rscheffler wrote:
lovinglife - so where are the 21 Lux shots??
Great stuff everyone!
The lens is sitting in my toolbox
Just barely used it so far, but hope to have some presentable shots by this weekend!
I can tell you, however, that I like that lens..even at 1.4 its sharp corner to corner, which is unbelievable for a fast wide angle. Only thing is its a bit bulky--you can tell i've very quickly gotten spoiled by the Leica system, and forgotten about the days i used to lug around a 14-24mm, 70-200L's etc
I think that if you took a mid range Canon prime (like the 85/1.8), increased the raw optical performance tenfold then you'd end up with something very close to the Cron.
Ryan, Excellent series of shots. I really do like the the way you make the most of the rendering in all of your shots. In answer to your qustion, shot #2 was with the 75 Lux. Stop it down to f/2.8, and the 75 Lux is very sharp.
KL, great shots! I love the older style rendering of the Leica lenses. The colours and mood in shots#1,2 and 4 are amazing. A characteristic that is often lacking with the newer asph designs
Joe, excellent shots of your son! I love the magic glow in these shots.
Luka, great series of shots! Amazing portrait shots with the 75 Cron AA. I agree with you and Joe the 75 Cron AA, does have a different drawing style and I personally prefer the older style of drawing. From some of my observations, taking portraits specifically, in high contrast lighting the older Mandler design lenses really perform better IMO. When the lighting is more muted, less contrast the newer Karne style lenses perform almost better. My observation is when you are using it for landscapes, the contrast is much higher, than for your portrait shots. Another aspect, I use no sharpening at all for the 75 Cron AA, even downsizing, and sometimes reduce the contrast in the RAW PP.
Lovinglife, very nice shots!! Congrats on your 75 Cron AA Love that last portrait shot!
lovinglife wrote:
This lens reminds me a lot of the Zeiss 2/100 Makro Planar which is one of my all-time favorite lens, but with less CA and a bit sharper wide open. The only thing i disliked about a 100MP was that 100mm was a bit too much focal length for me, so these I think fits the bill.
I assure you, the 75 Cron AA could not be further away from the 100 MP. The two lenses have exactly nothing in common except for being medium/short teles and having been designed in Germany.
-The Cron is an APO while the 100 MP is anything but an APO (high LoCA, PF etc).
-The 100 MP produces very high contrast at all distances while the 75 Cron is a medium to low contrast lens.
-The Cron has heavy field curvature while the 100 MP is virtually free of it.
-The 100 MP has very high performance close up, while the Cron is very weak close up.
- The sharpness-to-blur gradient for the two lenses are very different - the Leica having a very quick transition while the Zeiss has a much more gradual one.
.. and that's just a few of the differences.
Take a quick peek at the MTF charts and you'll see that the two lenses are about as different as two short/medium teles can be:
100 MP:
f/2
f/4
75 Cron:
f/2
f/2.8
My advice to you LL is not to expect anything similar to the Makro Planar from the 75 Cron or you'll be very disappointed with it. When I bought it I was hoping for something similar to a 100 MP as it's one of my all time favorite lenses. Much of my disappointment with the 75 Cron has been that it was really nothing like the Zeiss. It has other strengths though and it's better to look to them then to hope for rendering similar to 100 MP as that simply isn't going to happen - the lenses are too different in every respect.
Here are two very quick and not particularly informative examples, but they do show some of the differences.
Cron:
MP:
Cron:
Mp:
What is obvious from the shots above is the much higher global and local contrast of the 100 MP while the 75 Cron produces a less punchy but more nuanced rendering. The Zeiss sacrifices some of the color separation in favor of higher contrasts.
Luka - I was going to ask if you thought perhaps the ZM85 f/2 was somewhere between the 75 Cron and 100 MP, but went to the Zeiss site to find the MTFs and it's no longer listed!
I know you passed it over because of the size, but considering it's roughly the same price as the 75 Cron and if the rendering is Zeiss-like. I liked the few samples I've seen from Joshua (was it?).
For all your Zeiss MTF chart needs, this is a good resource so you don't have to navigate Zeiss' site: http://www.zeissimages.com/mtf.php
The 85/2 Sonnar doesn't have the nearly flat curves of the 100 MP at f/2 nor the field curvature of the 7 Cron. At f/2 it looks like it is sharper and more detailed in the center compared to both the 100 MP and 75 Cron while getting slightly weaker by the time you're in the corners. At f/4 it really looks unbelievably good and looks like it runs circles around both the MP & Cron.
For some unknown reason Zeiss has stopped producing this lens. I'm hoping for a successor but it's more likely that it simply wasn't profitable for them to continue the production (in Germany and actually by Zeiss and not Cosina).
I'm going to stick with the 75 Cron for now. I might have given the impression that it can't produce any good shots, but that's not true. My problem is that I can't beforehand predict if a shot is going to be good or bad. So I need to use it more and see if I can actually learn to use it in a way that I get predictable results from it
Luka - Thanks for the detail comparisons!
As of now, i'm enjoying the 2/75 and plan to have it as part of my 2 lens combo unless there's a good reason otherwise. So far it doesn't seem that way in the least.
But like everything in life, time will tell
Nice 21 shot lovinglife! As for the 75, enjoy it and make up your own mind about it. There are many people who absolutely love everything about it and that really know how to use it
Charles, great shots! I think I like the 75 Lux shot best, but both are great.
