Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/10/01

[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]

Subject: Re: [Leica] Summar vs. Summicron!
From: "Richard F. Man" <richard-lists@imagecraft.com>
Date: Wed, 01 Oct 2003 09:24:29 -0700
References: <5.1.0.14.0.20031001173030.0220d3e0@pacific.net.sg>

At 08:59 AM 10/1/2003 -0400, Simon Pulman-Jones wrote:
>Richard - What was the film, and the aperture? Color balance looks
>remarkably similar (if it hasn't been altered too much en route to the web),
>with only slightly less saturation visible on the Summar.
>...

The film is Fuji RHP II (I think it's a II, my eyes are getting old :-( ). 
Wait, it must be RHP III, or Provia 400F. Darned, my eyes are old :-(

My bad! I did my usual webifying thing. It does make a true comparison 
invalid. Here are pretty much the raw scans:
http://www.dragonsgate.net/pub/summar-np.jpg
http://www.dragonsgate.net/pub/summicron-np.jpg
Only thing done to them was to resize to smaller sizes and convert the 
profile to sRGB.

The original posts (w/o the -np suffixes), were done w/ very minor 
sharpening, which is otherwise always needed because the scanner softens it 
ever so slightly, especially since I use ICE by default. The only other 
thing I did was to Adjust Level in Photoshop and moved the high and low 
points to the true ends of the histograms. I think this shows the Summicron 
is a much higher contrast pic - on the summicron pic, I only needed to 
nudge the end points slightly. On the summar pic, the ends of the histogram 
were a bit further inward.

Anyway, I think you can tell by these two pics that the Summar is softer 
and lower contrast, and does not have quite the snap. OTOH, even on the 
teenager's skin, I think the Summar gives a more pleasing smooth tone. Of 
course, lets leave the B word out of the discussion :-)

Oh, this particular Summar also seems to be relatively scratch free. There 
is a 2-3 mm line around the center, but otherwise I don't see other 
scratches or fog / haze etc.

// richard (This email is for mailing lists. To reach me directly, please 
use richard@imagecraft.com) 

- --
To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html

In reply to: Message from D Khong <dkhong@pacific.net.sg> (Re: [Leica] Summar vs. Summicron!)