Leica 50/2 vs. Contax G 45/2

["Charles E. Dunlap" <cdunlap@rupture.ucsc.edu>]

G lenses are reputed (by others on the net, my local camera store,
magazines) to be as good as Leica M lenses of equal focal length and max.
aperture. I'm not out to prove that they are or aren't, but I got curious
and for my own amusement compared my Leica 50 Summicron to a Contax G 45/2
in a simple walk through Palo Alto, California. The approach was practical
and was not controlled enough to be conclusive. If you're interested in
what I saw in my slides then read on. If you're rubbing your hands over the
chance to skewer me for my subjectivity, please spare me.

The photos were taken on two successive Saturdays. Both days were sunny and
cloudless; the photos were taken between 2 and 4 p.m. I photographed detail
on a mural, several buildings, and some store front displays. I used Kodak
E100S transparency film. There are a dozen things I could have done to make
the conditions more rigorously identical. Some shortcomings in the exercise
are that 1) the slide film was not processed at the same time (but was at
the same lab) 2) the time of day was slightly different in each case 3) The
cameras were hand held and 4) the apertures were ca. 5.6 to 8, not wide
open.

The resulsts were remarkably comparable. Under an 8x loupe I couldn't find
a bit of difference between the slides in terms of contrast and sharpness,
center to edge. The biggest difference was the slightly warmer, richer
color in some of the Contax slides (noticeable when the exposures were
identical). This was subtle, and most noticeable in a building with a light
peach hue: the Contax lens produced a "sunny" peach color, while the Leica
"chilled" the color (made it dingy, made it grey, not exactly bluer,
though).

Since the 8x loupe showed me no differences I looked at the slides under a
100x loupe: a $250,000 Leica research microscope. All I saw were subtle
differences in focussing between G and M slides. The G slides seemed to
preserve more detail in some cases, less in others. To make such a judgment
was splitting hairs and there was no systematic difference in the level of
detail shown (corner vs. edge). In one slide of a building with several
storefronts in the shadows at street level I found that the sharpness on
the neon "OPEN" sign, at the edge of each slide, was identical. This level
of enlargement corresponds to a print of 4.3 meters measured along the
diagonal.


My conclusion, therefore, is that under normal use the two lenses will
produce results that are indistinguishable, with the exception of slight
differences in color.

This doesn't mean that one lens might not test differently than the other
on an optical bench, but in practice they seem quite comparable.

Does this matter? No, I might have gotten the same result with the
Summicron and another prime lens. The lesson I take home is that, as much
as I like my equipment, it's not the limiting factor: my creativity and
emotional response have much more to do with taking good photos than the
name on the camera and lens.

I hope everyone is enjoying the late Spring sunlight.

- -Charlie