Luka - great comparison. I too looked for a ZF 100 replacement and settled on the 90 elmarit-m for now. Not as fast but super sharp. Less contrasty too. Although the ZM 85 is large I would love to give it a shot if I ever saw it
Lovinglife - nice shot with the Lux!
Charles, great shots with the Lux's!!!
Malkovic - Great shots! Sure, post away! I love the look to #2 & #3 - great job on the processing!
Thanks Joe....The 90 elmarit-m is razor sharp wide open. The bokeh is smooth and creamy. Skin tones are rendered almost perfectly, perfectly sharp yet a little soft on the skin tones. Very small package and the lens is pocket-able . Great lens overall
Lovely pics all - great lux shots ryan! Love the colours in all3 shots of yours Malkovic.
Charles - wow - that 75 lux is something else!
Luka, thanks for the comparison - learning more and more everyday through your thorough and keen eye for detail!
Some more pics from the 50 cron for now - the copmarison between the cron and lux is not quite ready - finding it hard to get identical shots that PP the same.
CMC Confectionary:::Cafe 'Singapore' Style
"Soon Kueh" (breakfast dumpling):::Katong
Breakfast noodles
(Smiling) staff serving breakfast noodles:::He said 'whatever floats your boat" when i asked him whether I could take his picture
denoir wrote:
I assure you, the 75 Cron AA could not be further away from the 100 MP. The two lenses have exactly nothing in common except for being medium/short teles and having been designed in Germany.
-The 100 MP produces very high contrast at all distances while the 75 Cron is a medium to low contrast lens.
-The Cron has heavy field curvature while the 100 MP is virtually free of it.
-The 100 MP has very high performance close up, while the Cron is very weak close up.
- The sharpness-to-blur gradient for the two lenses are very different - the Leica having a very quick transition while the Zeiss has a much more gradual one.
.. and that's just a few of the differences. ...Show more →
Well, I agree there are few commonalities between these to lenses, mainly, they were both designed in Germany.
Technically, the 75 Summicron is not a tele design, being a Double-Gauss based design instead. I'm not sure how much of the Planar design was retained in the 100MP.
But whats more important, in my mind, is the fact that the 100MP is a macro lens, and as such is more corrected for short distances. The 75 Summicron is not a macro lens, yet gives better closer distance performance than most any other non-macro, non-floating element, Double-Gauss based design.
"The 75 Summicron is a medium to low contrast lens and has heavy field curvature"? That's exactly what its designers were trying to improve from earlier Leica M lenses. Sounds like they failed?
Technically, the 75 Summicron is not a tele design, being a Double-Gauss based design instead. I'm not sure how much of the Planar design was retained in the 100MP.
But whats more important, in my mind, is the fact that the 100MP is a macro lens, and as such is more corrected for short distances. The 75 Summicron is not a macro lens, yet gives better closer distance performance than most any other non-macro, non-floating element, Double-Gauss based design.
Jim, yes, technically the 75 Cron is a normal lens, just a bit elongated. However the 100 MP is not really a macro lens, just a close focusing tele. If you look at the MTF charts you can see that although it's performance is superb at MFD it's actually better at infinity. The 75 Summicron does have a floating element and the resolution is quite high at MFD (0.7m) although it does drop in contrast.
"The 75 Summicron is a medium to low contrast lens and has heavy field curvature"? That's exactly what its designers were trying to improve from earlier Leica M lenses. Sounds like they failed?
I wouldn't say that. What the ASPH lenses have improved upon is primarily a significant reduction of aberrations (SA & CA) and a significant increase in resolution at all apertures. You have to remember that Leica and Zeiss have very different priorities when designing lenses. Zeiss is obsessed with reducing field curvature and getting consistent sharpness and contrast across the entire frame. Leica on the other hand is obsessed with reducing SA & CA. The resulting lenses are different and you can't really say that one is better than the other.
--
Anyway, I had an interesting day today with the 75 Cron. For the first time since I got it we (me and the Cron) did not f*** things up. I managed to find some uses for the focal length and it did not provide any disappointing results. I suppose that we've both realized that since I'm not getting rid of it we have to find some kind of working relationship
I'll post some 75 Cron shots later, but first something completely different. Not ducks this time but a couple of swans
A dog showed up eying the swans hopefully:
Swans are usually bad tempered and aggressive, but not these two. The reason is because they are apparently used to getting food from people:
denoir wrote:
Anyway, I had an interesting day today with the 75 Cron. For the first time since I got it we (me and the Cron) did not f*** things up. I managed to find some uses for the focal length and it did not provide any disappointing results. I suppose that we've both realized that since I'm not getting rid of it we have to find some kind of working relationship
My point was that the 75 Summicron designers were trying to reduce field curvature and increase contrast.
Glad to hear it! For someone with so much knowledge of optics and the time to examine the lens qualities, I was wondering why you couldn't appreciate the brilliance of the 75 Summicron and it's design.
Ryan, Joe and KL ... thanks guys
Malkovic, #2 and 3 are my favourites! Love Velvia film
Ryan, very nice shots! I really do like the 90 Elmarit
KL, excellent shots! Great lighting and capture on #4
Luka, very nice shots! I do like close up portrait #1.
