Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/08/27

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

Subject: [Leica] Re: leica branded lenses
From: FELIXMATURANA at telefonica.net (Félix López de Maturana)
Date: Sat Aug 27 01:50:38 2005
References: <200508270620.j7R6HS5f015783@server1.waverley.reid.org>

>It seems that Canon's wide angle lenses are fairly weak and old.  
>Nikon may be a little better off in this department, but I still  
>would put my money on the Leica glass.

I cannot remember which Nazi hierarch said "If you repeat something 
enough number of times it will be considered as a unanswerable truth" . 
I can speak by myself as I'm a user of 14mm, 15mm, 16-35mm and 24-70mm 
Canon L lenses. Enough wides? As every non Leica lenses they get some 
softness on the corners full open but the situation becomes much better 
just closing a couple of stops. This situation is worse with a full 
format body than with a film camera as the sensor lacks sharpness when 
the light dos not hit it perpendicularly but with a big angle like as is 
the case of the corners. The 14 is very good lens almost at the level of 
the excellent Leica R 15mm but at a fraction of the price while the 
16-35 is not worse than Nikkor equivalent -I own all of them- 
Summarizing the extreme weakness of Canon wides is  a extended urban 
legend. They are not worse than Nikon, Minolta or Pentax and not very 
worse than Leica and Carl Zeiss but much ,much cheaper...I begun using 
Leica R lenses in my Canon DSLR -1Ds MkI and MkII and Rebel XT- but 
right now I use Canon and if there is a slight loss -certainly- of 
quality there is a much bigger comfort.

Felix