I'm told the new Sony FE 16–35mm ƒ/2.8 GM lens is available for pre-order.
Mike
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Goodly wide
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Center section detail of a sample picture made with the forthcoming Zeiss Batis 135mm ƒ/2.8 for Sony E-mount.
I get it that "full frame" cameras and premium lenses aren't necessary to participate fully in photography c. 2017, but I'm jealous of people who get to collect and use lenses like the Zeiss Batis series all the same. Just sayin'.
A bit much
...On the other hand, two grand for a 135mm ƒ/2.8? Back in the day, those were moderately-priced, borderline cheap bread-and-butter lenses that nobody would think to make much of a fuss over. How much did an Olympus OM-Zuiko or AIS Nikkor 135mm ƒ/2.8 cost in, say, 1985? Never mind a Nikon E-Series? Maybe somebody has an old Pop or Modern from approximately that era and can look up the prices for us. Once we have a number or two we can adjust for inflation and compare.
UPDATE: J Mellody (many thanks!) looked it up: "Popular Photography from July 1985 has a B&H ad that has a Nikon 135mm ƒ/2.8 for $149. The E-series sells for $68. An Olympus 135mm ƒ/2.8 sells for $98.90." So according to a site called "U.S. Inflation Calculator," that's $337, $154, and $224 respectively in 2017 dollars. As I suspected...a pretty far cry from $1,999.
...On the other other hand...even though I've already run out of hands...in 1985 you couldn't put one of those in front of a rectangle of recording medium that would give you anything like what you get today with, say, 42.4 megapixels at ISO 3200. And over-the-top quality is fun and gratifying, let's face it. 'S all good.
Mike
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Batis about the head and shoulders
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Alex P. Schorsch: "You've got me drooling in the morning...again! This Batis 135mmm weighs less than my Canon 35mm L. I know most people seem to think that a 135mm lens will go unused, but I like this focal length for landscapes and people shots."
João Medeiros: "I think you're not evaluating this lens properly. You should compare to other APO lenses coming from Zeiss or Leica. The lenses you mention never had IS, AF, LED panel, APO or the performance to complement 50+ MP sensors. Just saying. The price is actually quite reasonable when you compare to other combo in the market what you get with the A7RII + Zeiss APO 135mm ƒ/2.8. The market is shrinking and the future for any brand is high value and extreme quality. Mobile photography is going to change everything. It's already doing that."
Kent Phelan: "Or, you can have the same quality with an extra stop to boot for your Fuji X-T1, with the Fuji 90mm ƒ/2 lens—for less than half the price. It is one of Fuji's top performers, which is saying something. It compares favorably with the Leica 135mm APO Telyt M lens. Absolutely stellar lens."
Roger Cicala said you're never supposed to start a commentary with the words "Roger said." But in this case it's a direct quote, so I'll chance it...Roger said, "I'm not a lens reviewer; I just test the MTF. There's so much more that goes into choosing a lens."
That's the first "meta" complication in lens testing: namely, that each test describes what the testing protocol tests. I stated this crudely years ago when I mentioned that guys who liked to test lenses by taking pictures of sheets of newspaper taped to the wall are testing how good their lenses are at shooting newspapers taped to walls...i.e., small-scale flat-field subjects at near distances with detail of a certain frequency. (I added that that's assuming their testing skills are rigorous, which they often aren't, and that the tester has the knowledge to attribute characteristics properly, e.g., which types of error are caused by which aberration in the lens.)
But even beyond that, there are further complications that are given way too little consideration out in the wilds and warrens of the Internet.
Perception
The first is perceptual testing. What this means is gathering data about what visual characteristics people subjectively like, and relating those visual characteristics to the optical properties of the lenses that produce them. This was done comprehensively by Loyd [sic] Jones and C.E.K. Mees of Kodak in the 1930s and '40s in determining what kind of contrast people liked to see in prints—it led to the system that pertained for many years of targeting development of film to a standard contrast index (C.I.) and then further refining contrast by mean of paper grades—and what kind of characteristics people most preferred in lens images.
I've done this kind of testing myself several times (in the years around 1990, mostly), and it can be fascinating. I actually loved doing it and would have loved to have done more, but it's very labor-intensive, time-consuming, and costly for one unfunded individual to do*. Just as an example, one test I did compared prints made from a 4x5 negative with prints of the same subject made from a 6x7 negative. I showed pairs of prints at various sizes to a sampling of people and asked if a) they could tell a difference and, if so, b) which they preferred. What I learned in that specific case were two things I felt comfortable generalizing: 1.) that there was a point where the prints were small enough that the difference didn't matter and there was a point where the prints were large enough that it did matter, allowing you to extrapolate very roughly as what size enlargement the distinction begins to become meaningful; and 2.) photographers were able to detect the differences more easily than visually sensitive non-photographers could. The reason is that they knew which clues to look for. The point here is just that perceptual experiments are both fascinating and illuminating; they attempt to measure not just whether a lens is good but in why it's good—or you might put it, in what ways good is good. It's not a form of experiment anyone ever attempts today, that I know of.
Mees and Jones were designing the famous Commercial Ektar series of professional view camera lenses, and their experiments resulted in those lenses being optimized for high large-structure contrast rather than resolution, a design choice that carried over into certain early Leica lenses (and a choice I still prefer, personally, in B&W).
Generally speaking, what this indicates is that the choices one makes as to what constitutes "goodness" in the first place is also provisional and ultimately arbitrary. The best proof-of-concept of that claim is to look at lenses from the Pictorialist period (1885–1915, roughly). The properties that were prized and desired then, soft focus and low contrast, were the opposite of what is prized and desired today. I'm not saying either is better or worse, merely pointing out that the technical parameters we like to measure and value are not eternal values written in stone, but are actually just choices we make based on subjective agreement...often merely assumed and not particularly taste-driven. At least not in accordance with the taste of any one individual practitioner. I have a friend who is a great optical connoisseur who deplores overly-perfected lenses; he uses words like "clinical" and "sterile" and "synthetic" to describe just the sorts of lenses that would ace MTF tests. (He's hard to please; I believe one lens he approves of is the Leica 35mm Summilux ASPH. Type I, which he owns.)
Expressiveness
This leads to a complication that is even further removed, namely, how suitable the lens rendering is to what the operator (artist/photographer) is trying to express. I think it's fair to say that there is a minor "tradition" among working art photographers of taking in the nit-picking that exists around the analyses of lenses and then "going the other way" so to speak, by deliberately choosing lenses that are "poor," according to the common consensus, and seeing what can be done with them. There are many examples, from photographers who used Diana or Holga plastic toy cameras or cracked or damaged lenses, to those who made virtues of any (or many) of a whole variety of what are normally considered "flaws," whether that might be distortion or vignetting or flare or what have you. The look of flare can be so interesting aesthetically that it's been adopted in other media, for instance in Georgia O'Keefe's The Shelton with Sunspots, N.Y. (1926) or the Pixar animated feature Ratatouille (2007).
