7/17/2017 0 Comments Summicron 50Mm F2 Serial NumbersThe LEICA 50mm f/2 SUMMICRON with Near-Focusing Range is the greatest lens ever made by LEICA. This is LEICA's greatest 50mm lens ever, and 50mm is the most important. Voigtlander serial numbers have been published for many years. However, as more and more contemporary sources are located it has become apparent that many published. Selling your Leica M equipment. At Aperture we are always keen to acquire your quality Leica equipment. Either as a straight sale or as part of your next equipment. Next in line is the subject of this review, the Leica 50 Summicron. It is not an Aspherical lens and it is a classic design dating back to 1953. ![]() Leica 50mm Noctilux-M ASPH f/1.2 Leica 50mm Noctilux-M ASPH f/1.0 Leica 50mm Noctilux-M ASPH f/0.95. It has a magic attraction to it, like a large diamond. The Leica 5. 0 Summicron Lens Review – Steve Huff Photo. Leica 5. 0 Summicron Lens Review. The 5. 0mm focal length comes in many flavors in the world of Leica. The 5. 0 Summicron, Summilux, Summarit. So many 5. 0’s but luckily I have had a lot of time : ) It has been a long journey fore me trying to find a set of lenses that I could be happy with on my Leica M9 that fit within my budget. I just do not have the funds to buy a full set of Summilux glass, and even if I did I would probably feel bad about spending all of that money on lenses! It’s a slippery slope really. On on hand Leica M owners can go out and buy something like a Voigtlander 5. ![]() Alpa Prisma Reflex + Angenieux 50mm f2.9 Alpar. Condition 5/G (slow speeds & rangefinder faulty). Rare - only 935 manufactured. Nokton 1. 5 and get amazing results. This lens is inexpensive and seems to deliver superb image quality from what I have seen (there will be a guest article/review of that lens coming this week) but for those of us who really want a “Leica” lens on their Leica camera, a Voigtlander, no matter how capable, is not going to cut it so we look for a Leica to attach to our beloved camera. I have shot with Voigtlander, Zeiss and Leica on my M cameras and something about the Leica lenses keep me coming back to them. Wether it is their build, their style or their unique color signature I am pretty much hooked on Leica. New listing .Introduction Sony A7s with Jupiter-3 50mm 1.5 and VM-E close focus adapter (Helicoid) The Jupiter-3 50mm 1.5 is actually a copy of the Zeiss Sonnar 50mm 1.5 and was. The Canon 50mm f/1.4 LTM caught my attention by accident, whilst researching the 50 Lux I stumbled upon references to a lens known as the Japanese Summilux. But do not take that as a negative or a “stab” at Voigtlander and Zeiss. Both companies make some great little lenses for the Leica M mount and the Zeiss ZM range is considered by many as a true alternative to Leica. Today I am here to talk about Leica and one of the classical focal lengths for 3. The ever so popular 5. So if you shoot an M mount camera and are looking for a nice Leica 5. Your Leica 5. 0mm Options. For those who want to stick with Leica for their 5. The least expensive is the 5. Summarit. At $1. 39. Leica lens. At the time of this writing I have not shot with the 5. I can not comment on the quality of the lens but if it is anything like the rest in the summarit line, I am guessing it is really really good. The summarit is small and has an F2. AND IT DOES NOT come with a hood. That is an extra. Next in line is the subject of this review, the Leica 5. Summicron. It is not an Aspherical lens and it is a classic design dating back to 1. Over the years it has morphed into what it is today, a simple, small, well built heck of a 5. I love the design of this lens with it’s pull out hood and small size. This lens ups the ante a bit with a buy in price of $1. Leica leather pouch and as mentioned, the built in hood : )The third 5. Leica line up is the 5. Summilux ASPH and this is the mother of all 5. Its fast 1. 4 aperture is it’s main draw and its price is nearing the “I must be insane to but this thing” territory. At $3. 79. 5 (Feb 2. Finally, you have the worlds fastest most exotic and fastest lens for 3. Leica Noctilux F0. At $1. 0,4. 95 it is just way out there as far as pricing goes but man oh man is it beautiful. If I had the means to do so I would own one. The drawbacks with this lens is its size and weight. But that $1. 0k buys you a world class “stupid fast” lens as well as a lethal weapon in case anyone ever tries to rob you. I used to own the 5. Summilux ASPH and I remember buying one NEW at B& H Photo for around $2. Prices have since gone up (about 4 times) and these days it is getting harder and harder for me to justify Leica purchases. This is why I decided I had to finally settle on a three lens kit for my M9 and STICK TO THEM! Buying another 5. Lux was out for me because if I did that, well, I would not be able to buy a 3. My lens budget consisted of about $4. My search for a 5. Summicron. Enter the 5. Summicron. My first experience with the 5. When I bought a Leica M7 years ago it came with a 5. I shot that combo every day. Man, that was a beautiful combo. Talk about classic. I was soon tempted by the beautiful all black Leica MP and sold my M7 but I kept the 5. It never failed me, never let me down, and never ruined an image due to flare (many say this lens flares bad, but I have yet to see it in ANY of my shots. I do!). I must have taken 2- 3,0. MP. Never an issue with anything! Here is an image I shot years ago with the M7 and 5. Summicron. Leica M7 with 5. Summicron at F2 and Fuji Reala film scanned on a Nikon Coolscan VThat’s The Look I’m After! When Leica released the M8 I sold the MP to fund one. I mean, finally there was a digital M and of course I succumbed to my desires. Yep, I had to have one. I also sold the 5. Summicron because I decided I was going to go for a 5. Summilux for the M8 and I was silly like that. I wanted the best and that is what I bought. I remember people saying how much better the lux was over the cron so I never even thought to try it on the M8 (which was probably a mistake). Anyway, to make a long story short once I bought the M9 I tried a bevy of 5. Summilux, 5. 