The Online Photographer

Before I get a reputation as a hair-shirt, two-prime ascetic, simon-pure—unless it's already to late—:

How many lenses would you have if you could have all the lenses you want?

You can just give us the number. You don't have to go into the whole grisly blow-by-blow.

I've always held that four is the max. But, incredible as it might sound, I'm really not sure if I've ever owned as many as four lenses for the main camera I was using at any given time in my life. Surely that must be wrong, but I can't think of an exception off the top of my head. I have three lenses for my X-T1 right now. Well, four, but two of them are the same lens (long story), so, really, three.

Of course, I also have an Apo-Sironar 5x7 lens, a normal 80mm ƒ/2.8 Schneider for a Rolleiflex 6008AF, a Konica M-Hexanon 35mm ƒ/2 for Leica M mount, and a Panasonic-Leica 45mm ƒ/2.8 Macro for Micro 4/3—among other things—but let's not get into my psychological issues, eh?  ;-)

Mike

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Tom: "Five. I'd have what was the standard photojournalist's bagful from the beginning of my career, 24mm, 35mm, 55mm-ish Micro, 85mm and 70–200mm. Day-to-day I'd carry the 35mm and 85mm. The older I get the more I realise where I started was the optimum place."

Jeff: "Three or four, maximum, per camera. All native lenses, which is a critical part of the camera system purchase decision."

Eolake: "I’ve been selling lenses left and right in the past year, so now I’m down to.... Uhm, not sure, thirteen? Well, if you count the lenses on my vintage cameras (Pentax Spotmatic, Nikon F2, etc), then maybe twenty-nine."

Dennis Mook: "Five. Fujifilm...10–24mm ƒ/4, 16–55mm ƒ/2.8, 23mm ƒ/1.4, 50–140mm ƒ/2.8, and 100–400mm ƒ/4.5–5.6. Need the versatility for stock photography."

Kalli: "If I could have all the lenses I want, I'd have a metric ton of lenses. And I'd probably still use my current primary lens well over 90% of the time, so that'd be a LOT of glass gathering dust around my flat."

Jim Simmons: "That's easy—I'd want every lens Fuji makes for the X system. I'd trial them all and narrow it down to whichever ones I fell in love with."

marcin wuu: "I take photos of faces. I only want one—the 85mm ƒ/1.4 equivalent for any given film/sensor size."

Mike replies: People who know what their subject is are the happiest people.

Michael H: "I currently have nine...but three are for sale...so that I can afford to buy another.  :-) "

John: "There is no just right number if you shoot multiple genres. I could easily get rid of some of my lenses if I gave up bird photography. Likewise, despite the many lenses I do own, I realized today that I don’t have the right lens to shoot a high school theater performance. It’s horses for courses."

Peter: "One prime."

SF Murph: "One more."

Kenneth Tanaka: "(No comment.)"

Ken's Canon drawer

Ken Bennett: "Oh, wow, that is a difficult question. I'd have to ask, what's the purpose of owning the camera and lenses? Why are we making these photos? When I grab a bag for personal work, or travel, or fun, I usually have three or four lenses. But for actual work, I feel like I need to own most or all of the lenses in a system. That's how it is with the Fuji system right now, and I had a very large collection of Canon lenses when that was my primary system."

Mike replies: Did you by any chance sell all your Canon lenses to another guy named Ken?

Adrian: "Eight. The viewing and taking lenses for the wide, normal and tele Rolleiflexes, and the two on my iPhone X."

Mike replies: That's hardcore!

Matt: "Two. I have more but don't care about carrying more than two. One is restrictive, three a hassle."

John Car: "20, 35, 85, 180mm."

Mike replies: That happens to be just about exactly the classic photojournalist's kit, c. 1970s in the US.

Rod S.: "In architectural photography, one quickly realises that buildings are surrounded by immovable obstacles such as streets, walls and other buildings and, consequently, the available vantage points for a successful photograph are often limited and close. That means you need wide angle lenses having the largest available image circles, permitting lots of lens rise, to get it all in. For my 4x5 tool of choice my standard walk-around lenses are the Schneider Super Angulon XL 72mm (21 mm-e) and 90mm (28mm-e). I've just added a Super Symmar XL 110mm (35mm-e) on the long end so I can back off a bit more (when there's sufficient space to do so) and reduce the 'ship's prow' distortion that creeps in when one is too close to the corner of a building. Occasionally the 58mm (15mm-e) and 150mm 45mm-e) are useful to have in the car or hotel.

"So for my architecture on 4x5, the answer is five."

scott kirkpatrick: "Fewer than Ken Tanaka, at least."

Joe Kashi: "I'm taking the Fifth Amendment!"

Mike replies: You'd better confess. I'm a pretty nice guy, but my partner here....

...On some of the reasoning behind owning a "kit" of only a couple of good prime lenses:

The Case Against Zooms (2003)

Why 40mm? (2005)

I should also point out that the case for getting to know a few prime lenses well was exponentially easier to make back in the days of film, because a great many of the most serious and ambitious photographers back then photographed mainly with one of these three types of camera: a rangefinder 35mm like a Leica; a medium-format camera like a Hasselblad or Rolleiflex; or a view camera. With very few exceptions (a few multi-focal-length lenses for Leica M mount, a few very heavy, slow, expensive zooms of limited range for medium-format cameras), all those camera types used only prime lenses. And an overwhelming majority of photographers who used such cameras owned—yep—one, two, or three prime lenses.

Nowadays, I am bereft of most of these natural allies, because almost everyone has switched to digital*.  But the lessons of the past remain good ones, even as they are being lost.

Mike

*Although it's very ironic—and delightful!—that, as SteveW pointed out in the previous post, that the latest iPhones come equipped with the equivalent of two prime lenses.

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Michael Ferron: "A big yes on the 40mm. My Fuji lives with the 27mm pancake on it, my most used film camera an Olympus RC has a 42mm and my new A6000 has a Sigma 30mm ƒ/1.4 mounted that does not come off the camera often. So this gives me a range of approximately 40–45mm. 45mm is pushing the long end of the short normal for me but still doable; 50mm just starts looking too damn long for all around one lens work. My two cents."

Of course there are many ways to construct one's own arsenal of lenses. (No one—or very few people anyway—ever has all of them, so choices must be made.)

Two methods that are the farthest from the present topic might be: 1. To own many different cameras of many different brands, plus a few lenses for each, and choose which camera to use based on immediate need, mood, and whimsy; 2. To own a large selection of lenses for your camera of choice and decide what combination of lenses to take or pack on a day-by-day, assignment-by-assignment, or excursion-by-excursion basis. I do know a few well-heeled* amateurs who do the former, and most pros do the latter. (In the studio I was part of in the '90s, the Paul Kennedy Studio of Takoma Park, Maryland, Paul kept a 28mm Nikkor on hand, along with all his other lenses, despite his dislike of that focal length, just for when art directors would say, "Let's see that with a 28." He almost never used it for anything else.)

But being a teacher deep down, what I've always recommended is to get to know a few lenses well. How well? Well, as well as possible. One good way to do that is to own only one, or two, or three. And the first lenses you should master should be single-focal-length lenses, AKA "primes."**

Boiling all this down, we come to the most basic or classic form of the two-lens kit, which consists of a moderate wide-angle prime and a moderate telephoto prime. Of course, you can construct such a set of lenses for almost any lensmount. Here are a few nice examples:

For Micro 4/3:

Panasonic-Leica DG Summilux 15mm ƒ/1.7 ASPH.

Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 45mm ƒ/1.8

This is of course far from the only classic two-lens kit you could construct in Micro 4/3. There are many variants. But both of these lenses are light, tiny, quite adequately fast, and optically excellent.

It's odd to consider this, in these overheated consumerist times, but a person could quite conceivably be a fully committed and dedicated expressive photographer and use no lenses but these two little ones indefinitely.

From the high-value Sigma ART series for full-frame DSLRs:

Sigma 35mm ƒ/1.4 DG HSM Art

Sigma 85mm ƒ/1.4 DG HSM Art

And finally for Fuji X (APS-C), these two lovelies:

Fujifilm XF 23mm ƒ/1.4 R

Fujifilm XF 56mm ƒ/1.2 R

These two Fujis are both utterly lovely, brilliant lenses that will knock your socks off on a regular basis—they can do anything you ask of them and they have no weak points. This is as close as makes no difference to a theoretically perfect pair.

The above are only three example pairs among many, of course. Note that I'm not saying it's wrong or bad to own many lenses, and many experienced photographers can shoot with zooms successfully (another now-common type of two-lens kit is the wide-angle and telephoto zoom pair, the only one of the various two-lens kits mentioned thus far that is actually sometimes used by working pros). But for generalist expressive photography, it's quite possible to own and use only two primes. Just because you can photograph a critter or a linebacker at 300 paces and see the blood on its teeth, and just because you can take a tiny object like a gear in a watch movement and make it huge by photographing it from mere centimeters away—etc., etc.—doesn't mean every generalist has to equip herself to do so. Happy is the snapper who knows two primes like they knew their childhood backyard. Unless you're dealing with a specific, specialist assignment, it's all most people really need, if we're being honest.

