Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/08/30
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Welcome back to the Leica list Eric (Welch). I have not forgotten your great contributions and even better bylines since you left the list with your then-new F5. Great thread, by the way, re whether images produced by Leica lenses really are different. I have owned old Nikons, a Canon EOS-1n, and Leica M and R. Based on my experiences over the past 20 years, I'm still confused! The color cast of the old Nikon glass was clearly different than an old 50 Summilux I then owned. The Leica was much warmer and truer to color. The old Nikon 50/1.4 turned some pastels into an almost harsh, blue tone. The new, very plastic Canon lenses are very sharp. Sometimes sharper than Leica, sometimes not, depending on the individual lens in question. I did a lot of side by side testing of the Canon and Leica. I wanted to see a difference. Many times I could not. The one difference I could see with Canon was more wide aperture vignetting -- more than with Leica M, R, or Nikon. Donal, I think I know what you mean about Canon's brittle sharpness. There is clearly more to an image (e.g. depth, the layering of tones, etc.) than resolution. This whole question of the "Leica Look" may never find an answer, right folks? For each LUG member convinced that Minolta/Nikon/Canon/Leica images are indistinguishable, there is an equal number of members that swear to seeing a difference. Interesting. John McLeod