Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1996/05/09
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I don't know anything about the M 28mm lens, and I think that you probably need to decide whether you use the R camera or the M camera more, but I can talk about the R 28mm lens. I have one of the old 28mm f2.8 Elmarit-R lenses, which I bought used from KEH. It's a three-cam lens, but still probably from the seventies because the lens hood is a bayonet-mount thing that will hold series 7 filters in place. (There's also a screw thread for filters -- 48mm if I remember correctly. It vignettes quite noticeably if you stack two screw-in filters.) So it's a bit of a pain in the butt in some ways. On the other hand, it produces very nice results. I keep an 8x10 of my wife on my desk, a photograph I took of her with this lens last summer when we were at Caneel Bay. It was on Plus-X Pan, with the lens wide open to blur distracting foliage in the background. Although the lens was wide open the image is quite sharp, even at the edges (which are in this print despite its being on 8x10 paper because I typically print the full frame, ending up with broad margins on the sides). Anyway, contrast and tonal range are really very nice. Out-of-focus objects have a wonderful quality to them that's a little hard to describe -- a kind of impressionist look as though the tones had been smeared on with a broad brush. Okay, I'm raving a little, but this is my favorite lens. I understand the new one is supposed to be better, and I'd be interested in trying it out, but I already like this one very much. Focuses pretty close, too. -P.