Tech culture changes too
Of course, the very meaning of the idea of "lens performance" is changing. Case in point, in case a case in point is needed, are those lenses in which distortion is uncorrected in the glass because it is intended to be corrected later in software. Vignetting is also obviously no longer an issue, because it is so easily corrected (or exaggerated) in post. So what I've been saying for thirty years is become more evident everywhere in photography: technical properties are more important as aesthetic qualities. While there are some obvious common goals among technical properties, there's no stable definition of "good" when it comes to aesthetic qualities.
Recommendation
Most importantly: what is defined and accepted as "good" among technical properties does not equate to "good" among aesthetic qualities. Rather, the look in pictures of a functionally perfect lens, while it might be a sort of holy grail to techie geeks online, is aesthetically just one more quality among many. Expressively it suits some pictures (and photographers) while not suiting others.
My observation over many years has been that photographers of sensibility typically work toward the look they want until they get there. This can mean anything from "settling" quickly for whatever common equipment is on hand, to working for years to refine an esoteric process that might even eventually become identified with them (Sheila Metzner and Phil Borges are two examples of the latter who come to mind). Now this is coming to include Photoshop post-production skills and choices as well. And of course we are always free to intentionally "misuse" equipment to exploit the aesthetic qualities of what are technically considered faults. An example that comes to mind might be Frederick Sommers' out-of-focus pictures.
All this is taste-based, not tech-based. So what I'd recommend is not necessarily choosing your lenses based on lens tests at all. Information is good, and good information like Roger's is infinitely better, but even good information is still just data. A good lens is one that does what you want it to do and that you feel good about...based on how the pictures look. Keep looking until you get there—whether finding it comes early or late, and whether the process is easy or difficult, casual or fanatical, or expensive or cheap. Don't let other people tell you what you're supposed to like, yes; but be mindful not to let lens tests dictate to you what you're supposed to like either.
Mike
*A later experiment involved sending ten prints of ten different pictures to volunteers to see whether they could identify the two that were taken with Leica lenses. But the volunteers were so contentious and captious that I quickly gave that one up!
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Not cheap but cheapER
Nikon too
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Roger Cicala: "Roger Cicala says it is not only acceptable for Mike Johnston to start comments with 'Roger said,' it is absolutely flattering. :-) "
Pieter: "And even after doing many (possibly flawed) tests, I can (somewhat) objectively and subjectively show that my 28–300mm Tamron lens is worse in almost every way than a set of primes, or a series of narrower zooms. Yet somehow it's the lens I use the most, purely out of convenience when traveling light, and some of my best photos were taken with it!"
John Krumm: "I enjoyed the article. Lens chasing can be a bit like Pinot Noir chasing. You've had that one good bottle, and you know there must be another somewhere... My Pentax 31mm Limited at times seems sublime, at other times flawed. I suspect the flawed part has to do with field curvature, but really I have no idea. All my 4/3 and Micro 4/3 lenses, zooms and primes, are slight variations of really good to excellent."
Herb Cunningham: "Amen: why fans of 50mm lenses have more than one, and in my LF days, why the old Dagors and Petzval lenses were popular."
Kenneth Tanaka: "I very much enjoy Roger's analyses and tear-downs, especially his zoom lens analysis. I admit to not absorbing all of it but I did get its gist. That said, I think the fundamentals of lenses and their role in photography have dramatically changed in the digital era. In the chemical era the lens had perhaps the greatest influence on the final image for most work. So the degree to which a lens offered the nuanced inflections you outline was very important, coupled, of course, with its other geometric and sharpness properties. In today's digital era the lens is almost purely utilitarian, the pipe that delivers light to the sensor. Nearly all lenses of contemporary design and manufacturing are good enough for most digital work. The character of images is added later, along with gentle corrections for design compromises. That is, the lens is merely the first word in today's digital image, and rarely as influential as its chemical-era predecessors."
Mike replies: Very well said (briefly, too). I think that's a fair assessment and for the most part I agree.
...At least, it's not nearly as much fun being a lens geek as it used to be!
A CAD rendering of the upcoming Eckhardt New Dallmeyer 3B
Eckhardt Optics of White Bear Lake, Minnesota, is taking orders in advance for its upcoming replica of the Dallmeyer 3B. The 3B was a variant of the Petzval intended for cabinet portraits, with a focal length of 292mm (11.5in). (For large format cameras, if that doesn't sound familiar.)
A sample made with the prototype of the new lens on whole plate
Eckhardt says its replica will have "the exact functionality of the original," which means brass and aluminum construction and Waterhouse stops, and "glass which closely replicates that found in the originals." I presume this means the lens will be uncoated (a good thing, to aficionados).
The originals, which Eckhardt rightly calls "rare and costly," were made in London at about the time of the American Civil War. They are especially valued today by wet collodion enthusiasts. Pre-orders end on March 21st at 5 pm CST. There are more samples at collodionbastards.org.
Here's a page with more information on Dallmeyers.
Mike
(Thanks to Jim Becia via Oren Grad)
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A pleasingly fuzzy lens on all things photographic:
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...Like Nikon didn't have enough troubles already.
Sigma seems determined to become the go-to brand for top quality at a fair(er) price...its Art and Contemporary series of DSLR lenses (one of which I reviewed not long ago) has just increased by not one, not two, not three, but four new lenses.
The new focal lengths are: the Sigma 135mm ƒ/1.8 DG HSM Art; the Sigma 100–400mm ƒ/5–6.3 DG OS HSM Contemporary; the Sigma 14mm ƒ/1.8 DG HSM Art; and the Sigma 24–70mm ƒ/2.8 DG OS HSM Art. All are initially available in Nikon, Canon, and Sigma SA mounts. All are "DG" lenses that will cover full-frame (24x36mm).
The 24–70mm, because it's a workhorse lens for many photographers, is Sigma's third revision of its lens of this specification. This newest iteration is said to offer better construction and better image stabilization. Interestingly, Sigma claims it has been specifically optimized for better bokeh. Mark Mandl has provided a translation that communicates the meaning of the original Japanese text "球面収差をわずかに残すことでボケの描写にもこだわりました" from the 24–70mm's product page on Sigma's Japanese website: "The quality of the bokeh has been carefully tuned by leaving a trace amount of spherical aberration." (Thanks to Mark.)
Groundbreaker: the Sigma Art 14mm ƒ/1.8
The 135mm and 14mm primes both qualify as superfast—the 14mm in particular is claimed to be the fastest full-frame lens of its focal length ever made.
They're not on sale yet and not available for pre-order, but here's a link to more pictures and full specs at B&H.
Mike
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Jim Richardson: "To me the blockbuster lens in the new Sigma lineup is the 14mm ƒ/1.8 Art lens. For Milky Way photography this one is really important since you are limited in exposure time by star movement. This new lens means either you can halve your ISO for lower noise or double your effective exposure for richer star field rendering. Either way (assuming it's rendering of stars out at the edge of the frame) is decent to good we should start seeing a new generation of night sky photographs, similar to what happened when the Nikon D3 and the 14–24mm ƒ/2.8 Nikkor came along."
It's still Friday, barely, so I can squeeze in another post before the weekend is officially here and I have to switch gears.
