JonPB Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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If you're comfortable mixing and matching the Nikon and C/Y lenses, then I'd recommend going for the Zuiko. It is a convenient trade and, if it doesn't meet your needs, better to get it off your radar now than go through the process of locating another one down the line. Personally, I find working with a consistent ergonomic style of lens to be important, and the Leica R will handle similarly to your other Leica and C/Y lenses, so I'd go for the R 90 even if it were slightly inferior to the Zuiko, which I believe has a forward-mounted aperture ring (like M lenses) that operates in the opposite direction.
That said, I've been quite pleased with my ca. 1975 Summicron-R 90. (My copy is hardly pristine; I bought it at about half the then-market rate due to signs of abuse and a small flake of metal that is lodged near the center of the frame. Although I haven't found any optical defects due to these issues, I also haven't compared it to a good copy.) Its only serious flaw is fairly hard to provoke in (my style of) normal shooting, and that is a red/green fringing in the near-focus foreground/background. Mostly this shows up when I'm taking pictures of something like water or chrome in sunlight at a distance, and I focus at infinity rather than almost-infinity due to sheer laziness. Overall, the lens' dominant character is gentle and forgiving. Bokeh is very smooth and is almost entirely free of coloration. High contrast edges (near-clipping highlights to near-clipping shadows) have a visible transition at normal viewing magnification, although the edge itself is clearly defined and honestly I like how this mimics my own eyes' rendering of a scene. This flare might not be seen to the same extent in later copies of the same lens due to improved coatings. Resolution isn't a concern to me with this lens; at f/4 with a straight adapter on my NEX-7, which has similar density to the 5D-S, per-pixel contrast is very high for most of the frame and even the corners (at least with distant subjects) are quite good; with the lens set to f/5.6 on a Speed Booster, the corners are showing some astigmatism and more CA, and high contrast subjects have fallen to about 2 pixels, some of which is from the Speed Booster and which is still very good compared to the wide-angle lenses I primarily use. I've posted a few samples in the last few pages of the Leica R thread; PM me if you'd like higher resolution or DNG copies. So, it is not a perfect lens, and it can look downright poor in comparison to its APO siblings, but still impressive and more than enough for my needs.
Cheers,
Jon
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