Mike

*George Orwell mentions in Down and Out in Paris and London that you could usually tell the relative prosperity of a tramp by looking at his shoes. The expression dates from the mid-1800s, when how well a person dressed was an essential telltale of social status. Everyone wore leather shoes in those days, and maintained them by taking them to a cobbler for routine repair. A common failing of leather shoes was that the heel would come off; thus, someone who was forced to walk on shoes with no heels for reasons of penury was said to be "down at heel," and someone who was the opposite was said to be "well-heeled." It came to be a colloquial synonym for "wealthy."

**The actual original definition of "prime lens" isn't exactly just a single focal length lens, but that's the way it's now widely used, so we all must bow to common usage. The original meaning—the principle or basic component in a set of convertible element groups—has become a "retronym."

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SteveW: "I agree with this. Lately I've been shooting with 28mm/58mm on a Nikon D750. I'm happy as a clam with these two lenses. (Coincidentally, this pair is similar to my iPhone Plus 28/56)."

Nguyenhm16: You know I actually had the Sigma 35mm/85mm combo (well, it was the prior version of the 85mm), but found myself never using or bringing along the 85mm because it crossed the line into too heavy. This is on Nikon. When I had Canon I had the 35mmL/85mmL combo, and got rid of the 85mmL for the same reason, and got a 85mm ƒ/1.8 instead. Might try again with the Tamron 85mm ƒ/1.8 VC. To me the image stabilization plus lighter weight would be more useful than ƒ/1.4."

Dave Stewart replies to Nguyenhm16: "That 85mm Tamron is a big and heavy beast, at 700g (1.54lb). Both Nikon's current and previous ƒ/1.8 versions are almost half that, and both the current and previous ƒ/1.4 versions are lighter. Tamron's VC is very good though. Side-by-side comparison tool courtesy of DP Review."

Eolake: "Good picks. I don’t have a favorite Micro 4/3 wideangle lens, but I really love the Oly 45mm. It’s tiny, reasonably priced, and beautiful optically. Outstanding lens."

xfmj: "For Micro 4/3rds I have a Panny 20mm and that Oly 45mm. Both are great. I've in particular grown very fond of the look the 45mm provides, so much so that for landscapes I have a 'two lenses with one' (a TLwO?) kit: I just turn the 45mm's view vertical, take three or four shots, then stitch them together for that moderate wide view. The resulting print is just brighter with detail than what you get with any of the 28–40mm-e lenses, even in the grizzled northwest US. I recommend the TLwO kit for extreme portability, should a person happen to enjoy fussing with computers a little after a long hike."

Dean Forbes: "The Fuji pair are what I regularly have attached to a pair of X-T2s. Love them!"

Kalli: "Alternative two-lens kit: iPhone X."

John Krumm: "I definitely agree with you here about lenses. Relatedly, I find I enjoy printing more if I stick to a couple sizes and mostly one paper. I print a lot of 4x6 photos as a growing 'proof' stack (just the ones I like). Then every once in a great while I have one I want larger. My wife helps me weed out the proof stack (usually my landscapes fall victim to her editing)."

[First of all, I think I'll name the idea we've been talking about, and called it a "nested" tw0-lens kit. Definition: One big heavy do-everything zoom and a small, light, portable lens with a focal length inside the focal-length range of the zoom. Just so we know what we're talking about and I don't have to redefine it every time I mention it. If you don't like the name, fret not, as my names for things never catch on. Well, except for "bokeh" and "OC/OL/OY."]

Now then, moving on: the Pentax K-1 is, as you know, The Perfect Enthusiast Camera. Here's a comprehensive list of what it has that enthusiasts want:

1. Everything

And here's the comprehensive accounting of its drawbacks, shortcomings, and weaknesses:

1.

So now that's done, then the question is, what's a great "nested" two-lens kit for it? Submitted for your consideration:

HD Pentax-D FA 28–105mm ƒ/3.5–5.6 ED DC WR

SMC Pentax-FA 43mm ƒ/1.9 Limited

Pentax lenses, unfortunately, do have a drawback. Damn things are just too sharp. Have a look. Am I right?

Mike

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This morning, beuler wrote:

A long time ago I read somewhere on the young Internet that you shouldn't think of a zoom lens as several primes in one lens. Instead, you should think of it as a prime lens with flexible framing. Thus a 24–70mm lens is really a 41mm that allows framing to be adjusted. Why 41mm? The square root of the product of 24 and 70 is ~41. An example from the wide end of the focal spectrum would be an 16–35mm lens replacing a 24mm by adding framing adjustment.

Indeed. That's the reasoning behind the excellent Pentax HD DA 20–40mm ƒ/2.8–4 ED Limited DC WR zoom lens—it's a tweakable, or adjustable, normal. The equivalent is given as 30.5mm to 61.5mm; having one means you don't have to decide between the common short-to-normal prime options. Playing beuler's trick of the square root of the product, rounding up just slightly, the Pentax 20–40mm is really best thought of as an adjustable 50mm.

It takes a pretty subtle enthusiast to realize that. Ordinary consumers just see a zoom without enough range. But that's a disservice to the product in this case.

One of the most interesting zooms you can buy,
but you have to realize what it's meant to be.

Long ago, Pentax prototyped a zoom with an even narrower range, but numbers typically don't stick in my memory. It was something like a 32–39mm, and was meant to be an adjustable 35mm. Maybe a deep Pentaxian can provide the actual information. I think it exists somewhere on Boz Dimitrov's site. (Oracular and all-knowing Oren might be able to delve into the relevant archive at Stately Oren Manor. I'll try to remember to ask.)

Using a zoom as an "adjustable prime" takes a little deliberate self-training, I would guess. You need to get comfortable starting out with it in a middle position. It has to do with your mental conception of the tool you're using, rather than being a matter of the equipment itself.

Whack that conception as with a stout cudgel
Now then—laying devil's advocate, let's look at this the other way around. I recall reading somewhere on the young Internet—or even before that, in those antiquated information delivery systems we used to use called "magazines"—that most photographers actually use zoom lenses by slamming them to either the short end or the long end, seldom landing in the middle anywhere. That is, they used them like two primes.

That suggests a good way to decide what zoom lens to buy. You could just ask yourself, would I be happy with [prime on the short end] and [prime on the long end]? That is, if you were considering a 24–70mm, you would ask yourself how comfortable you'd be shooting with a two-lens kit that consisted of a 24mm single-focal-length lens and a 70mm single-focal-length lens.

Right away that would suggest a problem to me. Because 70mm, as a prime, just isn't long enough to suit my tastes.

Since I believe I have a little more discipline than to use any zoom only at its extremes, the question I'd ask myself would be, if the wide end were a prime, would it be wide enough for what I like to do with it? And similarly, if the long end were a long prime, would it be long enough to do what I want to do with that?

Based on long experience being me, I know that, for myself (please do note the qualifications, they do mean what they say) generally a 24mm is as wide as I ever need to go, but that I like to be able to go to 85mm on the long end (and 35mm–40mm is my "home" or comfort area). I can get by with just a 35mm or 40mm. The second lens I would need, historically, is an 85mm or 90mm. The third is a wide angle, but it doesn't need to be wider than 24mm because I just don't usually see pictures that way. (And yes, I've explored that—a year or two back, I photographed a lot with the XF 14mm ƒ/2.8 (21mm-e) glued to my Fuji. I grew to love that lens—it's an absolute honey—but I still don't think I need anything that wide. With the 14mm off the camera, I very seldom feel the need to put it back on.

And sure enough, the lens I've ended up using, albeit for different reasons (image stabilization), is the Fuji 18–55mm. (By happenstance I've ended up with two of them.) The equivalent focal-length range is 27–84mm, and, true to predictions, I'm pretty comfortable with that. I don't think 24–85mm-e is a very common lens spec for small-than-FF-sensor cameras, though.

It's always fun to speculate about lens choices. The only trouble with it is that the actual lenses cost money, and, thinking we "need" something somewhat different than what you have, some of us tend to spend more than we should. (We hate it when that happens, but we can usually rationalize doing it anyway.) The next lens I need to experiment with is a long zoom, but I can't afford another lens right at the moment.

So if you're buying an all-purpose zoom to use as your main normal lens, just ask yourself, if the short end were a prime, would it be short enough? And, if the long end were a prime, would it be long enough? That should take you a long way toward identifying what focal length range you should be looking at.