By far the best writer on lenses on the entire Internet these days is Roger Cicala, aided and abetted by his assistant wizards and the rest of the merry gang at LensRentals.com. Well, Roger has outdone himself now: "Some reviewer somewhere tested a single copy of a zoom lens and gave it their highest rating ever. Some people actually argued online about that, and then asked my opinion about that argument...." As he goes on to explain, he wrote a post describing why such verdicts are meaningless. The post is called "Things You Didn’t Want to Know About Zoom Lenses."
It's excellent. If you like lenses you might want to block out some time over the weekend to read it.
I've said some of the same things and reached similar conclusions over the years, but I've never, ever had anything close to the testing chops Roger has available to him every day. It's kind of thrilling (in a geeky way) to see Roger support his conclusions so thoroughly.
Roger and I had a similar conversation on the same topic privately a while back, when I asked him if he would cherry pick the best example of a certain zoom lens for me. His answer contained some tasty quotes but was offered mostly with nondisclosure mode "ON"—but now, he's published the public version, with charts galore.
Great stuff, not to be missed by lens lovers anywhere. Kudos to R.C.
Have a great weekend! Thanks again for all the support this week. See you on Monday.
Mike
(Thanks to Jeffrey Schimberg)
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Examined with a loupe.
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Mahn England: "Mike, you wrote: 'If you like lenses....' Who do you think we are? Photographers love lenses. I've an excellent collection of images of the bookshelf in my study taken with various lenses at various focal lengths and various apertures. I need to get a life."
Mike replies: No, actually you need to read Roger's article! :-)
Robert Roaldi: "Thank you for that link. A pleasure to read."
Dave_lumb: "Roger writes, 'So I completely understand when the artist tells me that all testing in the world doesn’t influence his choice of equipment at all. I accept when he or she says a lens is perfect for them. That’s the bottom line.' Was there any need to read any further than that?"
Mike replies: I've said much the same thing too, but (naturally) at (ahem!) greater length, for instance in "All Lens Tests Are Wrong" from The 37th Frame, October, 2001.
Joseph Vavak: "I go back and forth on primes vs. zooms, but always seem to end back with a 24–70-ish lens for 90% of what I do. The primes may be sharper, but I am lazy about changing lenses frequently. Out-and-out sharpness is not the most important quality to me. I like a well-behaved lens that has manageable distortion and has sharpness that is relatively even across the frame. And it can't be ginormous. I've settled on the Canon 24–70mm ƒ/4 and am very happy with it. Not too large, even sharpness, nice colors and contrast."
Robin: "Testing has its place, but as this article shows, it needs to be put in context. Personally, I never found a zoom I liked and so gave up using them, maybe seven or 10 years ago. This makes life so much simpler and photography more fun. Soon after, I also stopped craving new lenses. Perhaps because I found a few that were good enough for everything I needed. That would never have happened with a zoom."
The Fujicron on the "Leica M" of today. The silver-lens-on-black-body
was a classic "look" on old rangefinders.
Speaking of lenses, as I was in the previous post, don't forget that the avidly anticipated "Fujicron" (that's what they're calling it, out there on the wilds of the Internet) ships on January 16th.
You might want to preorder now.
"-Cron," if you're new to all this, is the traditional Leitz—now Leica—suffix meaning an ƒ/2 lens. The 35mm Summicron was traditionally the optimum, the top, lens of choice for a film Leica rangefinder.
A few Leicaphiles here and there are whimpering that the XF 23mm ƒ/2 WR—that's the Fujicron, and it's a 35mm-equivalent in angle of view—is not quite Fuji's sharpest lens. Really? You worry about that? Every lens is sharp enough these days. I almost long for the days when there were real sharpness differences in lenses...differences you could detect without fastidiousness, pixel-peeping, and dedicated tests. It's harder than ever being a lens nut these days. They're all just too good.
For example, I read a review of the new "pride leader" lens from Canon the other day—the show-the-world EF 35mm ƒ/1.4L II ($1,649)—that concluded it was marginally better than the Sigma 35mm ƒ/1.4 Art lens ($899)...because you could see slight differences if you looked closely in the extreme corners at the widest aperture.
That's where we are? Making distinctions based on vanishingly small differences like that? It's always fun and gratifying to own whichever lens nourishes your enthusiasm, and I'm not against the Canon or any other fine lens. (Quite the opposite—my tagline used to be "you can never spend too much money for your lenses.") But the hope that such qualities will distinguish actual pictures is probably imaginary now.
Makes me a bit sad, actually. It was so much fun back in the dimly-remembered days of yore to actually see lens quality in pictures without the present-day magnifying glass of pixel-peeping.
Now we pick lenses based on different criteria. Color fringing (fixable in post). Bokeh. Size, weight, and handling. Physical features like weather and water resistance. All the things, in other words, that make the new Fujicron absolutely perfect on the X-Pro2.
If the Fuji X-Pro2 is the Leica M of this millennium—not a stretch by any stretch—then the Fujicron is the ideal normal-lens for it. Perfect mates. Match made in heaven. Get in line!
Mike
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John Camp: "I hate to say it, given my current satisfaction with my GX8s, but that may be the prettiest combo of camera and lens I've ever seen. I'm not sure 'pretty' is a good enough reason to spend money, but it's definitely one reason you might. If it was a 4:3 aspect ratio, I probably would."
Bill Poole: "Having owned Leica M cameras and loved the 35mm ƒ/2 'Cron, I was quick to order the ƒ/2 Fuji lens, black version, earlier this year. It is now part of the three-lens set for my X Pro2 with the ƒ/2 35mm and the 27mm ƒ/2.8 pancake lens (which is really very wonderful and compact and pretty much the exactly right focal length for many situations.) To fund the purchase of the ƒ/2 lenses, I sold the ƒ/1.4 versions of the same lenses. Were those 'sharper?' I don't know—the 35mm ƒ/1.4 is a brilliant lens. But to me the trade off for the 'right-sized' primes for the X-Pro form-factor was worth it, and the lenses are very solid performers.
"This lightweight combo is very Leica-like in size and use and has left me in the hard-to-comprehend position of not hungering for a new camera or lens—the first time that has been the case in many years."
David Lee: "As we all know, you never, ever put a chrome lens on a black body. You can put a black lens on a chrome body but not the other way around. Basic Leica knowledge. Having said that, I love my X-Pro2. My M's are collecting dust."
Harry Teasley: "As a Leica user, you want to call your setup a SLOBB: Silver Lens On Black Body. Just FYI. But more seriously, since when is 35mm 'normal'?"
Mike replies: Harry check out this graphic from DPReview's Canon EF 35mm ƒ/1.4 II review:
...Underlining mine.
I meant that a 35mm is the best "main" lens on a rangefinder or rangefinder-style camera...we actually polled this once, years ago, at C&D magazine, and the 35mm Summicron beat out the 50mm Summicron as the most used and most owned lens. It is indeed more accurate to describe it as a "moderate wide angle" though.
Andre Y: "I've tried a few of those lenses on the list, and I think many of them tend to be very good lenses for a very specific thing, with a couple of notable exceptions. Here are my impressions of four that I either own or have shot extensively.
