Doug, nice shots! Favourite is last portrait shot
Joakim, nice morning capture!
Ajay, great shots! Love those with the 24 Lux
Zhangyue, welcome! Thanks Great portrait shot
rsolti13, Lovinglife, Charles, Thanks.
Lovinglife: Nice 28 and 50 image. The #2 is very beautiful. It would be nice I have such nice Leica lens collection
Charles: Nice night shot with moving people. 75lux shot is stunning.
Here is a shot with Sonnar at f5.6 from Portland downtown.
Ashok, love the sunset (sunrise ?) shot.
Charles, splendid work as always. Especially that 75 lux shot. Are you something like a secret 2nd shooter at beach weddings ? So many beach wedding shots that you post.
Zhangyue - Nice portrait of your son.
Zhangyue, Ajay and Joakim, thank you guys Much appreciated.
Ajay, the location is very opportune for wedding photogs, and yes I quite often end up taking shot
Zhangyue, nice shots of Portland downtown. Favourite is your first shot!
Joakim, you can almost feel the chill from your shot!! I am surprised the sun was up
Joakim - nice find with the injured traffic light.
Ajay - the whole set is great, very vibrant, I love the mood of #2.
Michael - great light and feel to the one of your son.
LL: love #2 and #5!
Nice finds Charles. If I was shooting that wedding I'd probably be trying to light them with a softbox, beauty dish or something, while struggling with what looks like a bit of wind!
GAS continues, having found a minty CV50 f/1.5 for a reasonable price. Only did a few shots with it today, primarily comparing it against the 50 Lux ASPH on the GXR (see GXR thread), but here are a couple on the M9:
First is CV50 uncoded then 50 Lux ASPH coded:
Notice any difference? There is some. The 50 Lux ASPH renders much smoother backgrounds. Some quick testing for OOF specular highlights indicates that the CV50 will produce brightline rings for OOF speculars behind the plane of focus, but not in front. I do like the character of the CV50 but it does purple fringe with high contrast transitions. Seems to be a 'feature' of numerous CV lenses, such as the 40 and 75 f/1.8, though I haven't noticed it with the 35 f/1.2 II except when the the brightness difference is extreme...
Cross-posted from the Voigtlander and GXR thread because I thought it might be of interest here since these are all M compatible lenses:
Four-way shootout:
GXR, cropped around 30% because the 90cm minimum focusing distance of the CV50 resulted in a pretty loose shot: 50 Lux ASPH, CV50 f/1.5, ZM50 Planar, CV40 f/1.4
WB based on the ZM image, brightness adjusted to match the white in the C of Canon. Of the various LR parameters, contrast was set to zero, black point at 5, clarity at zero.
Excellent photos on this page, absolutely love them.
zhangyue, I like the portrait very much. LL, the second shot is awesome. Charles, great sets as always. The 75 Lux should be called the "beach lens". It draws very nicely.
Ron, Hilmar thanks Much appreciated.
Ron, interesting comparison! I am surprised how much of a glow the CV 40/1.4 has. Very much like the Mandler style, except for the harsher bokeh. Definite difference with the 50 Lux. I love the 50 Lux for the OOF areas with the gentle glow. The ZM 50/2 Planar has been a favourite of mine, as it is very easy to use with no issues.
Hilmar, yes having the beach nearby does make it convenient for evening shots The lighting is usually harsh, so the 75 Lux makes for a great combo!
Thanks for all your kind comment.
Still learning how to process Leica's output. As I find I have to put a lot more attention to color than D700.
Ron, Reading your post always giving me a lot of good information and Knowledge. From your shots, I am surprised to see 50lux has such a smooth Bokeh, as I seems faintly remember people complain about harsh Bokeh of 50ASPH compare pre-ASPH one. VC50 is indeed a very good lens, I am very curious how Zeiss sonnar compare?
From your hat shot at given size, I can see 50lux is a little bit sharper/contrast with smooth Bokeh.
