[Leica] UC-Hexanon 35/2 review by Erwin Puts? Anyone have it?

[glehrer at san.rr.com (Jerry Lehrer)]

Bob Cole,

Don't you think that you are several years too late with your comments?

Jerry


Thinkofcole@aol.com wrote:
>  
> from Erwin Puts     _http://www.imx.nl/photo/faq/_ 
> (http://www.imx.nl/photo/faq/)  
> I hope this helps, G.  Medina...(Hexar is listed under Leica).... regards, 
> bob cole 
>
>
> Konica Hexar and register 
>
>
> I am currently using the Hexar RF for several  reasons. To test the new 
> Hexanon 2/35mm, to check on Hexar body - Leica lens  compatibility and get 
> a 
> feeling for the Hexar system. 
>
> To start with the body: the specs are well  known, so I can jump to the 
> more 
> philosophical topics. The body appears to be a  very high engineering 
> quality, 
> has a very solid feeling and is really easy to  use. The electronic 
> shutter-motordrive unit is a sealed box and can not be  separated. It is 
> the same as 
> used in the Contax G/2 series. As an aside: if  Leica were to use this 
> unit, the 
> manual advance lever would have to go. The  viewfinder is slightly lower 
> in 
> contrast than the Leica and the Hexar  rangefinder patch has a distinct 
> yellow 
> tint, that will lower contrast and makes  it more difficult to focus at 
> objects at 10 meter or more distance. While the  body has almost identical 
> dimensions to the Leica, the look and feel is  distinctly different. The 
> rounded body 
> contours of the Leica and the clean top  cover make it look more elegant, 
> compared to the squarish and somewhat boxy  character of the Hexar. 
>
> In use the Hexar is quite simple and its  controls are well laid out and 
> generally useful to the photographer. The  exposure compensation feature 
> is nice, 
> but with the leica a simple half click  stop of the aperture ring will do 
> the 
> job as fast and easy. 
>
> Biggest drawback of the hexar is the small time  delay between pressing 
> the 
> shutterknob and the actual firing of the shutter.  This delay and the 
> instant 
> of wait and thus insecurity is most annoying and you  can not use the 
> Leica 
> technique of prefocusing and fire when the object is sharp  in the 
> finderpatch. 
>
> When you close your eyes and pick up the Leica  and the Hexar several 
> times, 
> the difference in feeling and haptics emerges. When  you hold the Leica, 
> your 
> thumb slides behind the advance lever and your finger  lays on the shutter 
> release button, which is sharp as a trigger. This simple and  intuitive 
> act 
> signifies to the brain a state of alert attention and you fall  into the 
> mood of a 
> hunter or an active sportsperson anticipating the moves of  the other 
> players. 
>
> When holding the Hexar, both hands hold the body  and wen your finger 
> touches 
> the release button, there is no trigger effect. The  finger just rests 
> there 
> and you do not get any feedback from the body. So you  switch almost 
> automatically into a more passive state of mind and allow the  camera to 
> work for you. 
> That is easy to do as the automatic functions of the  camera (exposure, 
> film 
> transport, motorwinder) are so well executed that you  start to rely on 
> them 
> and even transfer control to them. In fact you are  starting to become an 
> operator of the camera, adjusting the wheels and not the  driver who 
> forces the 
> camera to do as he wants it to act. 
>
> The transfer of controls to the camera and the  mood of becoming more 
> passive 
> in the photographic act is in my view the fine  distinction between the 
> Hexar 
> and the Leica. Photographing the same objects with  a leica and a Hexar in 
> quick succession underscores this difference: with the  Leica the work is 
> harder 
> (more to think and act), but your act blends in with  the subject and you 
> are 
> part of it. With the Hexar your work is easier, but the  remoteness of the 
> controls acts as a filter between the object and yourself. Let  me say, 
> that you 
> become a bit lazier when using the hexar and that shows in the  pictures. 
>
> Technically there is nothing wrong with the  Hexar pictures, well exposed, 
> sharply focused etc. The Hexar then is for  photographers who avoid 
> technicalities and want good imagery with a minimum of  technical and 
> manual control and 
> who feel that the visual involvement with the  object has to be separated, 
> even 
> detached from the tool they use. In this sense  the Hexar is close to the 