"The Sigma 50–100mm ƒ/1.8 coupled with a Nikon D500 makes for one of the best stage photography systems you can get: focus is fast and accurate, and works across every focus point, performance wide open is good, and the focal lengths it covers is perfect for either shooting from the wings or from the first few rows of seats. Its flaring character leaves a bit to be desired, but its focus breathing and non-parfocalness is a non-issue in that application. It is heavy and somewhat awkward to hold, so be sure to do your pushups!
"The Nikon 105mm ƒ/1.4E is definitely the best short telephoto Nikon has ever made. It has very low levels of longitudinal CA and is very sharp across its frame, along with very nice bokeh too. You do pay though: it's large, heavy, expensive, and slow to focus. It's the ultimate example of Nikon's dual-personality lenses: wide-open for flattering portraits and stopped down great landscapes.
"The Nikon 19mm PC-E is the mechanical apotheosis of Nikon's tilt-shift line. We finally get to change tilt and shift axes without disassembling the lens, and the controls are mechanically less fiddly and more secure than before. Optically, there's not much more one can ask from this lens: it is very good. Its large bulbous front element does make me very nervous whenever I remove its lens cap though. It goes without saying that this is lens is highly specialized: if you need to ask whether you need it, you don't.
"The sleeper in that group is the Tamron 85mm ƒ/1.8. It does everything well, and has no real weakness. One might carp about its slight focus shift, or size compared to other ƒ/1.8 85mm lenses, but there's little else to talk about. It actually focuses faster than the Nikon 85mm ƒ/1.8G, has much less color fringing (the non-correctable longitudinal kind AKA bokeh fringing), and the vibration control even works, though it will visibly reduce your microcontrast. Sharpness is about the same as the Nikkor, but more even throughout the frame, and the lens has a pleasing character both in its out-of-focus and in-focus areas.
"It's really been an embarrassment of riches for lenses in 2016."
Mike replies: Wow, those are some great thumbnail mini-reviews Andre. Thanks!
Abhishek: "I bought this combo in black the first day I could and replaced my X100T. Weather sealing played the biggest part in that decision. Living in Vancouver, we get a lot of rainy days and now I can freely walk around with this delightful combo with no worries of it dying in the drizzle. It is perhaps the first compact sealed combo around. Something overlooked by most other manufacturers. I've been waiting a long time for this!"
Carsten Bockermann: "I wholeheartedly agree that 'Fuji is the new Leica.' More than nine and a half years ago, when you wrote about the Leica M8, I commented 'To continue the Leica tradition of small, fast cameras with truly excellent lenses, I think we need a new system designed from scratch.' Fuji has built exactly that."
You might have seen Digital Photography Review's "Best Lenses" contests. This year they've got one contest for zooms and another for primes.
The problem with such polls, of course, is that they are popularity/status contests, not real data; but hopefully everyone understands that and just accepts the spirit of fun. Mostly, people would just vote for whichever lens they either know, or just want.
I haven't gotten to know all the lenses on the list. I doubt anyone has, even people who work at DPReview. Even people who have tried all the lenses haven't gotten to know them all (it's a different thing).
But I fancy I've acquired a pretty acute "ear to the ground" sense over many years of writing and editing commentary about photo equipment. Jerry Seinfeld talks about how a comedian learns to "sense" an opinion that the audience has about a certain joke—that is, there's no overt sign or communication, but the comedian intuits the reaction. I know what he means. If I read enough discussions and hear enough comments about a product, I start to get a picture—which I believe would be valid even if I'd never used the product or seen any results from it. It's the same thing we all do when researching a product, but with stakes, because I'll get punished to some degree if I turn out to be wrong.
Such a sense might be subject, of course, to various sampling and perception errors; granted. And my method takes longer—I'm usually a little bit behind the news.
Still, I can provisionally get behind the winner of last year's poll, the Zeiss Batis 85mm. In that case I've seen a lot of results from it, albeit only online. But I've also heard a lot about it from users, and the praise it gets seems genuine. As good as the greats from the past.
Which lens would be your pick?
Mike
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Mark Muse: "I have the Batis 85mm. And the Zeiss 85mm ƒ/2.8 Sonnar Contax/Yashica, and a Zeiss 90mm ƒ/2.8 Sonnar G. I did a bake-off recently. To my surprise the rendering of all three was almost identical. The 90 G was slightly the sharpest and a bit more contrasty than the others. The Batis has the most CA. This on the Sony A7r2. I bought the Batis for shooting people in motion, for which it excels because of the excellent autofocus. The 90 G is my landscape lens at this focal length.
"The kind of poll you are writing about is pretty useless for me unless it includes an accurate description of the lens imaging characteristics, from which I can determine if it fills a niche for me. Popularity is meaningless unless one is concerned about resale on down the road. Even that is fickle."
Moose (partial comment): "Strange...what is clearly the best zoom of 2016, the Panasonic-Leica 100–400mm, isn't even available to vote for. I have thousands of shots with that lens, and it's spectacular. Beyond that, it's actually new ground, not a new version of an old focal-length range. It allows the photographer to do things that couldn't be done before. Handheld 800mm-e, anyone?"
Mike replies: Bingo! There's the Lens of the Year right there. A good choice.
I've always liked sleepers. A "sleeper" can be defined as something that becomes a success when no one thought it would, or something that turns out to be more than what it appears to be on the surface.
Mazda, for example. A small car company perennially taking a back seat to the big boys, both nationally in Japan and globally; but the Mazda 3 and the CX-5 (wait for the '17 refresh, though) are arguably two of the most recommendable all-around vehicles made, everything taken into account, striking the right balance in about every way. Panasonic, meanwhile, doesn't even have a logo. Its logo is just its name, spelled out in conservative, standard sans-serif letters, upper case and lower case. It just changed its catchphrase from "Ideas for Life" to "A Better Life, A Better World." O-kay.
Although Panasonic will be celebrating its centennial in 2018, as a digital cameramaker its august history goes way back to 2001. (Well, at least the Lumix brand.) So it doesn't take styling cues from its "iconic" 1960s designs, or build digital cameras with removable baseplates because someone thought that was a good idea in 1953. It doesn't have to deal with nine generations of lensmounts, either. As for heritage, when the GX8 came out with styling reminiscent of the standout LC1 of 2004, no one noticed because no one remembers the LC1 even though we were all excited about it at the time. Among the multinational electronics giants who are now players in the camera industry, Sony is the one that leans towards the enthusiast; Panasonic skews the other way, toward the consumer. It's not even the most prestigious partner in the 4/3 consortium. Panasonic partners with Leica the way Sony partners with Zeiss, except you get the impression that Sony is the lead partner in the Sony/Zeiss collaboration, whereas Panasonic definitely comes off as junior to Leica in terms of calling the shots, even though Panasonic is a much bigger company.
...When people even remember there is such a collaboration at all, that is. Mainly it consists of Panasonic letting Leica rebadge its consumer cameras while jacking up the jack.
And yet...I've really come to love Panasonic cameras and lenses.
