[Leica] new 50/1.4 M lens

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant)]

Dan Cardish said:

Subject: Re: [Leica] new 50/1.4 M lens


> There was a time when I jumped at the chance to buy a new Leica lens.  I
> bought the 35/1.4 asphereic even though I had a perfectly good 35/1.4, and
> I bought the 90 APO even though I had a perfectly good 90/2.8.  And there
> was a time that, even though I have two perfectly good 50s (a 50 DR and an
> older 50 Summilux) when I would do cartwheels in my attempt to get the
> first sample of the new 50 to reach my local dealer.
>
> But now I'm not the slightest bit tempted.   Probably because of the
> emergence of digital.<<<<<

Hi Dan,
In my case the hesitancy of jumping to buy a new Leica lens has more to do
with, in this case , the Noctilux captures every damn bit of light image I'm
satisfied with. It's never failed me,capturing amazing moments under the
severest of lighting conditions one can imagine.

I've made many 16X20 fine art prints from negatives captured with the
Noctilux and sold to the National Art Gallery's Museum of Contemporary
Photography. So I'm not even looking for a "sharper image" for $2500.!

This new 50mm will probably make the image somewhat crispier, maybe increase
the contrast and I don't doubt several other things only appreciated on a
test bench, but not in the real world of push and shove photojournalism.

Add to this my ongoing involvement with Digital. At the moment I've shot two
assignments all digital with the Digilux ll and have been extremely pleased,
not to mention the client's response to the image look.

I mean, popping $2500 for a 50mm lens used at best about 25% of the time is
a bit much if one isn't going to earn some bread with it. And even though I
used the Noctilux 50mm for a considerable amount of the work shot for Women
in Medicine, it still wasn't the high end user lens, even when the light was
iffy.

I've been more than pleased with the CV lenses I've purchased this past
year, certainly the CV 35 f 1.2 aspheric, an amazing image cutter.

But in the earlier days any purchase was always determined by aperture speed
the fastest and not the crispy aspect. Fast was foremost simply because
that's the way I've shot most of my career, if you can see it, you can shoot
it!

ted