Mike

UPDATE: Boz's site lists the "exact name" of the Flexi prototype as "smc PENTAX-M FLEXI 1:2.8 35mm." If that's true, it was actually going to called a "35mm" lens. It was indeed a very short-range 32–39mm ƒ/2.8 zoom. It was shown at Photokina 1978 but never made it into production. (Thanks to Oren Grad and Iñaki Arbelaiz.)

And from our friend Ned Bunnell, who as you know is the former president of Pentax USA:

"Good memory Mike. The Pentax lens you referred to was the 'M 32–39mm ƒ/2.8 Flexi.' It was shown at Photokina in '78, but it never produced.

"The only reason I remember this is on one of my many trips to Pentax Japan, one of their lens designers (who knew I was a avid photographer) showed me the final handmade prototype that was buried in the back of a display. It was called a flexi because it was primarily a 35mm lens with the ability to adjust the lens focal length slightly to 32 or 39. I took a photo of it, but have no idea where it is now. However, I recall the zoom collar was clearly marked 35 with a white line on either side giving you an indication of how far you could zoom either way. The zoom action was precise but smooth and I thought the concept was really nice. Rather than move the camera slightly back and forth to make that final composition tweak, or worst case step back or forward, a simple adjustment to the zoom collar gave you the exact image frame you wanted.

"I told the designer I would have bought one, which prompted a big smile from him."

Mike replies: You should have bought that prototype...!

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Mark Roberts: "Some manufacturer should take the 'flexi' zoom/prime concept to the ~100mm macro. In outdoor macro work, a little reframing capability without moving your entire tripod around would be wonderful. (Yes, macro focusing rails exist, but that's just one more piece of kit to have to carry into the field.) A 90–100mm macro zoom would be sweet.  :-)  "

Barry Reid: "Way back all the top manufacturers had 28–85-ish zooms and I really prefer that extra range at the long end over the now standard 24–70mm. Mine was the Canon FD 28–85/4 and I still think it’s a pretty decent Zoom on an FF mirrorless body."

Another utterly lovely two-lens kit...for a full-frame Canon:

Canon EF 24–70mm ƒ/2.8L II USM

Canon EF 40mm ƒ/2.8 STM

Mike

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Mus Aziz: "Adaptable to the Sony A7 Mark II series too. The 40mm STM works very well with the A7RII.  :-)  "

Michael: "As an aging shooter with a love for simplicity (read fewer lenses), I have chosen my primary kit to be a Canon full-frame 5Ds, 35mm ƒ/2 IS, and 24–105mm ƒ/4 IS. My logic when I assembled this trio was: A camera large enough that I can use the controls easily with my large, not-so-flexible aging hands; two lenses, IS in both; lots of pixels with the ability to crop-a-lot, and not a ton of weight so as to allow me to carry the three pieces without leaving my shoulder in pain.😓 After about a year, this combination is working quite well for my photographic needs as an 853-month-old geezer! I am not a pro, I just love to take pictures (and read TOP)!"

Mike replies: An excellent example of this kind of two-lens kit. Christopher Crawford mentioned that he liked that zoom too.

Geoff Wittig: "What Christopher [and Michael] said. I actually own too many lenses for my Canon system; can't help myself. When I'm out photographing seriously, I bring a huge backpack full of stuff with the 24–70 ƒ/2.8 II and the 70–200 ƒ/2.8 II serving for about 90% of what I shoot. The 24–70mm has no optical flaws that I can find. But the 24–105mm is waaaaay more useful if you have just one lens; that extra focal length at the long end makes all the difference. The 24–105 isn't quite as good optically—you'll see more vignetting and the edges aren't as sharp, which is very relevant for me shooting detailed landscapes I anticipate printing to very large sizes. The one stop smaller aperture matters little since I'm usually stopping down a lot anyway.

"Good thing Canon doesn't make a 24–105 ƒ/2.8, because then I'd be tempted to buy that too."

Wayne: "The 40mm ƒ/2.8 has a very strange impact on me. I have never owned it. In fact, I have never owned a Canon DSLR...although, I do regularly shoot my old F-1. But every time I see the 40mm ƒ/2.8 I get this strange compulsion to go to B&H, buy a Canon DSLR and get the lens. I have been fighting the urge for years now. Please stop mentioning this lens.  :-) "

Speaking of the Olympus 12–100mm ƒ/4, here's a strategy I've written about before that I've always liked but that has never caught on. Nobody ever talks about it, and it's not considered go-to or default equipment-purchasing advice. The idea have never gone viral. It is anti-viral.

The idea is this: a two-lens kit, with one lens being a big, heavy, expensive but wide-range zoom you can do everything with, and the other being a small, light prime lens, the focal length of which is at the sweet spot for you inside the range of the zoom.

The Olympus 12–100mm would be perfect for that, paired with your choice of a small, light Olympus prime with a focal length between 12mm and 100mm. For example, the 34mm angle-of-view equivalent 17mm.

Moose says that the Panasonic 12–60mm is just as good as the Oly 12–100mm, down to the bokeh. (You can read his comment here.) Since I don't need anything quite that long, an ideal two-lens kit, Micro 4/3 variation*, might be:

Panasonic-Leica DG Vario-Elmarit 12–60mm ƒ/2.8–4 ASPH. POWER O.I.S.

Panasonic Lumix G 20mm ƒ/1.7 II ASPH.

Crucial to the concept is that you use the two lenses in the OPPOSITE way from how people usually think of zooms and primes. You use the zoom when you're photographing purposefully, when photographing is absorbing your whole attention and concentration; and you use the little prime as a "do-everything" lens when you're just carrying the camera along with you in order to have it along, as you go about your other business or your daily life. The reason for that is that when you're photographing deliberately, you don't mind extra weight; when you're just carrying a camera along for fun is when you want it to be light and handy.

It has the added advantage that you don't want to skimp when it comes to a zoom. The better ones are better. But they're big and heavy.

As I say, no one else likes this idea but me, so you can ignore this post if you want to. I still say it's a nice way to think about a two-lens kit.

Mike

*You can construct a version of this two-lens kit in any equipment line, obviously. Canon, Fuji. Except Leica M maybe.

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Jeff: "Many Leica SL users carry the superb 24–90mm weather-sealed zoom with OIS for general purpose photography, and substitute their favorite M lens, which is effectively adapted, for a smaller, lighter option."

Ken James: "I personally very much like your idea. I do with the Olympus 12–40mm ƒ/2.8 pro and the Panasonic 25mm ƒ/1.7. I would like to replace the 25mm with your recommended 20mm. Someday."

Henning Wulff: "This is actually the way I do use two lenses quite often. The 12–100mm ƒ/4 is the main one on my camera, and the Olympus 17mm ƒ/1.8 comes along, as I'm first and foremost a 35mm kind of guy if I'm using one lens. Sometimes, if I want to extend my range a bit, I'll include the Laowa 7.5mm ƒ/2. The downside to the 20mm ƒ/1.7 (both versions) is that it uses an older focusing technology, and is annoyingly slower in that regard. [Very true, and something to be considered. —MJ.] Optically, it's possibly a bit better than the 17mm ƒ/1.8 Olympus. Speaking of the Panasonic 12–60mm ƒ/2.8–4; it's a very good lens, but the performance sags noticeably at the long end. The good thing is that it's a lot lighter than the 12–100mm."

Rene Theberge: "Well, this is exactly what I use, but I do violate one of Mike's rules which is that my prime lens is outside the zoom range. And, I cheat somewhat in that I carry two cameras. These days the majority of my photography is at demonstrations and events which can be fast moving with action appearing suddenly, hence the need for two cameras at different focus lengths. So one Olympus E-M5 Mark II has the wonderful 12–40mm and the other E-M5 MArk II has the superb 75mm (Can you tell I like Oly lenses?). This gives me good range to cover crowds with the zoom and a very sharp longer focal length to pick out people from the crowd.

"Yes, it's more than I'd like to carry, but it works."

Hisham Zerriffi: "Count me as another who does exactly this. Fuji 27mm pancake on my X-E2 most of the time. This time of year it actually fits in my winter coat pocket nicely. 18–55mm for specific work when I want to go longer or working inside and need a bit wider angle. Would love something a bit nicer but that Fuji 'kit' lens is still pretty great."

The new Leica APO-ASPH. LHSA and the Nikkor 50mm ƒ/1.8G (not to scale)

Leica has introduced a truly beautiful new lens. It's a commemorative variant of the current APO-ASPH 50mm Summicron, the modern iteration of Leica's most famous lens. Or the lens that made it famous, as you wish. It commemorates the 50th anniversary of the LHSA, an organization which did not change its initials even though it did change its name—the initials originally stood for Leica Historical Society of America and the organization is currently called The International Leica Society. It is "an independent, nonprofit organization [and a rich fellowship of friendships —Ed.] dedicated to all aspects of the Leica camera, including photography, research, history, documentation and collecting." Quite worthy of honoring.

