Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/01/28
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Eric, > Not true. The Zeiss 35mm 1.4 is not the best, not even in the top two. :-) > It's rather old, from the 70s I believe. The Zeiss 35/1.4 is the only SLR 35/1.4, other than the Minolta AF 35/1.4, to employ a hand ground aspheric element and does enjoy (by what I've heard over the years) the label 'finest' among competing SLR 35/1.4's. I own the Contax version and my ex owns the Minolta version. In tests I did, there wasn't a great difference between the two but the open aperture performance of both was much better than the Nikon MF 35/1.4. They all had fairly heavy falloff and not great corner performance @ 1.4 and all cleaned up nicely by 2.8-4. > Leica has the SAME 15mm lens as Zeiss. It's made by Zeiss. I KNOW that. No need to yell it. Did you know that the Pentax 15 is also the same (though people on the Pentax list believe it to have an aspheric surface)? My point was that Contax holds the best claim for bragging rights on the lens, or possibly Pentax, who, as I said before, had a hand in its original design. > The 19mm Elmarit > I'll stack up against Nikon's or Canon's 20s and say there is no comparison > at all. Don't know about the Zeiss 21. I'm sure it's just as good or maybe > better. The Contax 21mm, by its published MTF, is the finest sub 28mm lens ever to be MTF'ed. Its performance on the bench would easily beat most 50mm's at their best apertures. As far as I know, this is the finest SLR 21mm ever made. Danny Gonzalez