Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/11/08
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]> I like 40mm for all the same reasons that have been mentioned. It seems > most natural to my eye...not too wide but not 'normal.' Me, too. I like this angle of view best of all. Some people dislike it, such as my friend Stephen Gandy. A Summicron-C can be easily modified to bring up the 35mm framelines on an M. Then you just have to remember that, instead of there usually being a little MORE on the negative than the framelines show, there is usually just a little LESS. It's actually quite easy to get used to, in practice. One of my favorite lenses was the 40mm f/2 for the Olmypus cameras. They made 3,000 of them (tiny run for a mainstream SLR manufacturer, which Olympus still was back then), only 1,000 of which came to the USA. Darn thing hardly sold at all, and I remember them being "remaindered" interminably in the late '80s for as low as $69 each, brand new. Well, now they're all gone and still prized by Olympus photographers, so the few that come up on eBay sell for more that $500! The cheapest one I ever bought was in mint condition and cost $55. There are some times when the habit of consecutively buying and then selling gear is a real loss. <:-( It wasn't a perfect lens--not as good as a Leica lens--but it had great strengths and I got a lot of nice pictures with it. Its weakness was flare degradation (Olympus never could coat lenses worth a damn) but in open shade it was marvelous. I loved the bokeh, although some of my friends don't. Some of the sharpest-looking pictures I ever took were with a 40mm f/2 Minolta Rokkor-M on a CLE. It often bested my 35mm Summicron-M (pre-ASPH) which I used for a much longer period of time. I didn't use the Rokkor-M for very long, but that lens, to this day, is one that consistently draws admiring comments from non-photographers when they see the prints. Those lenses are easily usable on the M6, though I'd recommend the frameline modification. - --Mike