I know I will probably get beat up by some crazed Leica or Zeiss aficionados for this but, in the current day and age do all of you really feel that Leica and Zeiss optics are that much better than Canon and Nikon. No offense to collectors and Leica and Zeiss for that matter. They do make great lenses, no doubt! But, I don't really feel that they blow other mainstream manufacturers out of the water. I've seen several comparisons where there was barely a noticeable difference between lenses. I personally feel that ownership of modern Leica or Zeiss equipment has fallen into the same sort of mystique of owning a Ferrari or Lamborghini. Just about everyone wants one, even though you can buy a Corvette for almost 1/3 the cost that outperforms or matches it. Their heritage is what drives sales. They are an "image" camera company. Yes, they make great stuff and I would be intersted in owning/using it someday. But, not professionally or even practically. Ok, and now waiting for the black eye.
dancam wrote:
I know I will probably get beat up by some crazed Leica or Zeiss aficionados for this but, in the current day and age do all of you really feel that Leica and Zeiss optics are that much better than Canon and Nikon. No offense to collectors and Leica and Zeiss for that matter. They do make great lenses, no doubt! But, I don't really feel that they blow other mainstream manufacturers out of the water. I've seen several comparisons where there was barely a noticeable difference between lenses. I personally feel that ownership of modern Leica or Zeiss equipment has fallen into the same sort of mystique of owning a Ferrari or Lamborghini. Just about everyone wants one, even though you can buy a Corvette for almost 1/3 the cost that outperforms or matches it. Their heritage is what drives sales. They are an "image" camera company. Yes, they make great stuff and I would be intersted in owning/using it someday. But, not professionally or even practically. Ok, and now waiting for the black eye....Show more →
+1
The alt lens fashion grew out of disappointment with various Canon wideangles, and justified fussiness about extreme corners. Nikon's 14-24 is on a par with the famous Zeiss 21, and Canon's 16-35 mk2 was a much better lens than the mk1, if still not perfect in the corners. All lens makers make some very good lenses. Lenses from Zeiss and Leica are not always the best choice at a given focal length. But lenses also have different characters, and some photographers prefer Leica's tendency to design for rich colour, while others prefer the strong sense of 3D in many Zeiss lenses. Disregard brands and familiarise yourself with the results a lens produces so that you can choose which lenses suit you, for each task. And price.
Which Zeiss or Leica lenses have you tried? If you have not tried any Zeiss lenses, you can do so fairly cheaply used and chances are very good that you will immediately notice a difference in image character. High micro contrast and dramatically increased color detail are the common Zeiss characteristics. "Better" is a subjective matter but there is certainly a difference. No matter what you have seen regarding tests, the only way to really know is to try a lens yourself.
dancam wrote:
I know I will probably get beat up by some crazed Leica or Zeiss aficionados for this but, in the current day and age do all of you really feel that Leica and Zeiss optics are that much better than Canon and Nikon. No offense to collectors and Leica and Zeiss for that matter. They do make great lenses, no doubt! But, I don't really feel that they blow other mainstream manufacturers out of the water. I've seen several comparisons where there was barely a noticeable difference between lenses. I personally feel that ownership of modern Leica or Zeiss equipment has fallen into the same sort of mystique of owning a Ferrari or Lamborghini. Just about everyone wants one, even though you can buy a Corvette for almost 1/3 the cost that outperforms or matches it. Their heritage is what drives sales. They are an "image" camera company. Yes, they make great stuff and I would be intersted in owning/using it someday. But, not professionally or even practically. Ok, and now waiting for the black eye....Show more →
I thought I was doing alright with my Canon L series lenses (and the 85/1.8, a great optic) the only alt lens I had was a 50mm. I then got a 90mm and 35mm Leica summicron and the imaging characteristics blew me away. Resolution was the big one, they didn't "look" sharper at web/small print sizes, but if I wanted to print big the amount of extra detail is staggering.
To be fair to Leica, I do think it's pretty cool that the even upgrade the camera at all. And extend the warranty at the same time. Granted, at that price, outrageous, but it's a change from the disposable economy we have. Though I do think the prices partially reflect why we have a disposable economy - when it comes to upgrading mass produced, complicate electronic items, it's cheaper just to swap out whole boards and subassemblies than it is to troubleshoot and fix the broken resistor (etc.).
As far as Leica goes, the lenses are pretty good. Maybe not the best, but consistently good across the line. This goes for newer lenses - ones that have been designed in the last 15 years or so. They can be expensive, but a lot of people buy used. Though still expensive, at that point, they are in the same ballpark as some of the more expensive Canon/Nikon offerings. The 14-24 is in the $1800 price range. So is the 70-200 VR, the Canon 70-200/2.8 IS, the Canon 24/1.4 II, 85/1.2 II,... A lot of the other Canon offerings are up in that price range too - and let's not even talk about the super-tele's. A couple months ago, if you were willing to buy from England, you could get a brand new 50mm Summilux ASPH M, with warranty, for less than $2k.
Anyway, Leica prices HAVE gotten ridiculous, but they really weren't all that bad about 3 years ago. I think a lot of the pricing has to do with exchange rate and economies of scale. I know other small volume German manufacturers' pricing on products have basically doubled in the last 5 years due to the weakening dollar and strengthening euro. Mic manufacturer Schoeps comes to mind. Small volume manufacturers in reality aren't competing for market share - they already lost out that battle, and trying to absorb market fluctuations in order to compete like that would probably kill them. Canon can weather those storms a lot better and do what's necessary to keep costs (and profits) lower in a particular segment for the purposes of long term survival.