Panasonic GX8 and 12–35mm zoom, showing the GX8's tilting VF
I know, go figure.
You'd think I'd be a traditionalist, and snobby about the history of photography and all the great companies with history and heritage and prestige and so forth, and I am...I'm not arguing against those wonderful companies either. I love them and lots of us love them. But now here I am going on about Panasonic. I loved the GF1 and the 20mm ƒ/1.7 and used it for years, and I loved the GX8 when I had it here for review.
Not bad for a company that also manufactures air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines, compressors, lighting, televisions, personal computers, mobile phones, audio equipment, broadcasting equipment, projectors, automotive electronics, aircraft in-flight entertainment systems, semiconductors, batteries, electrical components, optical devices, bicycles, electronic materials, photovoltaic modules, electric fans, range hoods, air doors (air curtains), hand dryers, dehumidifiers, and subterranean air blowers, just to name a few. Panasonic even resurrected the Technics brand name a few years ago.
Panasonic has also collaborated with Leica on a series of Micro 4/3 lenses, possibly its most high-profile products among dedicated photography enthusiasts. I believe the first one was the Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm ƒ/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., a slow seller but an excellent lens, and the lineup now includes the formidable Panasonic Leica DG Vario-Elmar 100–400mm ƒ/4–6.3 ASPH. POWER O.I.S., which, with its reach of 800mm-e, must surely be among the very top choices for birders and other critter and sports photographers.
None of the Leica-branded lenses happen to make my wish list, however, and all of the Panasonic lenses I like best are pretty compact. In the post "What's the Best Lens Line?", from last May, I specified a complete kit of the Panasonic lenses I'd choose personally. Note that the weight (882 grams) of that entire kit, all four lenses including two zooms, is less than that of the Leica Summilux-SL we were discussing the other day (1,065 grams).
Apart from traditional DSLR zooms such as the Canon EF 24–70mm ƒ/2.8L II USM (for full frame) and the Nikon AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 17–55mm ƒ/2.8G IF-ED (for APS-C, and the lens I'd have for the D500 or D7200), my favorite zoom across all brands is currently the Panasonic Lumix G X Vario 12–35mm ƒ/2.8 Asph. pictured above.
I haven't said much about the cameras, but if you're a regular reader you already know (from my Panasonic GX8 Review) how I feel about the GX8. That camera is paralleled by the upcoming SLR-body-styled GH5 (the outgoing GH4 is on closeout for $300 off), which is aimed at photographers who do more video, but from there the line goes in the direction of consumer cameras exclusively. Panasonic supplies:
As is the case with Mazda, Panasonic doesn't attract as much notice or mindshare as some of its more visible competitors. But don't write it off—it quietly makes some very fine products that are well worth getting to know.
Mike
(Review equipment in the illustration courtesy B&H Photo)
Original contents copyright 2016 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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Nigel: "I think the Panasonic 12–35mm ƒ/2.8 and 35–100mm ƒ/2.8 zooms are far better thought-out than the bulky, heavy Olympus equivalents, which defeat the concept of Micro 4/3 in my view. I have both these lenses and find them equally superb and, most of all, practical to take on long hikes in the mountains. I bought a secondhand LX100 to use as a briefcase camera for my work. But I have found it a superbly thought-out camera for when I want to carry just one camera, or even a camera to go out with and shoot with the idea of keeping things simple and basic. I like the idea of the physical aperture and shutter speed dials that are quickly adjusted to the desired shooting mode.
"Reading through the various camera forums there seems to be a lot of prejudice towards Panasonic when compared to the more 'real camera company' Olympus. But I find the conceptual design of Panasonic camera gear to be first rate."
Mike replies: Glad to know somebody agrees with me!
Juha Haataja: "I'm now using my second LX100. The first got broken after 100,000 photographs taken with it (dust getting inside and other problems), but the second one is doing well after 20,000 photographs taken. If I would change to using a system camera, my first choice would be Panasonic GX80/GX85 with the Lumix G Vario 12–60mm ƒ/3.5–5.6 lens. This combination would be relatively portable and quite versatile, but I would be missing a few things from the LX100, for example the dedicated aspect ratio switch. And even though the Dual I.S. would compensate for the less bright lens, the LX100 would behave better in the dark season, not to speak of the fine bokeh of closeup photographs possible with the LX100."
John Sarsgard: "Partly based on your earlier review, and Carl Weese's love for his GX7, I got both the GX8 and the superb 12–35mm. I am delighted with both. I still use my Canon 5D Mark II for portraits...one needs a larger camera for clients to take you seriously...but the GX8 goes everywhere with me. Got it after spending a week in Cuba in July doing street photography. The size fits me just right...not too big or too small. The weight is wonderful. The silent shutter is a deal maker on the street. The tiltable viewfinder makes it easier to not be obvious...and facilitates getting down low with arthritic knees. The image quality and this superb lens combine with a camera that if you don't like the way it works almost anything is customizable. My GAS disease is hunting for another lens, but having a hard time needing one. Thanks for pointing me in this direction."
James Weekes: "I have been a Micro 4/3 user since the GF3. I have bodies from both Panasonic and Olympus. I have lenses from both companies. And I am with you. With a choice of seven bodies (some quite old) and numerous lenses, prime and zoom, what I walk out the door with seven times out of 10 is the GX8 and the 12–35mm ƒ/2.8 Panasonic zoom. That lens really makes even primes in that range superfluous. Beautiful, sharp, smooth files and ease of use. The camera is wonderful and I have never seen or suspected the dreaded shutter-shock. The rest of the time I take the Pen F with the neat little Olympus 30mm macro, for close-in work. I prefer the Panasonic color rendering, even though both cameras return easy-to-work-with color. And the Panasonic menus are a pure joy to use after the Olympus menus (designed by Klingons). So there are two of us who agree with you."
Jeff: "The sensor in the Leica Q, and likely the Leica SL, is designed by TowerJazz, which is owned by Panasonic."
Mike replies: I know TowerJazz was formed when Jazz Semiconductor was merged with Tower Semiconductor, but as someone who used to shop for jazz at Tower Records that name always startles me!
[Note: Don't miss Kevin Purcell's clarification of the TowerJazz connection in the Comments section. Kevin is a better Internet researcher than I am, and I ain't chopped liver. —Mike the Ed.]
Steve Jacob: "I don't own a Panasonic camera. I'm a committed Fujiphile, but I do recommend Panasonics for almost everyone else who asks. My reasoning is simple. If someone has to ask, they probably don't want a Fuji. It's the kind of camera you get because you know your cameras and you want one, and you are prepared to make an effort to get the best out of it. If you need to ask, you probably want a good-value, reliable, easy-to-use camera that does everything well, both in terms of stills and video. Right now, I don't think anyone can match Panasonic for the best balance of all of those attributes, and the fire-sale prices on some of their excellent outgoing models are also very tempting. They are just nice all-round cameras."
It's been more than a year since the Summilux-SL 50mm ƒ/1.4 was announced at the same time as the Leica SL, and now it's available for pre-order...just in time for Christmas. The SL has earned fans among those who use it—people speak especially highly of its state-of-the-art electronic viewfinder—and now those shooters have a prime lens worthy of their camera.
