
>companies for the different Leica systems were built to Leica
>specifications,

I am afraid not.  Sigma built some lenses in Leica mount for a while; they
were, of course, Sigmas, which is to say OK but nothing special. ( Later on
Sigma was the builder of the Leica 28-70, the inexpensive (for a Leica) lens
introduced for the RE.  That was built to Leica specs, I suppose, since it
was called a Leica.)  In addition, Tamron built an adaptall adapter for the
R4; it permitted the use of all Tamron adaptall lenses on Leica reflex
bodies.  Of course these lenses were built to Tamron specs, not Leica's.

 so theoretically they should all be excellent quality
>lenses, whether this is true in practice is another question. Has anyone
>done any comparisons between lenses built by Leitz and ones built by
>Schneider, Zeiss, Minolta etc. for Leica? If so I would be very anxious
>to hear what you came up with.

Well, this is a different sense of "built for Leica," since these lenses
were called "Leica" and so were presumably something Leica was willing to
put its name on.  The Zeiss 15 for the reflex is also sold as a Contax lens
(different mount, same glass), and is outstanding.  Schneider built the 35
PC.  Minolta built the first 35-70, and it is optically identical to their
much cheaper 35-70 in Minolta mount.  The R 24 is a Minolta design
optically, though there's enough German work on it to give it a "made in
Germany" tag.  Minolta also built 3 lenses in the 70-210 range, all
identical optically to Minolta lenses, though with nicer mounts.  Optical
comparisons are tough, since Leica has never built its own 35-70 or 24, and
the long zoom has only just been made obsolete by the Kyocera-built
replacement (supposedly a Leica design).
>
>Cheers and Merry Christmas,
>Matthew
>
>Chris Fortunko wrote:
>> 
>> I was told today that Angenieux made a 35-70 zoom for the Leica. Is this
>> true? I cannot find any references to such a lens in my literature.
>> 
>> Can anyone comment on the 45-90 zoom by the same manufacturer. Is it up to
>> today's lenses in terms of performance?
>> 
>> Thank you,
>> 
>> Chris
>
Charles E. Love, Jr.
CEL14@CORNELL.EDU