That being said, Leica prices are ridiculous But the newer lenses I've used on M are fantastic. You only need one or two, and then you can pad out your kit with fantastic CV lenses.
"I personally feel that ownership of modern Leica or Zeiss equipment has fallen into the same sort of mystique of owning a Ferrari or Lamborghini. Just about everyone wants one, even though you can buy a Corvette for almost 1/3 the cost that outperforms or matches it.
If you by "outperform" mean "can drive faster in a straight line", of course :P But give the corvette a curved road.... Even comparing the all muscle, no brain Corvette to the sexyness of a Ferrari
Getting completely off-topic, I hear the Corvette actually does perform quite well in the curves.
Unfortunately, when it comes to comparing lenses of different manufacturers, there are three fundamental problems. The first is that, like Brainiac said, what some people value in a lens are not what other people value (sharpness, evenness across the image, vignetting, bokeh, etc.). Heck, even getting people to agree what '3D quality' is is difficult at best. I read that giant thread on that, and I don't think there were 2 people who had the same definition. (That's not to say that they didn't see something in the images that they liked...)
The second is that there is no equalizer of film anymore - comparing a Zeiss RF lens on a cropped M8 Kodak sensor is going to introduce a lot of differences compared to a Canon lens on a non-cropped (or cropped) Canon sensor. At least we can mount Nikon lenses on a Canon to take out that variable. If we all agreed to do testing on Techpan film or Velvia 50, maybe you'd find a common ground, but what's the point of that nowadays?
Lastly, and most importantly, lens tests really ultimately don't matter There's plenty of great photography out there with kit lenses, plastic lenses, home-made lenses, lens-less lenses, etc.
dancam wrote:
I know I will probably get beat up by some crazed Leica or Zeiss aficionados for this but, in the current day and age do all of you really feel that Leica and Zeiss optics are that much better than Canon and Nikon. No offense to collectors and Leica and Zeiss for that matter. They do make great lenses, no doubt! But, I don't really feel that they blow other mainstream manufacturers out of the water. I've seen several comparisons where there was barely a noticeable difference between lenses. I personally feel that ownership of modern Leica or Zeiss equipment has fallen into the same sort of mystique of owning a Ferrari or Lamborghini. Just about everyone wants one, even though you can buy a Corvette for almost 1/3 the cost that outperforms or matches it. Their heritage is what drives sales. They are an "image" camera company. Yes, they make great stuff and I would be intersted in owning/using it someday. But, not professionally or even practically. Ok, and now waiting for the black eye....Show more →
It depends on the lens. Some are pretty close. Sometimes Zeiss or Leica is actually the value leader (IE you have to pay more to get an equivalent lens out of Canon or Nikon, see the ZF 35 here), sometimes there is simply no comparison (Leica 280/4 APO, Leica 100/2.8 APO Macro or ZF 100/2 Makro-Planar), sometimes the Canikon's Actually better (fast 85's).
Zeiss stuff tends to be pretty practically priced. It's not usually cheap but its also in the same ballpark for the most part (with the exception of the ZM 15 and ZM 85, which are leica-level pricing). The Leica stuff tends to be pretty ridiculous for new pricing, but used pricing can be quite reasonable and some of their stuff is just so exotic and high-performance that the high price can be justified by the performance (the APO tele's, the Noctilux and 24/21 Summiluxes).
brainiac wrote:
I think it's cool that Leica, or any other company does eccentric limited edition products. For many people, collecting these things is fun. I always hankered after the gold Contax RTS just because it would be quite funny to turn up to work wielding such hideous bling. But what Leica should really do is a limited edition M8 with an up-to-date full-frame IR-filtered sensor, great high iso performance, professional ergonomics, and auto-focus. That would get my attention.
lepp wrote:
Actually, Pentax does charge extra for that white K-m, black K-m being 50-80 euros cheaper...
MSRP is the same, but the white kit rarely gets the discount you see on the standard retail package. Not an uncommon occurrence for a limited edition package.
i don't understand why such a bruhaha about a white painted camera. every camera manufacturer produced or is still producing limited and not-so-limited cameras in different colors. red panasonic g1 anyone? german companies i think started all that though, with the limited golden, silver and who knows what other color cameras. over time i had golden contax, silver contax, silver rollei and golden leica cameras and lenses. btw, from financial perspective, slapping different paint on a camera and then selling it as limited edition to some crazy rich guy or a collector for 2x price totally makes sense.
now, whether leica would have been better off investing in new tech to update m8 is a different story. but we're talking about a german company entrenched in tradition with the independently wealthy owner - bad mix imo...
It not so much about painting the camera white, as it is charging a few extra thousand dollars for it. Beyond that, it just reinforces the idea (whether true or not) that Leica just make toys for the rich rather than serious photographic tools.
The Japanese camera manufacturers are doing things like this all the time, but most of the "Limited" models are only available in Japan. The "Titanium color-accented" Pentax K20D, which was made in only 1,000 copies, is currently almost twice as expensive as a normal K20D.
A few years back, there was the Nikon S3 2000. There's a Year 2000 Limited edition set for sale on eBay for $6,600. I think a white M8 would be a healthier investment
But the newer lenses I've used on M are fantastic. You only need one or two, and then you can pad out your kit with fantastic CV lenses. 