The Summilux-SL 50mm features 11 elements in 9 groups, takes 88mm filters, is 125mm (4.9") long, weighs 1,065 grams (37.5 oz.), and costs $5,295 (about €5,000).
Mike
Original contents copyright 2016 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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Geoffrey Heard: "A prime lens about as big as an elephant's trunk and not nearly as versatile or good looking. 88mm filters, by gob! Taking into account where Leica started from and where it gained its reputation—small, compact camera, small sensor (film) size, photojournalism and documentary photography—I have to say, sorry, it's a joke."
Mike replies:
Graphic courtesy Camerasize.com
On the left, the new Summilux-SL 50mm ƒ/1.4 mounted on an SL. On the right, the Summilux-M ASPH. mounted on an M9. While it would seem that Leica has rather lost the thread, actually it pays a lot of attention to its heritage—qua the replicam digital M's very existence. And the SL is deliberately named for the Leicaflex, which were (for the time) brawny metal beasts built like Tiger II tanks.
...Which, if you'll pardon a digression, had 88mm cannons! If my memory all the way back to young teenagerhood, building Tamiya models of Tiger tanks in my friend Mark's basement, is still any good. I'm sure it's just coincidental that that's the filter size of the new lens; but watch to see if Leica ever names a new camera the Königstiger(!!). Heh. Germans, if readers will forgive an overbroad stereotype, do seem to like things to be overbuilt.
The reason for the lens's size and cost is simply that Zeiss and Sigma have built extremely fine ~50mm lenses recently, and Leica is in a bind because it must be the best. That's the reputation it trades on and which keeps its legions loyal. So it is obligated to outdo Zeiss and especially(!) Sigma.
(Speaking of what I was speaking of, the M is increasingly sticking out, in my mind, as the oddball in the Leica lineup, a contrived contraption which does not quite fit in with thoroughly thought-out and well-designed beauties like the SL and S. It never made terribly much sense as a digital camera, and makes less sense as new designs fill in around it. But the faithful love it and that's all that matters.)
Winwalloe: "Leica heard about Otus lenses and took it as a challenge. Or maybe they saw their national counterpart BMW making their products larger over the years and got inspired."
Mike replies: ...Exactly. My feeling is that BMW's ultimate aspiration is to be the German Pontiac. One of the saddest sights I ever saw as an amateur wannabee car guy was an advertisement showing the 3-Series cars over the years all lined up side-by-side. Made me want to weep. :-O
[A different] mike: "Seems all of the new lens designs for FF cameras are super sized! Over the weekend a local camera store had a mini expo and I got to see the Tamron 85mm ƒ/1.8, and it's much bigger than I expected. It took me by surprise as my old Canon EF 85mm ƒ/1.8 was pretty small.
"The new lenses by Sigma are also gigantic, much larger than they appear in pictures. Yes they are fast and good, but wow, the thought of carrying them makes my back and feet hurt just thinking about it.
"I sometimes pull out my old Nikon F and F2 bodies with their plain unmetered prisms and marvel at how small they are compared to any FF digital body. The lenses too are tiny in comparison.
"I'm so glad I switched to Micro 4/3 a few years ago and left behind the megapixel and sensor size wars for a more reasonable system that more than satisfies all of my professional needs. A plethora of amazing lens choices that are all reasonably sized.
"When I compare them to my old Nikons, the size of the bodies is comparable, yet the lenses of matching apertures are even smaller, more like my old Leica M pre-aspherical lenses from the '90s. And the quality that I get from my miniature sensor blows away any film format smaller than 4x5. Nice."
Jeff: "And more to come...the Leica SL Lens Roadmap."
Dave I.: "I'll stick with the Pentax 43mm ƒ/1.9. Three-quarters of a pound and the filter size is the same as my old Super Takumar screw-mount lenses. How's that for backwards compatibility!"
Mike replies: A great lens. Maybe a little too sharp, but.... :-)
Bernard: "This is the size of lens manufacturers make when most people buy their lenses only on the basis of reviews which in turn are done solely by photographing test charts."
Goff: "I found the M 240 too small for my (big) hands and too fiddly for my (aging) eyes. The SL is perfect for both hands and eyes. I have been using it with my M lenses. Beautiful results. The focus assist works well in the EVF. Yes, I would like autofocus. But I am not going to buy the SL 50mm ƒ/1.4 because it is too big and heavy. Maybe the SL ƒ/2 lenses will work for me. Autofocus becomes more valuable on longer lenses. So I'm looking to the 90mm. Finally, the SL video is spectacular in 4K. The Leica SL will be my camera for both still and video for the next decade to so. Initially with M lenses, then with SL lenses."
One of my favorite lenses of recent years is the Fujinon XF 14mm. It's not the fast glamour-glass near its focal length—that would be the 16mm ƒ/1.4—but, really, with an ultrawide you just don't need a lot of lens speed. (Think about it—the more telephoto the lens, the more small amounts of camera shake are amplified; the wider the lens, the less so.) ƒ/2.8 is not a downtown hip-crowd aperture but don't let that put you off. It's fast enough and the lens is quite special.
Anyway I just thought you might want to know that the fabulous Fuji 14mm is on sale for a whopping $300 off right this very moment. Here's the link, and here's the link for all the Fuji stuff that's on sale right now.
Three hundred off for this lens is significant; it makes an expensive lens into an affordable lens. (Fuji has sales on such a regular basis that it doesn't make sense to buy their stuff except on sale.)
I own this lens (bought at full price, alas) so when I say "highly recommended" I both know whereof I speak and have also voted with my own bux.
Check it out. You will not be sorry. It's the first ultra-wide I have ever fallen in love with in my whole life as a lens nut.
Mike
(Thanks to Izzy)
Original contents copyright 2016 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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Ken Bennett: "Hear, hear. One of my first two Fuji X lenses and still a favorite."
Stan Banos: "After using a 20mm Nikkor for some 30 years and thinking that was as good as it gets, I could not believe the stunning IQ of this lens. Wish it was a tad more compact like the snub nose Nikkor, but...."
Steve G, Mendocino: "I'm not using the Fuji system, but I'll second the opinion that ƒ/2.8 is fast enough, at least for my work. I'm using the Sigma 19mm and 30mm ƒ/2.8 Art lenses on a Sony A6000, and have yet to either want or need a faster aperture."
After the "Asymptosis" post last week, a reader asked me if there was any lens I considered "the absolute best."
It's a silly concept, of course. It's like saying "who's the best musician in history?" Proposing one robs us of an apt appraisal of so many others. Bach, or Bob Marley? I'm sure I couldn't pick between those two, much less between them and fifty others. The best lens is the one that does what you need it to do, and almost all excellent lenses, like all great musicians, have their gifts to give.
Then there's the Johnston Lens Axiom, which holds that you can do terrible work with the best lenses and great work with the worst ones.
However, as an only semi-retired lens nut with a great and mystical passion for the magic of optics and a profound appreciation for the lens image, I do have a candidate.