(Somebody should start a Society of Friends of Fuji—SoFoF. All it would need would be a website, an occasional e-newsletter, some gateway ritual signifying membership, and a forum.)

To honor the occasion, Leica itself has issued the Leica APO-Summicron-M 50mm ƒ/2 ASPH 'LHSA,' a lens that looks old but is optically the same as the latest version. Absolutely beautiful. There it is, pictured, at the top left, and here it is at the Leica website, and here it is at B&H.

-

[Reality Check section—skip if you are a staunch defender of Leica.] It does however cost $9,595. That makes it exactly 43.2268 times better than the Nikon AF-S Nikkor 50mm ƒ/1.8G, from a company that doesn't know how to make lenses, except that the APO-Summicron ASPH. LHSA is slightly slower and has the advantages of not being autofocus.

(I'm being sarcastic, but actually the speed difference is not significant. For all practical purposes, ƒ/1.7 and ƒ/1.8 are effectively the same as ƒ/2...ƒ/1.8 is only 1/3rd of a stop from ƒ/2 and not only do many camera/lens systems not achieve a tolerance greater than about 1/6th of a stop anyway, but 1/3 stop differences are not visible or technically significant in all but the most specialized situations. It's a good rule of thumb to stick with differences of a full stop or more when upgrading to faster lenses, or in choosing between competing options. I wouldn't think twice about the difference between ƒ/2 and ƒ/1.8. It really doesn't matter.)

This reminds me of a couple of memories, as many things do now that I am a Photosaurus. One, a gray Winter day standing at the counter at Helix Camera in Chicago, up on the second floor of its location overlooking the Eisenhower Expressway, talking to a bored, cynical, fatalistic counterman (I liked camera store countermen, and miss 'em) while fondling some Leica equipment. He said that although it had that reputation, most Leica stuff wasn't really so very expensive, because for the most part it only cost 50% more than the best Nikon equipment. The opinion he expressed at the time was that as long as the cost of Leica gear was "within sight" of the cost of Nikon gear, "they're still all right." "You pay a premium for the build quality," he opined.

The other memory is that once in the late 1990s I decided to run a test to see if Leicaphiles could actually recognize pictures taken with Leica lenses. I meant to make ten prints with a variety of lenses, three of them Leica lenses, and see if Leica people could pick out the Leica ones. But I ended up not following through (gee, there's something that's not typical of me—Big Plans Man, Pie in the Sky man, that's Mike), and I only made, I think, five or six. Two of them were more or less the same picture, one made with the "tabbed" 50mm Summicron (from John Hicks), 1979–1994, designed by Walter Mandler, which I think were going for about $600 and change at the time, and the other made with an Olympus 50mm ƒ/1.8 OM Zuiko, which I scored used for ten bucks. The pictures were of my son and his friend from across the street, taken outside our back door at ƒ/5.6. They were black-and-white 11x14s printed by me in my basement. I showed the pictures to three local photo friends, none of whom could tell which lens was which. Then I sent them to an online Leica fan I knew. Instead of picking one or the other, he sent me a written objection that was long and contentious. The test was not fair, he said, because I was using the wrong film (Tri-X), and not making the enlargements big enough. He demanded that to secure his participation in the trial, I had to agree to use Kodachrome, shoot only on a tripod, and make focus brackets with the M6 because rangefinder focusing was sometimes not exactly accurate. He had a long section about how I could not be fair about my trial prints because I started with the assumption that people could not always tell when a picture was taken with a Leica lens...when, in fact, he could do so...if the conditions were "fair."

I realized that his reaction was likely to be typical, or not atypical, so I got discouraged and gave up.

The person who really had a reaction to those photos was Zander's friend's mother. In the picture, the kid, Sean, who must have been about eight at the time, had a thick mop of shaggy blond hair, including bangs that came very close to blinding him. From the pupils up he resembled a blond sheepdog. He was a friendly kid with a nice smile and I thought the picture was a nice candid of the two boys, so I sent one of the test prints home with him, thinking his parents might like to have it.

The next day Sean showed up at our house after school with about as emphatic a haircut as I've ever seen—a crew cut so close to the skull that his remaining hair was just a shimmer on his head. His mother's critical reaction to the photograph was thus very clear indeed! It was "my kid sure needs a haircut." I took an "after" picture, and somewhere I have those two prints to "commemorate" his mom's critical response to my work.

Before I leave the Reality Check behind, I wanted to also mention that the Zeiss Sonnar T* FE 55mm ƒ/1.8 ZA is also a pretty good lens, even if you could only buy two of them for just the difference in price between the new 50mm LHSA and the optically identical regular plain old everyday nuthin' special Leica 50mm APO-ASPH. I'll bet a Sony Zeiss 55mm on an A7RIII could give the 50mm APO-ASPH on an M10 a run for its money. But that's just guessing. [/Reality Check]

-

Sure would be nice to own both to find out, at leisure, over time. In any event, cost efficiency is not the way to look at this commemorative. The last small increments of quality at the extremes are admittedly expensive, rarity and collectability counts and so does desirability, and there is no question that the Leica 50mm APO-Summicron ASPH., in whichever livery, is one of the very finest 50mm lenses it's possible to own. You wouldn't be putting a foot wrong if you did. It would probably hold its monetary value pretty well, but mostly it would be an investment in geeky happiness that I bet wouldn't dim very much over years of service.

Leica's still good that way.

Mike

[An aside: I really am writing too long these days. I need to stop that. And now, boy, do these dogs need to go out.]

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Featured Comments from:

toto: "The Leica is 44.2268 times as expensive as, or 43.2268 times more expensive than, the Nikon. And that does not mean that the Nikon is 44.2268 times (or even 43.2268 times) cheaper than the Leica!"

Innumerate Mike replies: I defer to your superior arithmetic!

Rodolfo Canet: "Cannot believe it, Mike! Half the Internet is talking about the $12,800 new Noctilux 75mm ƒ/1.25 and you tell us about a measly $9,895 'Cron.... You can see it here."

Mike replies: I'm a contrarian.

Albert Macfarlane: "I'm sorry you abandoned the attempt to have a blind evaluation of the output from Leica lenses, as this would have been one of the few experiments to have the end result of photographic gear evaluated by human eyesight and opinion. Many of us suspect that this kind of study would unfortunately fail to find the differences we delight to speculate about in gear heavy blogs. One good experiment I remember was published by David Pogue some ten years ago when he showed that average people did not select prints as better when made from higher pixel cameras. The response to this finding was astonishing, and his methods were heavily criticized."

Mike replies: I like those kinds of empirical experiments, and have conducted several over the years. Going further back, I recall an experiment Burt Keppler wrote about in Modern Photography magazine (might have been Pop, but I think it was Modern), where he compared an equivalent Leica 50mm to a Pentax SMC Takumar 50mm ƒ/1.4. No one could tell the difference there either, but that was possibly because the Takumar is so good, rather than implying that the Leica isn't. Burt wrote The Pentax Way, so he was a bit "invested" in Pentax.

The Pogue article is excellent and intriguing.

cdembrey: "About Leica lenses. If it wasn't designed by Berek, it doesn't fit my personal minimalist/surrealist vision. Erwin Puts said: 'The smooth and pleasant shapes and tones that can be recorded with the Berek lenses are part of the Leica heritage. The Bauhaus generation was focussed on the "New Vision" and the grand masters of the snapshot were concerned with the surrealistic juxtaposition of image elements.' Erwin Puts, 'Three generations of optical design: Berek, Mandler, Kolsch' is worth reading."

Mike replies: It certainly is, but, as is often the case with Erwin Puts, sometimes it teases more than it conveys! For instance the sentences, "The innovations (zoomlenses) however were snatched away from Leitz by the Japanese companies," and "It is a strange coincidence that the famous designers are of German origin, like Bertele and Rudolph and Berek, but all serious optical design programs are American." There is a great deal more that he could say about those two tidbits, as well as other seemingly offhand comments!

psu: "On the upside it makes the new CL look cheap."

robert e (partial comment): "For what it's worth, I suspect that the Summicron may be 43 times more likely to survive a drop from a shoulder bag to the pavement than the Nikkor...."

After an extended silence (he's been photographing in Iceland) I heard from John Lehet today, he of our previous print sale. The following, nestled deep down in a longer email, made my ears perk up:

"My other big news is a new lens, the Voigtländer 65mm ƒ/2 Apo-Lanthar Macro for Sony E mount. I'm not sure it's getting widespread love. People are saying, 'what a weird focal length,' or 'only Sony?' or 'manual focus only?' But this Voigtländer 65mm is the nicest lens I've ever owned (and I have quite a pile of them stacked up in a cabinet with desiccant). The bokeh is perhaps a little rougher than the nicest when it's stopped down in contrasty light, but overall the bokeh is very clean and neutral, variable from 'very very nice,' to 'it could be better.' The bokeh-ball shapes can be ugly 10-sided things stopped down, and cats-eyes at the edges wide open though they only show badly in contrasty light. Even with those little flaws it's really nice overall.