> Contax G. The family resemblance goes a step farther.  My test of the 
> Hexanon 
> 2/35 indicates that Hexanon imagery is in character very  close to the 
> Zeiss 
> philosphy of correction. The Hexanon is an 8 element lens  (with the now 
> familiar 
> negatively curved front lens, pioneered by Leica and  quickly adopted by 
> Konica and Voigtlander). The Summicron has 7 elements, but  has one 
> aspherical 
> surface, and one such a surface equals two spherical  surfaces). At full 
> aperture 
> the lens exhibits a medium contrast (less than the  leica lens), has 
> visible 
> flare in the bright areas and small detail rendition.  The performance on 
> axis 
> till an image height of 6mm (image circle of 12 mm  diameter) is excellent 
> with a very good definition of very small detail. In the  outer zones the 
> image 
> quality drops significantly and now we see small detail  with quite 
> blurred 
> edges. Astigmatism is very well controlled, but there is some  curvature 
> of 
> field. The lateral chromatic error is quite large, and may add in  the 
> bokeh 
> preservation. The corners are very weak. At 2.8 the flare is gone and  the 
> image 
> crispens a bit, the central disk of excellent quality now extends to a  
> image 
> height of 8 mm, with the corners still bad and the outer zones hardly  
> improving. 
> At 4 we find an overall improvement, but the chromatic error still  
> softens 
> the edges of very small and tiny detail. At this aperture the quality is  
> comparable to the Leica, that shows better reduction of the chromatic 
> error and  
> thus a crisper and cleaner image. If resolution figures were relevant, I 
> had to  
> note that the 
> Konica has the edge here. But these are bench  mark figures (large scale 
> projection test) and in actual photography the small  advantage would be 
> lost. 
> This sideline indicates that differences in resolution  of 10 line 
> pairs/mm are 
> not indicative of superior image quality. Optimum  aperture is at 8, and 
> after 
> that contrast and resolution drop due to diffraction  effects. Close up 
> performance at 1 meter is identical to the tested distance  which is at 
> 100 times 
> the focal length. 
>
> The inevitable question of course is how this  Hexar lens compares to the 
> last non aspherical Summicron. In my view the Hexanon  is the better lens 
> overall. 
>
> But you cannot use the Hexanon lens on a Leica  body: a collimator check 
> showed that the Hexanon lens has a focus plane that  differs from the 
> Leica lens 
> by 0.09mm. Is that important? The discussion on the  Lug about the Hexar 
> body/Leica lens compatibility dismissed small differenes in  the area of 
> less that 
> half a mm as irrelevant, because some uses could not  detect any 
> difference 
> when comparing different lens/body combinations. The truth  is this: a did 
> a test 
> on the bench and focussed carefully on maximum image  quality. Then I used 
> a 
> micrometer to defocus by 0.03mm (which is quite small).  In the image the 
> loss 
> of contrast was very evident, but resolution at least at  the lower 
> frequencies (around 40 lp/mm) did not suffer. What did suffer was the  
> edge sharpness. 
> If you were to do your own testing and looking at the negatives  with an 
> 8-times magnifier, you would not se any drop in resolution (beyond the  
> detection 
> capability of the eye at that magnification). But at a larger  
> magnification 
> you begin to see it quite 
> clearly. 
>
> Now the continuing saga of the Hexar/Leica lens  compatibility. First a 
> few 
> remarks: You can not measure the actual distance from  bayonet flange to 
> pressure plate by using the pressure plate itself as a  reference. The 
> slightest and 
> unnoted pressure from the instrument itself on the  pressure plate will 
> give 
> errors and the pressure plate itself is hardly ever a  plane itself. So 
> additional errors. The only way to do it is to remove the  pressure plate 
> and insert 
> a device that is calibrated to be at the same distance  where the pressure 
> plate ideally has to be. To start from here. The distance  from the 
> bayonet 
> flange to the pressure plate or more accurate the top of the  outer film 
> guide 
> rails ( pressure plate rails) in the Leica M is 27.95mm. This  distance is 
> also 
> (but wrongly referred to as register. But this distance and  measurement 
> is 
