Re: [Leica] Interesting Quote-Now Jim Williams

[Mark Walberg <Walberg@simmons.swmed.edu>]

>>Found this quote on the Contax G site:and access to a lens line that Leica
>>devotees swear is unsurpassed in image quality (even if they often find it
>>necessary to couch this claim in terms of mystical virtues that stubbornly
>>refuse to reveal themselves in objective lens tests!)
>
>Roy,
>What is the URL of that quote, I can't find it.  Maybe I am at the wrong site.
>R. Mark Newport

Well, the Contax G site is maintained by Jim Williams at
http://www.novia.net/~jlw/contax/index.html

The site is full of lots of useful information and opinions.  Jim Williams
is a long time rangefinder user, and is a big advocate of the Canons.  He
has posted many very informative posts to the usenet (which I've given up
reading).  Here is one of his old posts that clarifies his take on Lieca
lenses:

Date: 3 Mar 98 10:22:08 -0600
Subject: Re: Leica lens still superior???
From: "Jim Williams" <jlw@NOSPAMnovia.net>
Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.35mm

>I know that Leica lenses are very well made and optically superior.

You're already off on the wrong foot. Leica lenses ARE very well made, and
they tend to be of consistent high quality -- partly because at their
prices, they don't have to engineer any "economy" lenses into their lineup.

But as to a blanket statement that they're "optically superior" -- well,
they aren't, and never were.

The best lenses of other makers have always been able to match or exceed
the performance of Leica lenses. In fact, from the '30s through '50s, the
camera preferred by optical cognosceti was the Zeiss-Ikon Contax. The Leica
was smaller, more comfortable, more dependable, and more convenient to
operate -- but even Leica buffs recognized that overall, its lenses were
more "good enough" than "stellar." There were only a few Leica lenses
recognized as equal to their Carl Zeiss counterparts -- the original 50mm
f/3.5 Elmar and the 105/6.3 "Alpine" Elmar, to name two.

In the late '40s and early '50s, photographers traveling through Asia
discovered that the re-emergent Japanese optical industry was beginning to
turn out lenses superior to Leica's -- the 50mm f/1.4 and 105mm f/2.5
Nikkors and the 85mm f/1.9 Canon Serenar were among the star performers
that helped build the Japanese industry's reputation. Since many of these
lenses were available in Leica screw thread mounts, significant numbers of
noted photojournalists dumped their Leitz optics and re-equipped with a mix
of Nikon and Canon glass.

It was only in the mid-'50s, when Leitz introduced its computer-designed
Summicron lens series to go with the then-new M3 camera, that Leica lenses
began to be regarded as at the forefront of optical performance. Even then,
though, they were simply recognized as being as good as the best -- never
"FAR MORE superior optically" to top-grade competitors.

When the Zeiss-Ikon Contax went out of production in 1961 -- taking its
superb lens line with it -- Leica was left with a clearer field for its
reputational myth-making. Meanwhile, as the spread between Leica prices and
the prices of "ordinary" cameras grew larger and larger, the proportion of
the population that had actually used a Leica or its lenses became smaller
and smaller -- further contributing to its cult status. In the '40s and
'50s, when many photographers were familiar with it, the Leica had been
regarded simply as one of the best 35mm cameras; as it grew more and more
out of reach, it became a less a working tool and more a cult object.
Photographers yearning for certainty in an uncertain art form felt more
comfortable believing that there was one "best" camera and one "best" line
of lenses, and that Leica was it. Since few of them had ever had the chance
to bang around with a Leica, or compare pictures taken with its lenses to
those taken with other brands, there was nothing to give them a "reality
check" on their beliefs. And photographers who DID use Leicas -- at least
some of whom bought in for status reasons, or because of their own fixed
beliefs in Leica superiority -- certainly weren't about to disabuse the
masses of their illusions.

And that's about where it stands today. When you pay those big bucks for a
Leica lens, you can be pretty sure you're getting something that's
mechanically very well-made, durable, and that performs consistently and
well. And, as someone else noted, many photographers prefer some of the
intangible characteristics of Leica lenses, such as their color rendition
and appearance of out-of-focus areas. But as to their being "far superior"
optically to the best lenses from Nikon or Canon... or, for that matter,
from Carl Zeiss or Pentax or Minolta... it just ain't so, and never was.