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Fred Miranda wrote:
I did some tests with the 90/2 AA today. First let me say that I've never seen a decentered Leica lens. Granted, I've only tested around 5 or 6 lenses in total but they were all perfectly centered. It's nice to have that piece of mind when purchasing it used.
So, how does it perform?...I will be direct and state that it beats my ZM 85/4 at infinity and that is very hard to do. There is more micro detail with the Leica center/mid-field and edges. It's noticeable at 1:1. That is true at f/4 and f/5.6 and it makes sense since the Zeiss is practically wide-open. At f/8 they are much closer but there is still a slight edge for the cron.
The Leica 90AA is sharp wide open but starting at f/2.8 it's gives an amazing performance for landscapes. At f/4 and f/5.6 it's really superb.
It performs very well at close distances too. I took a few images of my teenage girls with TAP and was able to nail the eyes every time. At close and mid distances, I don't think it's much better than the Summarit but at infinity there is absolutely no comparison.
For me, the Leica 90/2 AA will replace my ZM 85/4, CY 100/3.5 and Leica 90/2.5 Summarit lenses. They will probably go to the buy and sell soon....Show more →
Fred, in Phillip Reeve's review of the 90mm f/2 Summicron-M, he writes:
"The general quality of the bokeh is very good, no onion rings, no outlining. But on stopping down the shape of highlights changes: at f2.0 they are perfectly round (except for the border regions, where mechanical vignetting occurs), between f2.8 and f8 they can best be described as “crown cork” shaped (take a look at the example below), at f11 they are edgy 11-sided-figures and at f16 perfectly round again. To be totally honest here: I don’t like these “crown cork” shaped highlights (as much as I don’t like the highlights produced by perfectly straight blades for portrait shots as well), so I tried to find out why Leica chose to use these inwardly curved aperture blades, but I did not yet manage to come across a believable reason."
His f2.0 / f4.0 bokeh comparison displays this clearly and he notes that these inwardly curved aperture blades are "still present in today’s APO-Summicron", something I confirmed by looking at an eBay seller's photo of a partly stopped-down APO-Summicron 90mm.
He does add, however: "Fortunately sharpness and resolution are already very good at f2.0 so this isn’t bothering me too much." The portrait of your daughter on the previous page confirms this but I was wondering if you'd encountered the irregular highlight shapes from f2.8 to f11.
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