0 Noctilux F1, 5. Noctilux 0. 9. 5 and even the Zeiss 5. Planar (ALL reviewed on this website BTW in the Leica section). When I say I “tried” them what I mean is they were sent to me for review. I did not buy them all! After loving and shooting with a 5. Noctilux F1 for a while I decided I really needed a 3. I had Leica dealer Ken Hansen send me a 3. Summarit, 5. 0 Summicron and 9. Elmarit, all three new in box. The first lens I tried out of the three was the 5. Ahhhhhh. The lens seemed to have it all. It was small, well built, coded, not insanely priced and with its slide out hood made for a perfect 5. M9. Here is a youtube video I made to show you how big the lens is as well as how nice it looks in real- life- video. BTW, the video was shot with the Olympus E- P2 and Panasonic 2. The 5. 0 Summicron Bokeh. Cool video eh? I really fell in love with the lens and also the 3. I finally found my three lens kit but the 5. I started shooting with it and really liked the results. Not only is it bitingly sharp at F2, it has a really great signature as well as nice bokeh. Some say the bokeh of the 5. I disagree somewhat. To me, it has that Leica look and feel. This lens also happens to be a Mandler design so enough said : ) It may not have that perfect smooth modern bokeh of the 5. Lux ASPH but really, the bokeh of the summicron is just fine and will not make someone look at your image and say “Ewwww, look at that bokeh!”. The truth is, only us photo geeks stress over such things. But perfection is overrated these days and I started to realize this fact when I hit 4. Seeing all of my own imperfections made me ask myself why I used to be so obsessed with finding “perfect” lenses. A lens will not make or break a photo unless it is pure crap, and there really are no “crap” Leica lenses! Basically, it’s all about speed and speed is expensive in Leica world. At about $1. 80. 0 cheaper than the Summilux, the 5. As I have said, the Summilux is probably the ultimate all around 5. ANY 3. 5mm system. It beats the pants off of any Nikon or Canon 5. Canon 5. 0L which I owned for a while. If you have the funds, a summilux would be well, perfect! But if you want a tad but more of a classic rendering and do not mind a “slower” F2 design, the Summicron has its own kind of magic. Basically with Leica lenses you just pick your “flavor” and price range. I shot one paid job as well as my usual family and dumb animal photos. I even took it to St. Louis, MO and shot some old abandoned factories in mid day sun, again with no flare issues at all. The lens performed amazingly well for me. Never once did I say “Damn, I wish I had this lens or that lens”. I was amazingly 1. M9! Here are a few shots from my visit to St. Louis and the old factories, all of them with the 5. Summicron. Keep in mind these have been “processed” and are my final images. I did post an out of camera image in the “sharpness” section below with a 1. BTW, my “processing” of these files only consisted of using the “Ink” filter in Nik’s excellent Color Efex Pro filters. Sharpness & Detail. As I have stated, this lens is SHARP! Even at F2 you will not be able to complain about the sharpness of this lens, unless you have a bad copy or an out of alignment rangefinder in your camera. My M9 was recently calibrated to perfection and I can safely say that the combo of the 5. Cron and M9 ROCKS. It rocks HARD. Here are a couple of samples with 1. Be sure and click on the image to get the larger version and to see the 1. I think these tell you all you need to know about sharpness so newspaper text or wall clocks should not be necessary : )So not only do you get amazingly sharp detail even wide open at F2, you get the Leica buttery smooth Bokeh and color. I converted all of the images from DNG/RAW using ACR 5. The 2nd shot of the old Brick Warehouse is pretty impressive when viewing the full size file. You can click HERE to download it if you wish : )CA/SENSOR BLOOM/PURPLE CRUDIn some of my shots with the 5. I did see some CA/SENSOR BLOOM/PURPLE CRUD. I list all three because back a few years ago it was always refereed to as CA (chromatic aberrations) and generally popped up during high contrast situations. People always blamed the lens even though it never showed up on film images. Then, more recently the “sensor bloom” term came into play. Now we blame the digital sensors. The fact is that almost ANY lens will exhibit this “purple crud” (my name for it) on any digital camera but many digital cameras today fix this issue with in- camera software and processing so you never even see it. The M9 does NOT correct for this so if you shoot in a situation with high contrast like tree branches against a bright white sky and the exposure if not quite right, then you may see some of this “purple crud”. I have seen it the M9, D7. Canon 7. D, 5. D, etc. I have also seen it with just about every Leica lens, Zeiss lens, and Voigtlander lens (except the Noctilux F1. Here is a sample with some CA/SB/PC: This can be corrected in Photoshop or your image editor of choice so to me it is not a big deal and is something that comes along with digital.
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