Thanks Charles Love that first shot you just posted! Really nice and the color pp is excellent!!
Gregory, nice and varied set as usual! Missed your post the first time round.
Luka, super duck set with the 90CronAA! Rest of the shots are also really nice, I like #1, 4, 6 & 7 best. Of the 2 AA designs and from the pics on this thread and elsewhere, I definitely prefer the 90 over the 75. I'll say that you should definitely consider getting rid of the 75Cron and replace it with the 75Lux before your trip to the USA.
Joakim, excellent boat shot!! Beautiful!
--------
A package arrived this evening It was getting really dark and these were the only scenes where I had sufficient lighting to shoot.
Our customary test shot
90 Summarit
First impression is that it renders very similar to my 50Cron, kind of old school Leica look and not as clinical or sharp as the ASPH lenses. The lens has a really nice, Leica quality to it. The aperture clicks nicely and the focus ring is super smooth.
Talking about the Elmar 24, I should show some images. Here some shots from the Bavarian Forest shot with this lens. Since I used a ND filter on the second and third image colors are way off and rather non-existant (see my comments a few pages above):
Great shots Luka! I think the 90 APO agrees with your style, but then again, i think any lens in your hands will also agree with your style!
Greg, v interesting shots!
Bobu, nice captures from the forest!
Lovely shohts Charles - the 'look' is different for these shots? less saturated? Hope to see more!
Just one from me - it's the Red Dot Camera shop facade. Nice nice place to shop....decent chaps who serve 'no bull' salesmanship. The wait list for the new 35 lux is ....45!
Charles, great photos from Bangkok. The first of the first set and the second portrait of the priest are my favourites.
Joe, congratulations on the new lens and nice duck shot.
Boris, great set in terms of compostion. I like the second one the most despite the colours.
Kl, nice facade photo but it is the inside that counts
KL and Joakim, thank you guys
KL, what a cool shop!!! Appropriately named street, "Old Street" Yes you are right! Marginally less colour sat, as the street colours are so vibrant
Charles, very nice night shots! Now just imagine how they would look with a 0.95 Noctilux Superb portraits of the Buddhist priest monk!
Joe, lovely shot of the lady duck and very cool shot moon/airplane shot! Congrats on the 90 Summarit.
Actually if you look at the MTF charts you'll see that it's not far behind in resolution compared to the 90 AA. In the case of the 75 Summarit, it's actually sharper than the 75 Cron. The only reason I chose the 75 Cron was because the rubber focusing ring turned me off a bit. I also had the notion that I wanted to try a 'top end' Leica lens to see what the fuss was about. My mistake - I would have probably been happier with the 75 Summarit than the 75 Cron.
corposant, the ZM 18 & ZE 21 do have similarities in rendering style but the ZE 21 is altogether in a different league. To make an analogy, both Telemann and Bach were baroque composers. Telemann was an excellent composer but Bach was a genius. The same thing here - the ZM 18 is a very good lens, but the ZE 21 is a Great lens.
Boris, nice shots with the Elmar 24. How does it compare to the 25 Biogon?
KL, very nice image of the wall - love the textures and the light you've captured.
Charles, I really like your first monk portrait, although I normally prefer to have both eyes in focus.
Luka, I did a short comparison of 25ZM and Elmar 24 a few pages ago. Short summary: The Elmar 24 is in every aspect (besides 3D maybe?) as good as the ZM25. Center sharpness and contrast are nearly identical and the corner sharpness at f/4.0 and colors are slightly better on the Elmar. I will keep the Elmar and sell the ZM25.
Yesterday I bought the Elmar 18mm. I will compare this lens to my ZM18 and if it is in the same league as the ZM18 will probably also sell the Zeiss.
Gregory, love the colour and texture in the last set.
You make the unmentionable unmistakable and beautiful.
Nice feeling of summer. The light and reflections are wonderful.
I did a short comparison between the ZM18 and the Elmar 18 today (using my M8).
The ZM18 has higher contrast in the center at all apertures, also the resolution in the center is slightly better. Here is an example of a 100% center crop at f/4.0:
ZM18:
Elmar 18:
At the edges/corners the contrast and sharpness on both lenses are identical (no examples since there is no visible difference).
The Leica lens has warmer colors, but this could probably
easiliy corrected in LR. Here are some examples (@ f/4.0):
ZM18:
Elmar 18:
Another difference between the two lenses is the out of focus rendering (background bokeh). The Elmar is much smoother as you can see here:
ZM18:
Elmar 18:
Here is another example:
ZM18:
Elmar 18:
You can also see, that Elmar 18 image has more DOF at the same aperture than the ZM18. In my test images this can be observed at all apertures. This could either be the result of a different optical design or of backfocusing of the Elmar or frontfocusing of ZM18. That's difficult to say without lifeview.