"But the sharpness is unbelievable from ƒ/2 through ƒ/8, and there the apochromatic correction is amazing. For my style, bokeh is really only worth anything if it is a negative ground in relationship to real sharpness. I'm going to sell my Zeiss Loxia 50mm because the Voigtländer 65mm is better at every aperture."

This is only pertinent because John has lots of good lenses and a very acute eye for lens performance. When he speaks, I listen. Thought you might be interested if you happen to have an A7II or A7RII. The latter is what John shoots these days.

At it again
In other lens news, the elves and wizards at LensRentals (or should I say elf and wizard, Aaron and Roger) have been at it again, this time doing a teardown on a truly weird 40-year-old Minolta lens. If you like clever gizmos, you'll dig this.

Mike
(Thanks to Jeff Schimberg and John Lehet)

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Sharp.
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hugh crawford: (partial comment): "If you are looking for cheap APO glass, get an APO enlarging lens and a Leica ZOOXY focus mount. You can pick up the focus mount for $25 and ultra-sharp glass for $100 or so, $200 if you are in a rush. I just took 18,000 pictures with a Leica Focotar lens mounted to a Sony A7 via a ZOOXY last week. The Focotar doesn't claim to be apochromatic , but I can see no evidence of lateral or longitudinal chromatic aberration. The biggest problem is the extreme sharpness of the dust on the objects I am photographing, but thankfully there is Photoshop for that."

Richard: "Jim Kasson has done (is still doing?) his usual thorough examination of this lens, starting here."

Patrick Perez (partial comment): "I'm curious if the lens is actually apochromatic, if only because, if I recall correctly, when the modern Voigtlaender (A.K.A. Cosina) introduced its first branded 'APO' lens (I think it was the 90mm, but maybe a 135mm) they didn't actually claim it was apochromatic in performance, only that they were re-using the name."

John Lehet replies: As for the questions about the corrected-ness of this lens, it is really good. As noted above, Jim Kasson has been concluding that, but another good online example is Phillip Reeve's review. His torture test is a backlit fountain where of course many of the splashing drops of water are before and after the focal plane. His shot is quite clean, and a remarkable contrast to the other lenses he has subjected to that test, which show all kinds of color fringing around the drops. I have been photographing some spider webs with it in recent foggy/dewy mornings, and they are unlike any spiderwebs I've ever photographed, clean and free of color fringe. (It turns out that a foggy morning is also where this lens is at its best for bokeh, while the bokeh is rather less smooth in high contrast situations). It's not the very best bokeh lens ever, but the bokeh is good to quite good a reasonable amount of the time. For sharpness it is really good from ƒ/2 across the frame. It's not a perfect lens, or the best lens ever made (just, probably, the best lens I've ever owned, with the Loxia 21mm as the only other lens I've had in this class).

Right now it's certainly my desert island only-one-lens lens. 

Logic eludes me—I honestly don't know if this is a new old new lens, a new new old lens, or a new old new old lens, or what.

I've been having fun with the hairshirt Exakta 66 I wrote about a week or two back. Life has definitely interfered recently, but I managed to get some 120 Ilford XP2 and have been happily shooting it, using the iPhone as a light meter. It's a bit strange the way muscle memory is coming into play—I used this camera intensively back in the '80s, carrying it with me all day every day, and the feeling of familiarity is curiously strong.

Seller's photo

And now I've gotten a new lens for it. Or a new new old lens, or whatever it is. It's an Ivanichek Petzvar 120mm ƒ/3.8, and it's a modern reincarnation of an antique lens type called a Petzval. The new version of the old lens came into being as a successful Kickstarter project from a guy named Denys (or Dennis) Ivanichek, who reproduced the classic four-element Petzval as a new product in several different lensmounts—including the Pentacon Six "P6" breechlock mount that fits my Exacta 66.

Denys's newest Kickstarter is for the lens in Hasselblad 500-series leaf-shutter mount. The Kickstarter campaign has already greatly exceeded its goal.

The Petzval, sometimes nicknamed the "swirly bokeh monster" for its peculiar "swirly" out-of-focus characteristics at open apertures, has had quite a resurgence of late—there are several modern versions of it available, including, most notably, a 58mm and an 85mm from Lomography. This after the original antique Petzval lenses for view cameras got scarce (or, I should say, even scarcer than they already were) due to demand.

The Petzval Objektif dates way back to 1840, when it was developed by a Viennese math professor named Josef Maximilian Petzval, with some help from Peter Wilhelm Friedrich von Voigtländer's eponymous optical and cameramaking company, which also produced the first commercial Petzval objective. Not to be confused with the modern Japanese Voigtländer company owned by Cosina, which licenses the old name. The original company, which began in 1756, went defunct in 1972, when the rights to the old name was acquired by its Braunschweig neighbor Rollei. Not surprisingly, the Petzval objective was originally famous because it represented a high-speed design at the time.

I'm not generally a fan of special-effects lenses, but neither am I necessarily a fan of high-resolution lenses for portraiture. The latter is a look, and the look is popular right now, but I don't care for it, mostly. I'm a sucker for history, though, and it will be fun to experiment with the Petzvar to see if I can find an aperture I like (the effects tend to be aperture-dependent). It's more the subtle soft-focus (or let's call it "not high resolution") effect that I'm after, rather than the extravagant bokeh.

You'll probably be hearing more from me in the future about this particular rabbit-hole. In the meantime, check out Dennis Ivanichek's Kickstarter page for more about this ancient lens design.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Swirly and maybe a little squirrelly
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Cliff: "Back in the early '80s I worked for a local small town photo studio. The owner had some small renown in the VPPA for his exquisite portraits, women in particular. One of his 'secrets' was an old brass bodied Petzval lens. I printed hundreds of portraits from that lens (not easy to focus small prints from big negatives shot with that lens). One of the things I noticed about the softness of the lens is that unlike modern soft focus lenses, which seem to add flare and bleed the highlights into other areas of the image, the Petzval seemed to blend the shadows into the rest of the image. It always seemed to add a sense of mystery to the portraits. I hope your lens does the same for you, and I'd love to see some low key portraits shot with it. It was beautiful in color work and absolutely ethereal in black and white."

Moose: I seem to have inadvertently stumbled across a 'swirly bokeh monster' for Micro 4/3:

"I have ambivalent feelings about swirly bokeh images. Some are quite attractive, but, like anything hot, it's been overdone—'if swirl is good here, with this subject, it's good for everything.'

"All the 'officially' swirly lenses are designed for FF or larger film/sensor sizes. For good or ill, much of the effect is lost on crop sensors. They are also rather long focal lengths for smaller sensors.

"Although bought with other ideas, this no-name CCTV 25mm ƒ/1.4 lens swirls with the best when wide open. That does require an ND filter in direct sun [try searching 'Cokin 30mm ND8 neutral density' on eBay —Ed.]. Best of all is the price. Rather than trolling for myself, I bought a Fotasy package from of lens and C-mount to Micro 4/3 adapter for the princely sum of $28, with Prime free two-day shipping and no tax. [It's now $31.99. —Ed.]

"Swirl away, Micro Four-Thirders!"

Antony Shepherd: "I've got a 25mm CCTV lens and C-mount to Micro 4/3 adapter which I picked up years ago. Had a couple of friends tell me they couldn't look at those pictures because the swirly effect makes them feel sick!"

The 35mm camera pioneer Ernst Leitz GmbH, the historical forerunner of the current Leica Camera AG, dubbed its lenses according to speed (maximum aperture): Summilux, Summicron, Elmarit, etc. Leitz lenses with a maximum aperture of ƒ/2—at one time considered very fast—were known across focal lengths as "Summicrons," a tradition Leica Camera AG has continued. As medium-speed lenses in more modern times, they were the all-around, bread-and-butter lenses in the common middle focal lengths. Back in the day, Leitz sold many times as many 50mm Summicrons (ƒ/2) as 50mm Summiluxes (ƒ/1.4, one stop faster). I don't know about now.

Recently Fujifilm has introduced one-stop slower versions of some basic mainstream focal lengths for the XF X-mount line used by its APS-C cameras, including the two flagship cameras, the SLR-styled X-T2 and the rangefinder-styled X-Pro2.

There are currently three:

The first, the XF 35mm ƒ/2 R WR (~50mm "normal" angle-of-view equivalent), was introduced in October 2015.