In your comparsion for Canon shot, Does them all at f2? I think ZM50 looks most contrast/sharp to me. VC40 fall behind a little in terms of sharpnees, CA, and Bokeh.
Joakim: Nice Stockholm shot.
Charles: Always enjoy your 75Lux shot.
This thread has a lot less activity than before. Looks everyone is getting more excited with A, B, C, D's mirrorless
Charles, yes the CV 40 f/1.4 has a lot of glow. I did 5 focus bracketed shots with the GXR at full magnification to be sure I got something correctly focused on the Canon logo. The focus throw is quite fast, so it's very easy to overshoot slightly. This lens also has a lot of focus shift and the strongest amount of field curvature I think I've ever seen. It's not one I would use for technical corner to corner detail work, but I think it is good for portraits and other similar types of work. And I like its aggressive bokeh. Actually, of the group above, I like the CV40's background rendering the best of the bunch because it feels like there is some depth and texture to it. I think the 50 Planar is technically the best lens in terms of sharpness/contrast at the plane of focus at that working distance.
Michael: Yeah, it would be fun to add the 50 Sonnar to the mix, unfortunately I don't have easy access to one and I think its minimum focusing distance is one meter - the worst of the bunch. I suspect it would be fairly soft and glowy considering it has a fair amount of spherical aberration, especially at its minimum focusing distance. The 50 Lux ASPH can have very gentle bokeh, as seen in these images, but depends on the situation. This one of the camera with oof speculars is where the Lux ASPH is very smooth. Actually a bit too smooth for my preference. It's especially smooth when there is significant distance between a near in-focus subject and a distant background. Almost like applying a gaussian blur in PS. Where I see harshness from it is when photographing something at a distance wide open and the background isn't much farther away than the plane of focus. But I think this is a difficult situation for most lenses to render smoothly. Or when one can observe the plane of focus transition to out of focus, rather than here where the plane of focus is a separate plane from the foreground and background. Regarding the camera photos, they were all done wide open, not equalized at f/2 because I wanted to see the biggest blur discs.
Michael: A couple months ago I posted the following images here, which might give you an idea of how the 50 Lux ASPH stacks up to some of the older Leica 50s:
These are SOOC and exposure is not identical, nor is framing, since I wasn't intending for this to be a formal comparison I'd show anywhere...
50 Lux v.I:
50 f/1.5 Summarit:
50 Lux ASPH (cropped a bit for framing consistency):
I live in London, ON and I have a 50 C-Sonnar F1.5, ZM50 F/2.0 and I also have a VC50mm F/1.5 too. We could meet, I would really appreciate hearing about your M9, and seeing some of your m9 output.
I live in London, ON and I have a 50 C-Sonnar F1.5, ZM50 F/2.0 and I also have a VC50mm F/1.5 too. We could meet, I would really appreciate hearing about your M9, and seeing some of your m9 output.
Is that Leica store in Paris?
Let me know.
Andrew
Thanks Andrew, that's good to know and it would be cool to meet up. When I commented I don't have easy access to a Sonnar, in my mind I meant sitting right next to me. Just 15 minutes away in Burlington is Rob Skeoch, a Zeiss distributor. He has some inventory at hand for demos and rental. Just thought I would mention it in case it might interest you. It's not too often you find someone stocking relatively esoteric items so close to home. If you're looking for anything Zeiss, check out his sites for rangefinder related gear as well as for Zeiss SLR lenses and large format stuff and be sure to mention my name.
BTW, that was the Leica store in Munich. Very nice and laid back staff. Not sure if it's like that at the other Leica stores, but they basically unlocked the used lens cabinet and let me try whatever they had.
Thanks Charles! Nice set - taking a break from the beach?
Whenever you would like to meet just PM me with a few days notice and I can meet you. It would be great to get to know another FM'r in the neighbourhood so to speak. I have a few Leica lenses that I can bring along too. NEX 7 is arriving Monday BTW.
thanks for the info on Rob, I'll bookmark his site and keep your comments in mind.
