Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/06/02
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]on 3/6/00 12:18 am, Jlaird@aol.com at Jlaird@aol.com wrote: > On this subject (I hope) what are the relative merits of the 35 'cron 1.4 > ASPH over the 35 2 ASPH, besides the obvious one of one more stop. I've seen > nothing but praise on LUG for the 1.4 and I'm planning to buy a 35 soon. Again I can't speak from experience with the 35/2 but the 35/1.4 is what you might call a 'freeing' lens in the sense that you can shoot it as open as you like and it just delivers impeccable images... sharp from corner to corner, but more than that... lovely smooth tonality that you would expect from Leica glass, amazing resistance to flare (shoot happily into the light wide open... not many lenses can do that) and to top it all, a really nice bokeh, not the 'glow' of the pre-asph lens, which is undoubtedly a function of its 'faults', can't have one without the other, but a kindness that dignifies the subject. I loved my pre-asph 35/1.4 with a deep deep love but this lens does really go one better. Moreover, if you care about these things, it has a 'modern' character to its images that sits beautifully alongside the current (also rather wonderful but little praised) 28/2.8, which delivers in the same vein. In a sense you can just forget about this lens because it, in my experience so far, always delivers. I don't have to second guess it, like I do with almost every other lens I can think of. Is it going to flare? How is the out-of-focus b/g going to look? Are the details I am focusing on too small to be rendered properly (for example, shooting on a subway train on the pre-asph 35, there was a limit to how far away the main subject could be before the eyes went mushy and you lost what was potentially a great shot). Above all, these lenses manage to combine sharpness with sweetness. For me, sweetness was always more important, which is why I shot Canon FD and vintage Leica in preference to, for example, Nikon -- and also why, just out of temparament I think -- I much prefer the 50 lux to the V'lander Nokton, despite the latter being sharper overall. But to have both -- wow. The one-stop advantage has another side to it, which is that you can use the shallow dof of the 1.4 to cut through a situation like a scalpel, clear out the clutter. Moreover, it focusses closer than the pre-asph, which allows you to make the most of the shallow dof for those slightly stylised eyes-in-focus-but-that's-all portraits so beloved of MF photogs. If a new generation 50/1.4 comes out, I'll be first in the queue. - -- Johnny Deadman photos: http://www.pinkheadedbug.com music: http://www.jukebox.demon.co.uk