I was approached to have a look at this 50mm 1.9 M-mount lens that will be sold under the "Dallmeyer" brand.
I received the lens yesterday, hence I did not get to use it a lot, but I will already tell you what I know and update this post (of course also with sample pictures) when there is more to show.
The lens is rangefinder coupled and the build quality does leave a nice first impression.
It has a square hood (and square is the truth here, not rectangular) and also comes with a small ring that can be attached instead of the hood.
I also got some marketing material:
I was told the lens is made in Germany, I don't know where or by whom though.
There is no "Made in ... " stamp on the lens.
Behind this project is Photo Vision s.r.o. from Czech, who to my knowledge also hold the name to "Kinoptik".
This is not a high performance lens in the sense that it features a retrofocus design with a lot of elements, it is more of a classic double gauss.
Apparently it will start shipping in February 2025.
Noctigirl recently published some portrait shots taken with this lens. It is sharp in the center with beautiful circular bokeh wide open. She didn't post if the photos were taken with this new lens or the older vintage adapted one (no photo of the lens taking the posted photos was shown).
Remakes of vintage lenses become more and more fashionable. Shows that there is a trend in the market to use older lenses with specific faults to have photos standing out from those taken with modern and highly corrected lenses. Most vintage LTM lenses which I purchased > 10 years ago have easily doubled in price, too.
I have been using this new lens throughout the day in all kinds of different scenarios.
These are all taken at f/1.9 on a Leica M10.
The marketing material didn't lie.
There is a high amount of spherical aberration at f/1.9 that leads to a strong glow (similar to some of the fast MS-Optics lenses at their maximum aperture or the LLL 50mm 2.0 SP II amongst others).
Bokeh at f/1.9 is more of the nervous type with a lot of outlining.
Shooting into the sun, you will catch some flare artefacts for sure.
Personally, I think at f/1.9 it works best in dark scenes, where the softness of the lens can help tame the high contrast of the scene a bit.
At f/2.8 the amount of aberrations is surely lower and stopped down to f/11 it shows a very good across frame performance.
I do think this is going to be a lens you either love or hate, similar to the Voigtländer 50mm 1.5 Heliar Classic or the LLL 50mm 2.0 SP II.
Desmolicious wrote:
The lens body/case looks very similar to the Kipon Iberit 50mm 2.4.
Hmm, the Iberit lenses seem to have equidistantly spaced aperture stops.
That isn't the case here.
Those photos must have been taken with the vintage Dallmeyer Super-Six which is very expensive in the used market. There are different versions out there, with the most known one being the kit lens that came with Ilford Witness camera (1953).
J H Dallmeyer company shut down in 1984, and the brand name changed ownership multiple times. Whoever owns the name right now is trying to bring it back with this new Super-Six. Looks like the 6/4 Double Gauss optics are retained but we don't know how it compares to the original Super-Six at this point.
BTW, Light Lens Lab happens to be working on a replicate Super-Six 50/1.9. As we have seen in their existing products, they pay a lot attention to faithful replicating. Will be interesting to see if someone can compare the three lenses at some point .
retrofocus wrote:
Noctigirl recently published some portrait shots taken with this lens. It is sharp in the center with beautiful circular bokeh wide open. She didn't post if the photos were taken with this new lens or the older vintage adapted one (no photo of the lens taking the posted photos was shown).
Didn't see this video when posting my previous comment. Always appreciate Kai's weird sense of humor . Now I think about it, it reminds me of the multiple attempts to bring back the Meyer-Optik Gorlitz name including the current one.
So the new owner even acknowledged that the optical formula is not exactly the same. Kai didn't show many A-B comparisons but at 5:21 I can already see the very different bokeh balls off the center. And as Kai said, it is not as swirly as the original.
By comparison the LLL copy will be a bargain and hopefully will be closer in rendering. In addition, when you have a mysterious company in Europe that holds a historical name and makes new lenses, it is highly likely they are actually made in China. Then why don't I buy from a Chinese company directly at lower cost? At this point, I don't see a good future for this new Dallmeyer brand...
The original Super Six 50/1.9 is much better. It has a very "fat" character. It shows details without blurring, but covered with a thin veil. This effect is typical of many vintage cine lenses of the 20-50s. This character idealizes the picture, conveying the image in large forms, hiding small details. Such an image looks more artistic.
This character is formed not only from the optical scheme of the lens, but also from the properties of the lens glass. Repeating the scheme with modern glass will not give such a "fat" picture. Therefore, it remains to be hoped that LLL will go further and select a type of glass to get closer to the character of the original lens.
sander9t wrote:
Those photos must have been taken with the vintage Dallmeyer Super-Six which is very expensive in the used market. There are different versions out there, with the most known one being the kit lens that came with Ilford Witness camera (1953).
J H Dallmeyer company shut down in 1984, and the brand name changed ownership multiple times. Whoever owns the name right now is trying to bring it back with this new Super-Six. Looks like the 6/4 Double Gauss optics are retained but we don't know how it compares to the original Super-Six at this point.
BTW, Light Lens Lab happens to be working on a replicate Super-Six 50/1.9. As we have seen in their existing products, they pay a lot attention to faithful replicating. Will be interesting to see if someone can compare the three lenses at some point .
Desmolicious wrote:
I like how at the 0.33 mark you see Kai’s name tag on his camera. In case he leaves it behind in recess and a teacher comes across it.
I’ve seen in the video where he tested a LLL Panchro that he bought for himself that he had it engraved with his name tag also.
He has a serious track record of breaking expensive gear, behind the scene we may not have been aware of him losing them too.
The S21 replicate is already out in China through some pre-orders.
Don't know when the Super-Six replicate is going to be out but they were working on it at some point - at that time I saw they were trying to use the Rigid body to house the optics, probably a cost saving measure. I would hope they actually design a Super-Six body, for example, based on the Ilford Witness version which looks rather cool and unique. No recent news though...
Sonnar-7 wrote:
I thought they were working on the Angenieux S21 50mm 1.5, the rendering of it looks fairly similar though.
I can’t wait for that one.
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