It's a lens I've never owned, never tried, never seen. You might consider that to be odd, but, like the world exploding once the monks finish cataloguing the nine billion names of God, if I ever used this lens, a cap would be put on my lens nuttery; all would conclude. You know, like a landscape photographer going to Iceland.
So, why, you ask? Well, I once asked Harold Merklinger what his favorite lens was. Harold, an e-friend-I've-never-met, was Chief Scientist of the Canadian Defence Research Establishment Atlantic and retired as that agency's Director-General. He wrote "A Technical View of Bokeh" as part of the trio of articles that introduced that concept in this hemisphere. He's an enthusiastic polymath of technical photography and has written several books on optics. His answer was that he liked the older 55mm-filter-thread version of the Leica Summilux-R. When I asked him why, he said, "Oh, I suppose it just does everything I want a lens to do." Which seems a very casual answer until you consider the weight of technical expertise backing the statement up.
Likewise, the 50mm Summilux-M ASPH., designed by Peter Karbe, seems to do everything I want a lens to do. It's small and compact. It's reasonably well built, about 80% as well as Leitz lenses used to be 50 and 60 years ago (it might be better where it counts, namely, in robustness—i.e., its ability to hold all the elements exactly where they're supposed to be despite hard use, handling, temperature variation, and the passage of time). It exhibits very close to exemplary bokeh. It's consistent from center to corners and up and down the aperture scale. It does very well at close-focusing. It resists flare extremely well.
In short, it's pretty ideally well-behaved.
And subjectively: it will make you smile a thousand times if it makes you smile once.
Negatives
It's extremely expensive*. (Ken Rockwell: "As this is among Leica's less-expensive lenses, one of the ways Leica keeps the cost so low is by making the focus tab out of plastic." Cost so low?!? ROTFLMAO. And how much manufacturing cost did that plastic focus tab really save? Eight dollars? Thirty dollars?)
WARNING! Leicaphiles do not read the following paragraph!
<!>It's not made in Germany. It's made here, with only enough final assembly left undone so it's legal to mark it "Made in Germany" after it's shipped there in pieces. Leica buffs don't believe this, but it's true. Oh, and I believe the molded aspherical element was sourced from Canon. I have the first on better authority than the second, although I know for a fact that Leica did source some molded aspherical elements from Canon, which was the first company to master the process. All on the QT of course.<!>
It only has one flaw—the aperture is the wrong shape, the opposite of rounded. I don't know what its shape is called—like a pincushion with nine points. Somebody wanted specular points of light to have a modest amount of star-rays. But you see that weird aperture shape in pictures—for instance, here—although you won't see it very often. The aperture shape doesn't seem to adversely affect the bokeh at all except in specular out-of-focus highlights. Even then it's mild.
I wouldn't use it on a digital M camera. I'd use it on a Sony A7 series camera. Of course the Zeiss 55mm ƒ/1.8 is probably preferable on an A7-series camera. Unless those five extra millimeters and that two-thirds of a stop really matter all that much to you. Or, if my ship ever came in (that damn ship!) and I retired rich, I'd use this lens on an M6 with Tri-X. But only if I could also hire an assistant to develop my film.
I can't recommend it unless cost is no object to you. I'll probably never buy one, and that's okay. But I'll bet people who do buy them are richly rewarded and deeply satisfied.
And if you want a lens with just as good bokeh, try this underappreciated sleeper for your Micro 4/3 camera. Granted it's got a different angle of view, 90mm-e.
Summation
We photographers like to use good lenses for the benefit of people who look at our pictures. The reason we use great lenses is for us ourselves to enjoy, shot after shot and year after year. They make us happy. They "nourish our enthusiasm," to use Ansel Adams's phrase. This Leica 50mm would be one prime exemplar of the latter type of lens.
Mike
Clarification: I didn't say this lens was the sharpest Leica lens. I didn't say it resolved the best. I didn't say it measures the best or that it measures perfectly in any measurable parameter. All I said was that I think it's probably perfect, that's all. I got there by looking at pictures...granted, most of them online, although that's as good a way as any to evaluate bokeh, as long as you look at enough pictures (I'll bet I've seen thousands from this lens over the last 12 years).
The perfect lens will never be technically perfect, because that would make it imperfect. :-)
*I would love to see some gear site compare the Sony FE 50mm ƒ/1.8 ($198, announced in March 2016) and this lens. It would be fascinating to see what the difference really is between a cost-no-object lens circa 2004 and a lens made to an economy price this year. I've no doubt the Leica would trounce the Sony—but by how much? The Leica lens costs nineteen times what the Sony lens does. Unless that $3,597 price difference would only pay for a metal focusing tab.
Original contents copyright 2016 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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David Saxe: "I own a 50mm Summilux-M ASPH. and I love it. Its not because of the bokeh and I don't care where it is made. I like it because it is small, focuses smoothly, and the quality is excellent so it will last a long time. It has nothing to do with the quality of the photos that I make. That part of it is up to me—not the lens. I must admit though, that when I hold it in my hand, it feels solid and just right. Its a nice feeling."
Jeff: "This is the only Leica M lens that I own that is not a Summicron (ƒ/2), which I generally find to be the 'sweet spot' for M lenses in size and performance. I've loved it on both film and digital M's.
"There is some fascinating background to this lens, as covered by the designer, Peter Karbe, in this old Shutterbug interview....
"Subsequent to this lens, Leica produced the 50mm APO Summicron-M, which costs more than double the cost of the Summilux ASPH., with more impressive specs, but I'll stick with the Summilux...and get a stop to spare.
"Anyway, I've found more to be gained in print quality improvements over the years from changes in the back end of my workflow (printers, inks, papers, editing software, etc....and my own experience/skill/techniques) than from some modest change in lens (or camera) performance (especially when the existing gear is pretty great already)."
Mike replies: Thanks very much for that link. I had never seen it. Lead designer Karbe highlights something that his lens illustrates richly—which is that really good lens designs still requires good taste and intentionality on the part of its designers, as well as inspired quality control on the production line. I could have emphasized the former in this brief review; the lens shows a superbly well-judged balance of imaging properties, as well as physical and handling properties, which is really why I admire it so. I think it remains an especial success, even 12 years after its introduction.
Pierre Charbonneau: "I have used the 50mm Summilux ASPH for a good number of years. The 35mm Summicron ASPH as well. Excellent results technically, for sure! I have sold both of them last year. For pictures with more character on my Monochrom, I prefer these days the 50mm Summicron v.4 (and the 35mm Summicron v.2). This version of the Summicron is very light, very sharp and about half the weight of the Summilux, something that matters on an M body.I may be mistaken but I have the impression their imperfections make the image more 'analog.' I don't think I would buy another Summilux."
Henning Wulff: "I'm fortunate to have had this lens since right after it came out, and it is the 'go to' standard 50. Optically, I really don't need/want anything better, which the Otus probably is, and the Apo-Summicron definitely is. However, the Otus is gigantic and the Apo-Summicron is a ridiculously priced ƒ/2 lens, and I can't see that either of those lenses would make any picture I took better. That's really the bottom line. The stupid built-in lens hood has had me using a $5 eBay screw-in hood, but that has been its only downside.
