RE: [Leica] Guess the Lens

["B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>]

Thanks for caring so much, Steve, but I can take care of myself. And by the
way, Steve, while we're talking about people making fools of themselves - I
didn't post a guess suggesting that the $450 Cosina was a Summicron or
Summilux.  Nor would I be enough of a fool to post a scanned image and
suggest that it proves anything about lens quality. ;-)

Your buddy - B. D.

- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
[mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us]On Behalf Of Steve
LeHuray
Sent: Friday, August 30, 2002 1:09 PM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: Re: [Leica] Guess the Lens




B. D. Colen continues his anti Leica rant:


> Well, ain't that a hoot! Summilux! Summicron! Summaron! Leica! Leica!
Leica!
> And both shots were taken with Japanese glass - one a 50-year-old design,
> the other a modern lens which sells for $489 NEW at B&H.

<<snip>>
>
> B. D.
>
B.D.

PULEEZZ, I really hate to see you keep making a fool out of yourself with
your constant anti-Leica stance. This Summilux 50/1.4 shot at f1.4 blows
away Peter's Nikkor and Cosina lenses by any measure you can think of:

http://www.streetphoto.net/images/im120.jpg

With apologies to Peter, who takes very good pictures.

sl


>
> OK, folks, here's the results of the Guess The Lens contest.  Only one
> person correctly identified one of the lenses, but he matched it to the
> wrong picture.  The person who thought one picture was taken with a Summar
> and one with a Summicron had the right idea, but the wrong lenses.
>
> This picture was taken with an early-1950s 50/1.4 Nikkor, wide open at
1/60:
> http://www.2alpha.com/~pklein/temp/marianne-4.jpg
>
> And this one was taken with a nearly-new 50/1.5 Voigtlander Aspheric
> Nokton, wide open at 1/60:
> http://www.2alpha.com/~pklein/temp/marianne-5.jpg
>
> The 1/3 stop difference in apertures is insignificant for black and white
> film.  The reason why somebody thought the Nikkor picture was exposed less
> is because the Nikkor has significantly less contrast.
>
> As far as delivering detail to the negative, the Nokton is clearly the
> better lens wide-open.  However, the Nikkor is kinder to women over 30.
My
> wife strongly preferred all the Nikkor's "portraits" to the Nokton's,
> having no idea which was which.
>
> For those who thought that camera shake or focusing mistakes played a part
> in which lens looked better, sorry, but I don't think so.  I shot several
> pictures of two different people with each lens, and the differences
> between the lenses are apparent in all of the shots.  One thing about the
> Nikkor is that at this distance, wide open, it has a "hump" of decent
focus
> rather than a sharp "peak" of razor-sharp focus like the Nokton. I focused
> very carefully on an eye in all cases.
>
> Remember, neither picture has any sharpening applied.  And all lenses are
> less than perfect at f/1.4, where abberrations abound and the depth of
> field is a whopping two inches.
>
> Perhaps a couple of more pictures will demonstrate things a little more
> clearly.  Here's a Nikkor shot of another colleague.  This is a full
frame,
> shown for scale.  It's is a normal Web-JPEG with curve adjustments and
> sharpening, reduced from my printing
> file:  http://www.2alpha.com/~pklein/temp/susan.jpg
>
> Now here's a detail of just the face with each lens. No size reduction,
> *no* sharpening and *no* curve adjustments.  These pictures were both shot
> at 1/30 and f/1.8.  Warning: These are approximately 140K files.
>
> Nikkor:  http://www.2alpha.com/~pklein/temp/susan4-detail.jpg
> Nokton: http://www.2alpha.com/~pklein/temp/susan5-detail.jpg
>
> Anyway, I hope this has been useful to somebody.  It's unscientific, may
> not apply to your lenses,  and may have been influenced by the moon, swamp
> gas, or the fact that I saw Cirque du Soleil last weekend.  BUT it does
> show what these two lenses do, hand held, in available light
> conditions.  The differences show up on a 2700 dpi scan, so they're not
> academic.
>
> --Peter Klein
> Seattle, WA
>
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