Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/12/17

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Subject: [Leica] 15-21-35mm M lens comparison
From: Christer Almqvist <christer@almqvist.net>
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 16:36:35 +0200

Last week I had a half finished film in the M6 which I had to develop 
urgently, so rather than leaving half of it ununsed I did some simple 
lens testing. I plastered a wall with newspapers (you do not realize 
how much they curl until you try to get them flat on a wall), lit the 
room evenly with floodlights and made a couple of exposures with each 
of three different lenses, always at a distance of 50 times the 
lens´s focal length. Erwin taught me this, and it is quite useful as 
the image sizeon the negative is the same in all cases. I enlarged 
the negatives 16 times linear on my V35 and compared the prints. The 
film was Delta 100 and it was developed in Xtol diluted 1+1. Here is 
what I concluded:

- --- 35mm asph Summicron: here I wanted to know if the lens is almost 
as sharp fully open as closed down a stop or two. For the centre, 
there is no need to use the expression 'almost as sharp',  one can 
say that this lens is as sharp in the center fully open as stopped 
down. The corners improve with stopping down, but this usually is not 
the important part of the picture.

- --- 21mm 'old' Elmarit: I wanted to review how much an upgrade to 
asph could mean (although i did not have a 21 mm asph to compare 
with, only the 35 mm asph). The Elmarit a very good (Erwin disagrees, 
I know). The picture quality in the center is very good compared to 
the 35 mm asph, at the edges it is very good at the middle of the 
long sides of the picture, but at the edge at the middle of the short 
sides it is far from the asph quality, and even more so in the 
corners.  Fully opended Summicron was compared with fully opended 
Elmarit, and then the same procerue for the lenses stopped down

- --- 15 mm Super Wide-Heliar (Voigtlander): reviews rave about this 
lens, but how does it fare in comparison with my other Leitz lenses? 
I was surprised that this asph lens was not much better than the old 
21 mm Elmarit, again comparing two fully oped lenses. It was a bit 
better at about 6mm of fcenter,  but at the edges and in the corners 
the Elmarit was better.

OK, I know I compared apples and bananas, or perhaps even apples and 
sausages, but the result was still interesting for me. On the other 
hand, I have been shooting a fair amount with the 15 mm and enlarged 
to 9.5 x 12 inches with a bit of cropping off,  and the prints in no 
way lack sharpness. I like the 15 mm, except that it comes with a 
hood that obviously is made for a lens that does not have a fixed 
lens shade. I use the short focal length not to exaggerate the 
perspective, just to add a bit more drama.
- -- 
Christer Almqvist
D-20255 Hamburg, Germany and/or
F-50590 Regnéville-sur-Mer, France