Re: [Leica] Warm Nikkors?

[Ken Iisaka <kiisaka@ms.com>]

John McLeod wrote:
> In my experience, however, Nikon lenses can vary quite a lot.  There is no
> doubt that my old Nikon 50/1.4 manual focus lens from about 20 years ago was
> very cold.  I have taken the same picture with it and other lenses and it
> will render an off-red color almost blue-red.  On the other hand, when I
> went through my F5 phase (Eric was right when he said it would pass), I
> bought 3 new 50/1.4 Nikkors for testing.  One was downright yellow-orange
> and the other two were fine.  I concluded that while some of this has to do
> with film, perception, etc. some of it is good old-fashioned quality
> control.  On the other hand, the Nikon 50 was quite sharp at 1.4 in the
> center, which was not true of the new 50/1.4 R Summiluxes that I tried,
> despite their other excellent qualities (great contrast, great sharpness
> from corner to corner when stopped down).

Again, the colour rendition may vary depending on the vintage.

Older Leica lenses, with blue to purplish coating are indeed "warm".  My
early Summaron 35mm 1:3,5 is downright yellow.  Nikkor-H 50mm 1:2 from
the 60's is warm, where Nikkor-H 85mm 1:1.8 is cool.

However, all of my multicoated Nikkors (28mm 1:2.8, 50mm 1:2, 50mm
1:1.4, 105mm 1:2.5, Micro 200mm 1:4) are quite consistent across the
board.  My Leica lenses (Summaron 35mm 1:3.5, Summicron 35mm 1:2,
8-element version, DR 50mm, 75mm, Elmarit 90mm, first version,
Tele-Elmarit 90mm, first version, Hektor 135mm 1:4.5, Elmar 135mm 1:4) ,
of which only one is multicoated, are all over the place.

If we bring the lenses of different vintages into this discussion, we're
comparing apples and oranges!