Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/01/29
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]One aspect to be remembered -- and on this Erwin Puts and I seem to disagree, though I will assuredly allow him to speak for himself! -- is that the primary purpose of 'improvements' in lens design has been to reduce production costs. Older lenses were often labour-intensive to make. Manufacturers have strived to produce newer lenses which are of EQUAL quality while reducing production costs. A lot of older designs are quite acceptable optically and mere 'newness' means little in terms of relative quality. A 1940 seven-element lens may produce results remarkably akin to those from, say, a modern five-element design. Optical parameters have shifted a bit with time, and, for instance, modern lens design tends to emphasize 'colour saturation' a bit more than older lenses did. Even so, I would warrant that a World War II 1.5/50 Sonnar in LTM used on an M6 with an adapter would produce an image which only the most hawk-eyed of our number could sort from a shot taken with a current-production 1.4/50 Summilux. The original 2.8/90 was a five-element design. Was it a 'bad' lens? No. Is the current four-element 2.8/90 a 'better' lens? By optical standards, yes: but it's the third version of the telephoto design produced by Leitz/Leica, and they've had a lot of years to improve it. And, cranking in the difference in cost, that used Elmarit can look mighty attractive when compared to the new-car-in-the-driveway cost of the current Elmarit-M! Marc msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!