I'm patiently waiting for the LTM version, but I think I should have just bought an M version. I already have some 50s but none of them are just right. This looks to be about just right.
I got on the list with the Thai distributor, but have essentially decided to go another direction for now. They kept pushing back the date. I'll wait until there's more good variety of reviews and samples online.
I got mine yesterday- what a treat !
Kudos to Mandler for making such a beautiful piece of glass available to us at such a reasonable price
I have briefly held Leica glass but going from memory - can't tell a difference between the two
I will leave to the well capable member here to describe the technical aspects of this lens but I am very impressed with the pictures and quality.
I have the brass version and I like the weight and feel. On the m11 I find that it remains rangefinder couple to around 0.55m, so basically you can use almost the whole focus range without an Evf or screen.
My guess is: quite different. A guess, an informed guess maybe: Thypoch walks the fine line between retaining the existing (modern) look from the source lens and modifying the design to impart their ideas on improving the images.
And their (8/5) Simera 50/1.4 is based on the Karbe-era Asph lens from 2004. The Mandler (7/5) 50/1.4 is based on the pre-asph lens ('v2/v3') lens.
Put another way: what difference does an aspheric make?
Back to add that Walter Mandler designed more than 40 lenses from 1950-85. How many of these optics contained an aspheric element? Not one. The use of aspherics is the major differentiating factor between these two eras of lens design at Leica.
'While contemporaries in Wetzlar (like Helmut Marx) experimented early with aspherical designs (such as the original 1966 Noctilux-M 50mm f/1.2 which had two aspherical elements), Mandler famously redesigned the Noctilux in 1975–1976 (the famous f/1.0 version) without any aspherical elements to dramatically improve optical performance and lower production costs.'
