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Wrong on several counts: 1. Their digital bodies are garbage (that's how they're different from Apple). I owned an M9 and between its crappy sensor and faux le
by melted 11y ago
Wrong on several counts:
1. Their digital bodies are garbage (that's how they're different from Apple). I owned an M9 and between its crappy sensor and faux leather peeling off, I was not impressed at all. The only good thing about that camera was the rangefinder.
2. Their lenses, on the other hand, really have no equal in the industry, and as the very best they rightfully command a steep premium. I had two: 50mm and 35mm Summiluxes. They really put everything else to shame, and they most certainly do offer a superior result. What other f/1.4 lenses do you know of that can be actually used at f/1.4 without significant resolution loss or veiling? OK, nowadays there's Zeiss Otus at 55mm, but it's also not cheap and it's three times the size. Add to that also that Leica lenses are extremely well made and compact, and you'll see why people are willing to part with large quantities of cash to own them.
- vvanders 11y agoI'd argue if you're using Canon's 35mm F1.4 at anything other than F1.4 you're wasting a lot of money. I hear the v2 rev is also very sharp compared to the original. Although I find the rendering of the original quite good enough.
- melted 11y agoCompared to 35mm 'Lux, Canon is a Coke bottle bottom. It's worse than Nikon 35 f/1.4, and it is really an f/2 lens at best, with inflated specs. Rent a Lux if you get a chance. I held Canon/Nikon in much higher regard until I tried Leica.
- foldr 11y agoWhen would you ever want to shoot at f1.4? The low light argument makes less sense in the context of digital cameras with VR lenses, since bumping up the ISO a stop or two, or using a longer shutter speed, would usually degrade the overall quality of the image less than having almost everything out of focus. Nothing wrong with a bit of bokeh, but at the focal lengths typically used with a full frame sensor, f1.4 will almost always give you less than the desired depth of field.
- melted 11y ago35 benefits significantly from f/1.4. 50 benefits too, but to a lesser extent. You get better subject separation at greater distances.
- vvanders 11y agoAll the time, otherwise you'd buy the 35mm F2 and save about $1.2k. Depth of Field is a function of Aperture , Focal Length and Distance to plane of focus. The focal length drives how wide the "scatter" of the blur is, so wide angle lenses like the 35mm have a very "soft" blur as opposed to something like a 400mm F2.8 which just obliterates backgrounds. This is also driven by how close you are focusing so you can shoot a 35mm F1.4 wide open, focusing around ~15ft away and the detail of the scene is very much preserved. It lets you focus on a subject and give them a slight "pop" of focus while keeping the rest of scene coherent.
- foldr 11y agoCan you give an example of the sort of scene you have in mind? I often play around with 4x5 photography, where it would be trivially easy to get that effect for a subject 15ft away with a $100 lens, but I've never actually wanted to do it.
- vvanders 11y agoYeah, in 4x5 you've got a larger "sensor" which also contributes to DoF. [edit] If I remember my lens geometry correctly, film size is just the other side of focal length when it comes to bokeh calculations. I grabbed this random image from the 35L group on Flickr, they didn't include EXIF so I can't be 100% certain they shot it at F1.4 but it looks very close to shots I have at F1.4 from that lens. https://www.flickr.com/photos/49830238@N04/25021998886/in/pool-27449914@N00/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/49830238@N04/25021998886/in/po...