[Leica] Thou insulteth Takumar, Sir?

[Mike Johnston <michaeljohnston@ameritech.net>]

Dan C. >>>First Mike Johnston's post on the weakness of Summicron versus
$79 Pentax
Takumars, now this.

Has the world gone MAD????<<<<

Dan, the Takumar in question is a used lens, more than 25 years old. It
is well built. It focuses more smoothly than any other lens I have ever
used, including any Leica or Zeiss lens. It has spherical surfaces where
other 50/1.4's have flat surfaces; it was among the first lenses on the
market with multicoating. Pentax beat even Zeiss's first multicoated
lens to market. In the late '60s and early '70s both Zeiss and Pentax
were working with Optical Coating Laboratories (? I have a poor memory
for descriptive names), which invented multicoating for the space
program. Every surface is fully multicoated, not often the case on many
lenses today. I don't know when Leitz's first multicoated lens came to
market, but Nikon's first was the 35mm f/1.4 in I believe 1977, some 5
years later.

It is a very fine lens, the equal or more of Leica's lenses at the time.
In my judgement, if it were to be produced for sale today in Japan, it
would have to sell for something like $1,200-$1,400--way above what the
market will bear for Japanese normals.

Of course from what I hear from several sources, Leica has a new
APO-ASPH Summicron-M 50mm in prototype and it would be above what the
market will bear, too, which is why it hasn't yet been released for
production.

Of course I've never found an M42 screwmount camera that both had an
onboard meter and was reliable. In that way it IS inferior. And it does
have this wierd veiling-glare thing going on in some kinds of light,
that makes the highlights look almost flashed. Oh well. It ain't
perfect.

- --Mike

P.S. I wrote a long reply to a reader yesterday that recounts some of my
opinions and prejudices about lens quality and lens connoisseurship, if
anyone is interested. Perhaps I could send it privately. I hesitate to
post it because it is pretty long--I know I get wordy. Don't want to hog
the bandwidth. (I know, I know. Hold those wisecracks.)