Next came the XF 23mm ƒ/2 R WR (35mm moderate wide-angle angle-of-view equivalent) in August of 2016. It weighs only six and a third ounces, which means that five of them weigh only a tad more than that Zeiss Milvus we were talking about the other day.

Most recently added is the XF 50mm ƒ/2 R WR (75mm short telephoto angle-of-view equivalent).

Because of their small size and very high performance, they've been dubbed the "Fujicrons"—a name most often bestowed upon the XF 23mm ƒ/2, a fast-focusing lens that was eagerly awaited before its release and has been highly prized since. That makes sense because the 35mm focal length was the most-used and arguably the most useful lens for Leica film rangefinders. (This was at least true during the long reign of the M6; the magazines I worked for ran surveys.) 

A number of the Leitz M lenses were also snout-nosed—tapered from thicker at the lensmount end to thinner at the objective (outermost lens element) end. There was a very good reason for this: it was because Leica made rangefinder cameras. With a rangefinder, you "found the view" not by looking through the lens but by looking through a little viewfinder window set close to the lens. There are two problems with this arrangement: one is parallax, the name for the slight difference in viewing angle between your eye behind the viewfinder window and the film or sensor behind the lens; and the other is that longer and larger lenses and hoods can partially obstruct the viewfinder on the lower right side.

An XF 23mm ƒ/1.4 partially blocking
the optical viewfinder of an X-Pro1

Snout-nosed lenses, by the nature of their shape, minimize this obstruction.

The X100F and X-Pro2 cameras from Fujifilm (fixed-lens and interchangeable-lens respectively) are the only AF cameras with large sensors to offer viewfinders that can be switched on the fly from electronic to a true optical view. Hence, while they can be easily used on any X-mount camera, the snout-nosed, medium-speed lenses are ideally suited to the X-Pro2.

The XF 35mm ƒ/2 R WR costs $399, the XF 23mm ƒ/2 R WR costs $449, and the XF 50mm ƒ/2 R WR costs $449. But you can also buy all three as a set for $1,297, for a scintillating savings of...$0. Um, what? I just report.

I won't elaborate about how I think the X-Pro2 is the true Leica of today and the Leica M is a Veblen-Good replicam (cf. replicar), because I get tiresome when I gas on about that and I know I do.

But really, the X-Pro2 with a snout-nosed Fujicron is a an awesome, brilliant device with which to have fun with photography.

Mike

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Ricardo Silva Cordeira: "I had the 35mm ƒ/2 and sold it to get the ƒ/1.4 version when I upgraded to the X-Pro2. My rationale was that the older lens has good AF performance with the most recent Fuji cameras and the extra stop would be good to have for street shooting at night.

"Today I regret parting with it. I like the Fujinon 35mm ƒ/1.4, it has a beautiful bokeh and delivers images with a pleasing smoothness. But the newer Fujicron draws in a different way which I like a lot too. The images have more 'bite.' It's hard to describe, but there is something about how it makes the objects in a scene have a 3D volume. It may be the most Zeiss-like non-Zeiss lens I've used.

"So I'm looking to buy one again, even if it's a bit redundant having two 35's.

"Here are some of my photographs made with my former 35mm ƒ/2 that constantly remind me how much I miss it:

jim: "I wish you would stop this. I sold my Fuji X-T1 and X-Pro1 and lenses over a year ago when I was convinced that my Sony A7rII was the replacement to my Nikon D700 and D750 ( and they are except for sports). An Olympus Pen F with my old Leica mount lenses gave me everything I wanted in a small package except for that damned 'creative' dial. But those three lenses look so tempting! Maybe you should stick to pool, dogs, and Miatas??"

Mark Kinsman: "These three lenses are gems. Combined with an X-Pro2 and a Tenba DNA 8 bag, it makes for a small easy-to-carry kit. The 23mm ƒ/2 is on my X-Pro 2 the most;, great for capturing the daily vernacular. This kit does indeed make photography fun again."

Nigli: "This post has caused me the worst GAS-attack in ages. Sigh."

Before we leave the subject of 35mm and 35mm-e lenses, I should mention one more thing. I claimed the other day to have used between 60 and 100 of them over the years. I have no idea if that's actually true. How would you count? There'd have to be rules. Do you count fixed-lens cameras? I'd want to count the fixed-lens Fuji X100S but not the the fixed-lens iPhone 4s. But that's rather arbitrary. Tough to know how many 35s I've used exactly. But if it's in the range of 60–100 I wouldn't be surprised. Exploring lenses used to be a bit of a compulsion with me.

However, there are a number I haven't tried. Apart from the Summilux-M Aspherical Type 1 (one roll—thanks to a friend) and Summilux-M ASPH (thanks to another friend), some of the ones I've missed include some high-dollar, cost-no-object optics. I've never tried the new Canon L II (although I have tried the Type I), or the Sony FE 35mm ƒ/1.4, or the older, now rare, but well-regarded Summilux-R, or the Zeiss Distagon T* 35mm ƒ/1.4 ZM. There are more.

Missed this one

Hey, what can I say? I was a single parent for quite a while (well, I still am, but Xander takes care of himself now). As a type, we aren't known for being loaded.

So maybe I was Mr. 35mm Lens, but there are still gaps in my education.

That's what the future's for, isn't it?

Mike

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I've never told this story until now.

I've tried/tested a number of them, but the only Leica 35mm I ever owned was a beautiful fourth-version 35mm Summicron-M of the type that was dubbed the "pre-ASPH" after the first aspheric version came out in 1996. Pics of that lens here. (Remember when aspherical elements were the hot thing? Been a while now. You have one or more in your phone's camera module.) I bought it new. I really got to know that lens; I taught myself zone focusing and could focus by feel from about five feet out. It had a lot of falloff (also called "vignetting"), especially with thin-emulsioned B&W films—but it was ungodly sharp and contrasty in the right circumstances, and the bokeh when it was stopped down and focused not-too-close was as coherent as anything I ever saw. Maximum aperture was pretty poor and I almost never shot it at anything wider than ƒ/2.8.

Unfortunately, my lens developed a problem. The black paint or anodizing or whatever it was on the aperture blades started to flake off, and the tiny chips began to collect right in the center of the adjacent inner elements...right in the optical axis. I agonized for quite a while about what to do about this. Get it taken apart and cleaned, and risk it coming back improperly centered? And what if the same problem continued? Send it back to Leica? Live with it? No solution seemed good. Well, no solution seemed ideal. And the more expensive the item, the more you feel you deserve it to be ideal.

It finally triggered my "persnicketyness" (see the post "Hwo to Cure Perfectionism" for a definition of that word) so much that I had to sell it. Somewhat to my lasting shame, though, I never (until now) mentioned that quality-control problem I had with that lens. The rule is that you may not say that anything Leica makes is anything less than the best, perfect, and unimprovable until Leica itself improves on it. Then you may criticize the superseded product. So my lens was perfect until 1996, and at that time I got to point out that falloff characteristic I mentioned.

I am supposed to be in the disclosure business (in David Vestal's memorable phrase), but I had already criticized Leica enough to raise the ire of certain of its devotees, and I just didn't need the hassle. (I consoled myself with the thought that my lens was just one sample, but that's chicanery—the rule of disclosure is, say what's true, just qualify it accurately.) I'm sure it was one of those production problems that companies of all sorts fix on the fly as soon as they become aware of them. The early '90s were an era of quiet cost-cutting by Leica, an era that is now well passed.

Problem or not, it was one of the lovliest lenses I ever used, with a beautiful look to the pictures and gobs of character.

The current Summicron-M is better, but not as good.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Peter Wright: "You didn't mention if the flakes had any effect on the pictures. I suspect that they might not, even though they were on the centre line of the lens. I know what you mean though. When we buy into 'perfection' we can't get past very obvious but perhaps insignificant defects. I have an older 90mm Leica lens on which the red dot fell off and got lost. I have to somewhat shamefully confess that I sent it in to Leica Service to have another one stuck on. However, when that one also fell off, I resorted to making one myself and attaching it with super glue. It's been there every since, and I have learned to live with it and be happy."

Mike replies: I'm uncertain if it had any effect on the pictures, but that very uncertainty had a decidedly bad effect on my mind.

Ignacio Soler: "Re 'The current Summicron-M is better, but not as good.' Sorry, but you lost me there. I can see how something can be both 'better' and 'not as good' at the same time. Say you are young and go on holiday to this beach town with a group of your best friends. You book the cheapest hotel and sleep five in a room and you count your pennies every night for the beer. You have tons of fun and remember that trip for the rest of your life. Thirty years later you return to the same town with your wife. This time you book the luxury hotel and enjoy fine dining and spa treatments. Certainly a 'better' trip, just 'not as good.' But how does this apply to lenses?"

Mike replies: I just think that the search for technical perfection can potentially rob lenses of character and appropriateness for certain tasks. For example, making a portrait lens clinical and razor sharp, rather than having just the right degree of softness.