> used to check if the guide rails and the bayonet flange are  parallel to 
> each 
> other 
> and have the correct distance. The second  important measure is the 
> distance 
> from the film rail (the innermost film guide  rails) to the bayonet 
> flange. In 
> the Leica this is 27.75mm. The film gate then  has a distance of 0.2mm. In 
> every Leica book I know of there is a reference to  the filmplane/flange 
> of 
> 27.80mm. 
>
> What is this. Rogliatti, Roger Hicks, Collectors  Checklist, Hasbrouck you 
> name them, all refer to flange to film plane distance  or flange to film 
> register. Now in German the word is "Auflagemass". This can be  correctly 
> translated 
> as "flange focal length" or "flange focal distance". But  this measurement 
> is 
> done for the lens itself on a collimator where the lens is  adjusted such 
> that 
> the distance from the lens bayonet flange to the true optical  focal plane 
> (focal point) is indeed exact 27.80mm. First lesson: NEVER believe  what 
> is 
> written about Leica in books that are focussed on history or collecting:  
> these 
> persons are no engineers. In every other book, check, double check, triple 
>  
> check to make sure the person knows what he talking about. 
>
> To sum up: we have an optical measurement done  on the lens to adjust the 
> flange focal distance and that distance should be  27.80mm. We have a 
> mechanical 
> measurement on the Leica body, which is the  distance from bayonet flange 
> and 
> the pressure plate rails which is 27.95mm. The  film gate is 0.2mm. If we 
> now 
> use a film with a total thickness (emulsion plus  base) of 0.13mm (APX25 
> as 
> example) the thickness of the film will not fit into  the film gate. There 
> is 
> some play and therefore the film will curl and curve  inwardly (away from 
> the 
> lens). By using a focal distance of 27.80mm, Leica will  ensure that the 
> film 
> when bowed a little, still will be correctly aligned in  relation to the 
> focal 
> plane. It is intriguing to note that thick colour neg  films of about 
> 0.27mm 
> will fill the 
> film gate completely and the pressure plate will  press the film to a 
> plane 
> position, instead of the curved position with thin  film emulsions. 
> Theoretically a thick film would have a better flatness than a  thin film. 
> Of course more 
> research is needed, but these investigations do show  that the information 
> in 
> the public domain is at best scanty or at worst  misleading. 
>
> Now for the Konica Hexar. Here I have only one  official fact: that is the 
> bayonet flange to the pressure plate rails of  28.00mm. But I do not have 
> official info about the flange distance to the film  rails (or film gate 
> distance). 
> Nor about the lens flange focal length. My own  measurements on one Hexar 
> body 
> and lens showed that the film gate had a  thickness of .24mm and the lens 
> a 
> flange focal length distance of 27.71. On the  basis of these measurements 
> the 
> flange to film rail distance is 27.76mm. These  results are however no 
> reliable enough to draw firm conclusions. What I do know  from discussions 
> with 
> konica people is that their tolerances are wider than with  leica and are 
> choosen 
> such that the best fit of Hexar body to hexar lenses is  assured. The many 
> inconclusive reports about problems or the lack of problems  with fitting 
> a leica 
> lens on a Hexar body is partly to be explained by these  tolerances and 
> partly 
> by the unreliability of the reports themselves. The Konica  people at the 
> factory told me that the Hexar is designed for use with the  Hexanon 
> lenses and t
> hat all dimensions inside the Hexar are based on that fact.  If a hexar 
> user 
> fits a leica lens and he has problems, than it is caused by  these 
> different 
> dimensions and/or the chain of tolerances add up unfavorably. If  he has 
> no 
> problems: than he is plain lucky as the tolerances are such that they  are 
> close 
> to what is expected for leica bodies and/or his demands are such that  
> they are 
> below the visibility threshold for the mismatch to show up. 
>
> This is not the end of the story. People would  expect quick solutions and 
> fast answers and move on to the next topic. That is  living in the fast 
> and 
> superficial lane of user group discussions. Serious  research takes time 
> and 
> experience and dedication: scarce resources in a hasty  world.
>
>
>
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