[Leica] Tested out my 400mm Telyt F6.8 against some newer optics......

[Frank Filippone]

Next week, it will be the Tall Ships Festival in Long Beach.  Wednesday will
be the day the ships sail into the harbor, past Angels Gate Lighthouse. I
always wanted to take images of ships in full sail
.

 

>From on line maps ( don’t you love Google Maps!) I picked a parking lot that
would afford me a non-industrial background of the ships as they sail by.

That yielded me a distance of ½ miles as the closest distance from me to the
Ships.  Assuming a ship was 100 or so feet long, I would be using my D7100 (
I have long lenses for Nikon, and to be honest, an SLR ( or, if I had one,
an EVF camera)  is the only logical way to take images from that distance),
I calculated ( and you thought trigonometry was or should be dead when you
were 15) the angle of view I would need.  Then I looked up the lens that
would afford me that angle of view with some room for the ocean in the
scene.  It all calculated out to a 400mm lens.  I bought an older ( 1973?)
model Telyt years ago,.  I use it when I need the reach
. It is the
push-pull focus type.  With a Visoflex to Nikon adapter, it works on my SLR.
Thus the choice of the Telyt.

 

But I have a couple of other contenders
 a Sigma 400/5.6 AF and a Tamron
300/2.8 MF.  So I took them out today for a spin in the yard, focused at
some objects about 1/2 mile away.  

 

The results are in
. the 300/2.8 was the easiest to focus ( no surprise) and
the 400/6.8 was, by far, the best resolution of all.

 

With 24MP, you would think the old Telyt would be outclassed
 but it surely
had the best resolution of all.  The Sigma was the poorest resolution.

 

Balance on the tripod was fine
 the D7100 being fairly light, I expected the
combo to be a bit front heavy.. it wasn’t.. 

 

The Telyt is going to the shoot
 all 40 years old of it
.

 

You just can not beat Leica optics
..

 

 

Frank Filippone

Red735i at verizon.net