Paul De Zan: "Re 'The current Summicron-M is better, but not as good.' The perfect summation of so many comparisons here in the Late Technical Era of my generation."

Henning Wulff: "Being a Leica shooter on a continuing basis since 1962, that is one of the lenses I have and have kept. Hardly a technically cutting edge item anymore, it still produces wonderful images. I have other 35mm options, but this lens still produces images that I like more often than ones from the Summilux ASPH or Zeiss ƒ/1.4 ZM. Similarly, I have produced more keepers from an even more universally denigrated Leica lens, the 'thin' Tele-Elmarit 90mm ƒ/2.8 than I ever achieved with the 90 AA.

"And it's not just that I like lenses with technical imperfections. My favourite 50mm Leica lens, out of the approximately 25 that I have either owned or used sufficiently is the current Summilux ASPH and my favourite 21mm is the current ƒ/3.4; both outstanding by any criteria. Some lenses just have a combination of characteristics, whether technical superlatives or downsides, that just combine to allow you to make images that achieve a higher level of satisfaction than others.

"By the way, my 4th-gen. Summicron was never flaky, but I did have a 135mm ƒ/2.8 that was, and some of the lenses I have now still have faults that should have never left the factory. Nevertheless, my Leica lenses as a whole still rise above any other brand in their totality."

Carsten Bockermann: "One of my most-loved lenses, the Summicron-M 35mm ƒ/2 is."

Just for fun, what's your favorite 35mm (or 35mm angle-of-view equivalent) lens? [UPDATE Sunday noon: Still awaiting the enigmatic oracular Oren's pick. Hoping to lure him out of his usual inscrutable silence. As Ctein (sincerely, not sarcastically) says, Oren sees things in lens performance most of us do not see. —Ed.]

This might sound odd, given that I've probably tried somewhere between 60 and 100 of them, but my favorite is probably the Fuji XF 23mm ƒ/1.4 R that I'm currently using. There's no geeky magic about it. It just seems to do everything very well. Performance, for sure, but even size, weight, the way it operates, and cost all seem to hit the sweet spot to me.

In second place for digital might be the Sony-Zeiss 24mm (the Carl Zeiss Sonnar T✻ 24mm ƒ/1.8 ZA E-mount prime lens). I'm pretty sure it's overpriced—it's not nearly the value the Fuji lens is, offering less in virtually all ways. I have a soft spot for it, though.

Dave Fishing, shot with the Zeiss 24mm

An honorable mention from the old days might be a Leitz-Wetzlar-labeled, Walter-Mandler-designed Summicron-R...but I only ever shot Tri-X with that one, and, of course, only on 16-MP sensors with both the other two, so it's tough to compare them meaningfully. There have been too many over the years, really. And all lenses yield their gifts.

Anything come to mind for you?

Mike

(P.S. I don't usually post on Saturdays, and I know fewer people are here today, but I shorted you last Monday, when my son and I were driving back from Cambridge via Vermont on the second-to-last-day of his visit here, which I very thoroughly enjoyed.)

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Maggie Osterberg: "Without a doubt, it's got to be the Zeiss M 35mm ƒ/2.8 C-Biogon. It's compact, has a perfect focus throw, a nice metal nubbin focus tab and is insanely sharp, 3-D-ish, and sits in the Goldilocks Zone of contrast. Sure, it's a slow lens, but if there's enough light, it is stellar. I used it exclusively on my Cuba trip with Peter Turnley."

Gordon: "The Fujinon XF 23mm ƒ/2 R WR has been practically glued to my X-T2 since the day I bought it. Initially, I bought the XF 35mm F/2R WR for the camera and liked it, then purchased the 23mm for the 'few' shots where I thought I'd need it and discovered I 'need' it almost all the time. The focal length just seems right for the urban setting, where I make most of my photographs. In summary, the focal length, size, weight, IQ, and weather resistance are about all I could ask for."

Mike replies: That is just the perfect lens for the X-T2. That camera and lens would be worth having just for the sheer enjoyment.

hugh crawford: "I thought the 127mm ƒ/4.5 Ektar on a 4x5 Crown Graphic shooting Polaroid 655 Positive/Negative film was perfect in every way. Probably a high percentage of the iconic photos of the mid-20th century were shot with it and a big ass flash. The Nikkor 50mm on the Bronica S2a is a lens and camera I really miss. Sold it over 30 years ago and tried to buy it back from the woman I sold it to until I stopped shooting film regularly. Still like the negatives from it when I come across them.

"The best wide lens I ever had was a 47mm Super Angulon. Never liked any lenses in that range for 35mm film and I had a few. More a 15mm to 24mm kind of guy. I had a pair of Nikkor 24mm ƒ/2.8's that I used 90% of the time and they looked beautiful on film. Still have one that didn't get stolen with all the other Nikon gear, and it really isn't a very good lens for digital.

"I've been kind of disappointed with wide lenses in general for digital. Every time I buy one I return it. I think that there may be something that the film structure imposes on the image where you are seeing the film and not the lens that is more pronounced with wide lenses than with normal to mild telephoto lenses. And like I said I'm a wide angle kind of guy.

"Hmm, my wise-ass answer seems to have devolved into a metaphysical fugue. Still like that 127mm Ektar though."

Mike replies: Wait, I thought all your comments were metaphysical fugues!  :-)  Always appreciate what you have to say Hugh. And I think I agree with you about the 127mm Ektar.

Michael Poster: "The best 35mm (or equivalent) lens is the smallest one I can find to fit whatever camera I happen to be using."

William Schneider: "The one that suited me best was my Leica 35mm Summicron M—one of the pre-aspheric models. I liked it especially because it was very small. Sharpness suffered wide open, but it was still acceptable for some situations.

"Here's a shot made under darkroom safelight illumination. The exposure was one second at ƒ/2 on Tri-X, steadied by a wall behind me."

Robert: "Almost any 35mm ƒ/1.4 will be a good lens. They are fast and expensive and tend to be among the best of any lensmaker. But the Leica Summilux is divine."

Darryl: "Add one more vote for the Fuji X100, in my case a T. I had never seriously looked through 35mm before and it was mostly opinions from this site that convinced me to try it. I am very happy that I did."

Ricknin CO: "The Zeiss 35's are awesome. Probably the best bargain on the planet for a Leica M is the 35mm ƒ/2.8 Biogon-C. If you want wider, go for the 25mm ƒ/2.8 Biogon—either are the best values for the money on a Leica full frame. I started with the 25mm Biogon on an M8, so it qualifies for the 35mm equiv!"

Chris Fuller: "The Nikon 35mm ƒ/2 AF-D is the standard lens on my D700."

Mike replies: Another lens I know well. I believe I owned three of them over the years. The second of which suffered from the dreaded lubricant-leak problem, which, by the way, Nikon really did fix on later production runs.

Dave in NM: "I have lots of love for my pre-AI Nikkor 35mm ƒ/2 'K' lens—it was my favorite for years, shooting film. These days though, the lens that gets the most love from me shooting digital is the Nikon 35mm ƒ/1.4G. To my eyes, it's about as flawless a lens as I could ever hope for, with not so much character that it draws attention to itself, or so little that renderings feel clinical. Most of the pictures in my project 'The Fallen' were made with this lens."

David Karp: "My favorite is a Fujinon too, but it's my 125mm ƒ/5.6 Fujinon NW on a 4x5 camera." [Link added by Ed. —Ed.]

Kerstin: "Auto Takumar 35mm ƒ/3.5. I'm in love with that lens, either on an old M42 Pentax with FP4 film or with adapter on my Fuji X-E2. Not the fastest lens but the sweetest."

JG: "For me, it's Sigma's 35mm ƒ/1.4, because it has truly excellent image quality and also projects an image circle large enough to provide room for movements when used in combination with a Sony A7R and Cambo Actus combo (below). And it's reasonably priced, too!"

Henry Rinne: "When I was shooting A-mount Sony A850, I dearly loved the Minolta Maxxum 35mm ƒ/2. Extremely sharp with a lovely rendering. Very versatile—good for landscapes and people."

Mike replies: I still have one of those.

Hugh: "Canon 35mm ƒ/1.4L Mark II—big, heavy, expensive...but just about perfect at any aperture. For me, it has to be 35mm. Didn't like 40mm, 38mm, 30mm or 28mm (or equivalents) when I tried them."

Brian: "Without doubt, the Zeiss Distagon 35mm ƒ/1.4 ZM which does dual duty on my Leica M7 and Sony A7RII. Wonderful. Second is the Loxia 35mm ƒ/2. Very different rendering. I sometimes go out with both at the same time. I also like the Loxia on my A6500 with the nearly 50mm angle of view."

