recoated Summarit

[pgs@thillana.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick Sobalvarro)]

A few months ago I bought a Summarit 50/1.5 very inexpensively.  The
price was good because it was fogged and the front coating was in very
poor shape; I bought it with the intention of having the front element
recoated.

I tried shooting one roll of plum blossoms on the trees in my back
yard with the scratched Summarit before sending it off to John Van
Stelten for recoating.  The results had a quality that is sometimes
referred to in early books on photography as "artistic" -- they
suffered so terribly from flare that the plum blossoms were seen as
though through mist.  Ah, the floating world!

The last time I saw really awful flare was with the Olympus 35S I used
in high school, but that was nothing compared to this.

Anyway, John sent me the lens back some weeks ago and I had the
opportunity to use it on a couple of occasions recently, using Royal
Gold 100 to take pictures of weekend fishermen on the pier in Pacifica
(south of SF), and using Tmax 400 while driving around Quabbin
Reservoir (the big body of water in central Massachusetts).

The results are pleasing, overall.  At around f/8, the lens is
reasonably sharp; flare is controlled and colors are saturated.  I say
"reasonably sharp" because, as everyone has reported, the Summarit
does not have the acutance of modern lenses -- my R lenses are clearly
sharper.  On the other hand, with Tmax 400 at f/8 or so, the grain of
the film is the first-order determinant of sharpness, and the Summarit
does a creditable job.  Tones are smooth.

Surprisingly, edge sharpness appears slightly better at these
apertures than center sharpness, although that could be a peculiarity
of my particular lens.  I also took photographs of backlit trees at
sunset, and found that, just as Erwin Puts has reported, the
Summarit's internal reflections are sufficiently well-controlled so
that the trees were very black against the glittering water of the
lake.

At f/1.5, the lens is noticeably soft and loses contrast, exactly as
everything I've read about it says.  But I think the most interesting
results are at around f/4.  At f/4, the lens is still reasonably sharp
and contrasty, but distant backgrounds are very noticeably out of
focus and quite beautiful.  The lens has really excellent out-of-focus
characteristics.

I had been wondering if I should sell this lens, but I find that I'm
quite reluctant to do that now.  I simply like the look of the
photographs I get with it.  It doesn't have the snap of my 50/2
Summicron-R, but tones seem to vary more smoothly and the out-of-focus
areas are very pretty, more so than with the Summicron-R or the
Jupiter 50/1.5 I used to have.  I wouldn't want it to be my only 50mm
lens, but I like having it.

And, once again, I'm very pleased to recommend John Van Stelten's work
on this and the other equipment he's done for me.  I'm sure this won't
be the last lens I send him for recoating.

- -Patrick

P.S. A note about lens hoods: the day I bought the lens, I bought a
     non-Leica frustum-shaped hood that fit it.  I worried that this
     quite narrow hood would cause vignetting, and so I later bought a
     Leica hood when I finally found one at a "reasonable" price, but
     now I see that either hood works fine, with no noticeable
     difference.  So don't be worried about vignetting with those
     little non-Leica frustum-shaped hoods that say "fuer Summarit" on
     them.