Short summary of this test: The optical difference between these lenses is rather small with a slight advantage of the Zeiss. The biggest benefit of the Elmar is in my opinion the better integration in the Leica system with correct coding information and an optimized in-camera correction. With the ZM18 you probably have to use Corner-Fix and loose also some Exif-infos. Since I had big problems hand coding this lens and don't want to use Corner-Fix I will keep the Elmar and sell the ZM18.
Charles, very nice portraits - I especially like the first one.
Joakim, nice shots - I like the first and last best.
Boris, thanks, interesting test and observation. I'm not surprised by your 18mm comparisons but I am by your ZM 25 / Elmar 24.
I'm surprised because according to Zeiss the ZM 25 is the world record holder in resolution. It hits the diffraction limit at f/4 and can resolve (MTF10) 400 lp/mm. A full frame sensor of over 500 megapixel would be required to make full use of the resolution of the lens. Now this peak is for the center of the image, but even if the corners were an order of magnitude worse (extremely unlikely) it should still be beyond anything that the M8/M9 can make use of.
I've done comparisons against the 28 Summicron, and it was an easy win for the Zeiss across the entire frame. And in the f/4-f/5.6 interval I have not noticed any drop in resolution towards the edges/corners on the ZM (although that's of course no guarantee or proof). It may be though that the 28 Cron is not comparable to the 24 Elmarit - the former does drop off towards the edges even at f/5.6 due to field curvature. It's first at f/8 that the DOF is large enough to compensate it and the two are roughly equal.
Of course sharpness is resolution and micro contrast. You could have extreme resolution at low contrast. I remember doing Zeiss 100 MP vs Canon 100L comparisons and although the Canon showed exactly as much detail as the Zeiss, the latter looked much sharper because the fine detail had a high contrast and was therefore more visible.
There are of course many different parameters such as focusing distance that affect a test, but I can't say that I've ever seen so much sagittal blur in a ZM 25 shot. This is what I'm used to getting: Full resolution jpg
This was shot at f/4 and I don't see much variation in resolution across the frame.. Anecdotal evidence, I know but still, that is pretty much consistent with what I've seen the lens produce. So blurry corners at f/4 on a crop camera seems very odd to me.
Judging from the MTF charts, the Elmar should indeed be slightly better tangentially at f/5.6 and in the corner region, but at f/4 the opposite should hold true and the ZM 25 should be as good or better than the Elmar in the sagittal direction at all apertures across the frame.
denoir wrote:
Boris, thanks, interesting test and observation. I'm not surprised by your 18mm comparisons but I am by your ZM 25 / Elmar 24.
Note that Boris did the test on his NEX-5. I don't know how different the designs of these two lenses are, but perhaps the lack of off-set microlenses in the NEX-5 sensor is more critical with the ZM25? The NEX-5 doesn't even show the true corners of these lenses...
AhamB wrote:
Note that Boris did the test on his NEX-5. I don't know how different the designs of these two lenses are, but perhaps the lack of off-set microlenses in the NEX-5 sensor is more critical with the ZM25? The NEX-5 doesn't even show the true corners of these lenses...
Since I still have the ZM25 I can repeat this test with the M8, probably this weekend. Last time I did the test my M8 was in Solms.
Charles, excellent two sets from Bangkok! Really superb portrait of the monk with the 50Lux ASPH. Very nice!! I also like how the lady looks like she's dancing on #3. #2 is my favorite from the 2nd set.
Boris, really nice shots with the 24 Elmar. I think this or the 24/2.8 Elmarit are both excellent lenses to have for landscapes. Thanks for sharing your test with the 18mm lenses.
KL, excellent shot of the Red Dot Store! Nice perspective.
Joakim, very nice set with the trees. #1 is my favorite. Really like how the 50Lux ASPH renders and creates depth to this shot.
------
I am pretty happy with the 90 Summarit for now . I like that this lens is lightweight. Its actually lighter than the 50Lux ASPH. My main concern with this lens before I bought it was the rubber focusing ring, whether it can last long enough without breaking apart, only time will tell.
Love that first shot you just posted! Really nice and the color pp is excellent!!
. I like that this lens is lightweight. Its actually lighter than the 50Lux ASPH. My main concern with this lens before I bought it was the rubber focusing ring, whether it can last long enough without breaking apart, only time will tell.