Curtis: "My son is an avid analogue photographer. It has been a great experience shooting film together this summer, and I've particularly enjoyed using the 35mm Summicron R (and all my old R lenses, really) on the Hunchback of Solms [as I once dubbed the R8 —Ed.]. There are lots of interesting new film stocks to try and I'm fortunate to have a good film lab near me."

Ilkka: "I have nine lenses that are 35mm equivalent or close enough. Might have forgotten one or two...excluding zooms. A few of them cover 35mm as well. Hard to pick one favourite but I used the 35mm Summicron on a Leica M a lot. Now I don't have a digital Leica so it sees very little use. On R I always liked the bit oddball 35mm ƒ/4 PA Curtagon. Quite compact for a shift lens and focused very close. Now on Micro 4/3 the 20mm ƒ/1.7 is a common fixture but I might pick up the Olympus 17mm—20mm feels a bit long, especially in the squarer 4/3 format, after some 40 years of using real 35mms."

Mike replies: That Curtagon was made by Schneider Kreuznach. Another sleeper as very few people have tried one or even seen one.

Mats: "Without a doubt, my favorite is the 35mm ƒ/2 that is permanently stuck on the front of a Konica Hexar AF. There is just something special about the way that lens draws a picture. It almost, only almost, makes me want to shoot film again!  :-)  "

Mike replies: I once tried to start a "Konica Hexar Club" on CompuServe.  :-)

Pak Ming Wan: "I'm surprised there isn't more in defense of the Leica Summicron-M 35mm ƒ/2 ASPH. I've used it for about five years (in chrome). It's small, got the right heft to balance an M body, precise, sharp, renders good contrast and colour, and has only very slight distortion (that can be corrected in Lightroom). The front element is relatively flat (and concave), so is easy to clean, and the hood track takes new and old lens hoods. Bokeh is acceptable (but I tend to shoot hyperfocal so, meh). What's not to love? Maybe the fact that it is a little too boring...."

Mike replies: I slightly prefer the Zeiss version (for a third the price, although that's not why I like it better)—here's a nice photograph taken with one, by Oleg Gronik—but they are both extremely fine lenses.

The new Zeiss Milvus manual-focusing lenses for Nikon and Canon

I love 35mm lenses, even if the affection is half sentimental and nostalgic at this point. We all like lenses of our "home" focal length, if we have one—the lenses that see pictures the way we most easily do, the lenses we'd like to have on our cameras if we could have only one. Over the years I've owned and used more 35mm lenses than any other kind.

Zeiss's Milvus lenses—"Milvus" is Richard M. Nixon's middle name*—stands for a group of manual-focus full-frame lenses in Canon EF and Nikon F mounts. (Basically the successor to the ZF.2 and ZE manual-focus lines, and B&H still labels them as such, no doubt to assist searchers.) There were previously nine, from 15mm to 135mm, including several macro lenses.

Now there's one more, a second 35mm lens in the Milvus lineup, the Milvus Distagon T✻ 35mm ƒ/1.4. It's what I would call a super-premium lens—very high cost (two grand) and no punches pulled: weather sealed, a rubberized focusing ring in a metal mount, and a whopping fourteen elements, including one aspherical element and five (count 'em, five) anomalous partial dispersion elements. That's luxo. Zeiss, accordingly, claims near zero chromatic aberration. It had better have near zero distortion, too, and I'll bet it does.

The bokeh is a bit complicated but looks very coherent and not at all ugly. Like I could live with it. Although let's face it—although bokeh is touted in the marketing materials because it's an alleged benefit of full-frame, you seldom really care that much about bokeh with a medium wide-angle.

Sung to the tune of "She's Crafty": It's Hefty

There's a downside, although it might not be a downside to those at whom the product is aimed: the newest Milvus is a bit of a brick at more than 41 ounces (1170 grams) for the EF version. Just about the same weight as an adult male red kite**. Coincidence? You decide.

That would stop me from buying a zoom, but then, some guys lift weights.

Some competitors? Well, Canon and Nikon both make their own 35mm ƒ/1.4's. Nikon's AF-S Nikkor 35mm ƒ/1.4G ($1,497, 601 g) was one of the nicest 35's I had ever used when I used it to review the original D800E, and Canon's EF 35mm ƒ/1.4L Mark II ($1,649, 760 g) garnered some very high words of praise from Roger Cicala, In Whose Name We Trust. Roger said, in a glowing teardown report, "If I had to summarize the mechanical design of this lens, I would say simply that no expense was spared, no corner was cut. Sometimes things are expensive because they’re worth it. Sometimes they’re heavy because they’re so solidly constructed. This is one of those times." Of course, Sigma makes the very fine autofocus ART lens as well ($899, 665 g. Sign of the times: when I heard about this new Zeiss I caught myself thinking, "I wonder if it's as good as the Sigma?").

I'd say the problem if you were in the market for a fast 35mm for a full-frame Nikon or Canon would not be whether there's a great lens out there, but which great lens to get. If this one is going to be your choice, though, I have little doubt it would last as a prized possession while many cameras came and went. What a beaut.

Mike

*No it's not. It's the genus name of a group of medium-sized birds of prey that includes red kites and black kites.

**Just checking to see if you read the footnotes.

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Kenneth Tanaka: "The rise of these über primes has made me wonder just who their target markets are. Living in a heavily touristed area and often traveling to even more popular and scenic places I rarely see anyone carrying anything as large as a DSLR any more, and then it's usually a Rebel-size camera with a kit zoom (with the hood mounted backwards). I rarely see anyone carrying a big rig and can't remember noticing anyone carrying a brick-sized prime. And I can tell ya I'm certainly not in the market for any 600+g prime, regardless of its 'bokeh' or optical purity. I'd love to see the Powerpoint slides used to pitch these lens lines. There's clearly something afoot that escapes me."

Mike replies: I can't really help, but a story occurs to my mind—many years ago I chanced across a then-friend, Jeff K., in a ski-lift line. At that particular resort the "bunny hill" lift was also the first stage up to the lifts for the more difficult slopes higher up, so Jeff and I were in the same line despite the fact that he was a champion skier, just below Olympic caliber, and I was a beginner. (I went on to the top with him on that occasion, because we were talking, and after he disappeared in the distance carving moguls effortlessly I had a terrifying hour or so attempting to get to the bottom again without tumbling downhill arse over teakettle, but that's another story.) What struck me in this context was that Jeff was dressed in a poncho and old jeans, wearing only a headband to keep his ears warm, with ancient leather ski boots and battered skis with no noticeable logos on them—whereas many of the bunny-hill neophytes were equipped to the gills with brightly-colored bespoke ski clothing, helmets with bronze-look goggles, giant plastic boots, and the most expensive models of the most fashionable skis, ablaze with logos.

I'm not suggesting that you can't be a good photographer and use an "über prime"—of course. But ever since that day at the ski resort it has struck me that you make yourself look faintly ridiculous when your equipment is radically out of keeping with your skill level.

Then again, I have a very nice bicycle (named Gruesome) and if I have put an aggregated thousand miles on it in the eight years I've owned it I'd be surprised. So people in glass houses, etc.

However, Gruesome, an Asian-made Trek, is the bicycle equivalent perhaps of a Micro 4/3 ƒ/2.8 zoom, not the equivalent of a raptor optic like the 1,170-gram, $1,999 Milvus. (That would be a Rivendell.)

This is one of the reasons I like Miatas—they fit my driving skill. I'm a decent driver with some modest skills (my pinnacle was driving a Cayman around an autocross course with the head instructor of the Porsche Sport Driving School in the passenger seat, and receiving a few compliments), but I drive on real roads and very seldom at more than 80% of what even a Miata can do. I don't need 700 horsepower at the wheels. It wouldn't be modest or seemly. I'd rather be a good Miata driver than a chucklehead Z06 driver.

Maybe this is one of the appeals of possessions that do not require any skills—like another of my historical passions, audio. You can geek out all you want to with fine hi-fis and never run into any dissonance between the equipment and your own abilities—because all you have to do to use the gear is listen to music, and anybody can do that. Maybe you can't hear the difference between one component and the next, but nobody can prove it. Nobody really knows what you hear with your own ears but you.

Anyway back to the Milvus...my own position for many years is that anybody can have fun with photography however the heck they want to, as long as it's not hurting anybody else. So if anyone's way of having fun is to have and enjoy a superlative lens, whether they need it or not, I'm all for 'em.

Bernard: "To reply to Kenneth Tanaka's question who the target audience is: The only time I've ever seen one of these Zeiss lenses 'in the wild' was on the Canon 5D Mark-something used by the wedding photog at my brother's wedding. When I inquired whether is wasn't a hassle using a manual focus lens on a body designed for autofocus, she explained she shot a lot of video, which was manual focus anyway. And then it was a lot easier to use a lens actually designed for MF, instead of a short-throw AF lens."