"I intend to keep this lens forever. Steve Cook mentioned that the focus was a bit too stiff, and many users have commented on a slight 'bump' in the focus action part way through. The latter is due to the floating elements cam, and both of these concerns go away after a couple of months of diligent use, when the brass and aluminum have gotten to know each other better. Then the focusing action is almost ideal (most of the time)."
Peter Wright: "Your example with the strange pincushion o-o-f highlights had me going to Lightroom to go back over the few thousand shots I have using digital M's with this lens. The effect is there but only very occasionally. It seems that all the conditions need to line up just right for this to occur, and the bokeh is indeed wonderful.
"Since I finished my 'Leica as Teacher' stint in 2015 using an MP and a Zeiss 35mm, I have been doing the OCOLOY using the 50mm ƒ/1.4 ASPH and the M246 Monochrome. (Really I am finding this much harder to keep to, so it's really mostly OC, and mostly OL—'It's a tough job, you say, but someone...'). But when everything comes together, this lens gives me pictures I simply love. (And I appreciated the interview link with Peter Karbe—very interesting.)"
George Feucht: "I own this lens. It is my favorite. Absolutely perfect balance of sharpness, creaminess, and contrast. They can be found used for around $2700...which is still a lot, but that's not like dropping $3k on a digital body. When you're done with the 'Lux, sell it for more than you bought it for. As for Elcan, they also manufacture Panavision Primo lenses. These lenses cannot be bought, but would surely cost at least $30,000 each if they were for sale. If you watch any amount of movies, you've seen the output of Panavision Primos at some point. Coincidentally, they mimic Leica lenses: a perfect marriage of sharpness and smoothness. So yeah: I have no problem with Elcan manufacturing my Summilux."
René: "To add to my praise for my Summilux 1:1.4 50mm ASPH. in my comment on your 'Asymptosis' post last week [a comment which triggered the present article, by the way, and thanks for that, René —Mike], one should notice the filter size of the Summilux. It is 46mm, compared to the 77mm filter size of my Sigma Art 1:1.4 50mm. Besides the size and weight advantage of the Summilux, this makes the Summilux so much less obtrusive than the Sigma in for instance street photography. There even exists a limited edition black chrome version of the lens (only 500 pieces, alas) with a filter size of only 43mm. The signature of the lens I spoke about is there when you photograph with the aperture fully open or only slightly closed (ƒ/1.4–ƒ/2.8). It is the combination of the sharpness and high contrast of your subject and the tranquility of the unsharpness of the surroundings that give this lens its special signature. At ƒ/5.6 or ƒ/8 it probably will be very difficult or impossible to recognize the Summilux, although even then I personally prefer the color rendition of my Summilux over my Sigma 50mm.
"It indeed is an apo design, and Roger Cicala showed how really good this lens is in MTF terms. Isn't there anything negative to mention? Yes there is. In certain situations where a strong large light source is not in the image but slightly off-axis it can produce a veiling glare in a corner or the edge of the image, most often when I shoot vertical. I couldn't find anything on this on the Internet. Considering that when I started with photography I couldn't wait to buy additional lenses to my 50mm, skipped 90mm (wrong) and bought a 135mm lens, skipped 35mm (wrong) and bought a 28mm, I find it utterly funny that I now photograph the vast majority of my subjects with the 50mm focal length, thanks to my beloved Summilux."
Mike adds: The Mandler-designed 35mm Summicron-R, a lens I remember with great fondness, also had that odd property of being vulnerable to veiling glare from large, diffuse bright light sources just outside of the frame. I subsequently devised a regular trial for this called "the window test" and wrote about it in an article that's now labeled as "Flare-01-11-01-03" at the L-L. It's now behind a paywall so I won't link to it.
Question for you. Which would you prefer to buy: a $5,295 lens that fits natively on a 24MP camera, or a $949 lens that fits natively on your choice of many cameras, including 36MP, 42MP, and 50MP?
Carl Weese brought it up. In the post about the new Leica 50mm SL lens, he asked, "Was the challenge to make the most expensive FF normal lens?"
As they do in my world, one thing led to another last night, and I ended up spending a happy hour looking at online samples of the Sigma 50mm ƒ/1.4 ART lens. What I kept thinking was, "Really? Someone needs a better 50mm lens than this? And, why?"
Right: we all want good lenses. It's frustrating to do the work of finding or making great photographs—it's usually a lot of work, because those fish don't always bite—and then be let down by the fact that you weren't using good enough equipment. I certainly get it.
However...well, let me put it this way. Our friend and sometime contributor Ken Tanaka made up a new word: asymptosis. He mashed together "asymptote," which means a curve that continually approaches but never quite meets a straight line, and the suffix "-osis," which signifies "a general functional disorder."
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Asymptosis, n.: The ongoing quest for perfection or improvement even after the differences and distinctions are so small that they cease to have any meaning.
(coined by Kenneth Tanaka, definition modified by Mike)
-
Now, I don't mean to be picking on Leica again. (I have that reputation, but only because I insist on perceiving Leica as a camera company instead of a lifestyle brand and a status symbol...just as many of you Leica shooters do.) If you own and love the new SL, then you need a 50mm lens that fits your camera. Fair enough. You're going to pay a bit more for it, but presumably you were aware of that going in, and you don't mind.
Oh, and by the way: many people think $5,295 is too much to pay for a 50mm lens. But they're wrong, it's not...or rather, it's not necessarily. If I've learned anything in this business over the years, it's that price sensitivity is infinitely variable. I knew a guy once who bought a vacant lot for $675,000. And he didn't even need it. I asked him why he bought it, and he said, "Oh, it was available, and I thought lots like that might not be available in the future. So I thought I'd better go ahead and pick it up while I had the chance." (Paraphrasing there.) To that guy, I would imagine, $5,295 is not expensive for a lens. (He's since built a beautiful house on that lakeshore lot, which was indeed one of the last vacant lots available on that lake, so it did turn out to be useful to him. Even though he has other houses.)
But if you're just looking for a really good lens, do you really need one that's prettier than this? That isn't a dog? That has nice bokeh? That renders detail well? That's sharp? That can stop action? That's good for reportage? That works for portraits? That lets you get close to wildlife? (And I could go on....) Then I think the $949 Sigma 50mm ƒ/1.4 DG HSM ART is unlikely to hold you back, just from an image-quality standpoint.
Here's a sampling of critical opinion:
"Optically it's simply spectacular [...] It's the best autofocus 50mm prime we've reviewed to date, with optics so good that we can't really find anything to criticise." (Dpreview)
"This Sigma is fantastic, if you don't mind carrying it." (Ken Rockwell)
"The Sigma 50mm ƒ/1.4 Art stands up to the [$3,990, manual-focus] Zeiss 55mm ƒ/1.4 Otus very well, meeting or slightly exceeding the optical performance of the Zeiss! [...] The Sigma 50mm ƒ/1.4 Art is the most exciting lens we're likely to review this year. All competing lenses from Canon and Nikon fell short when compared to the resolving power of the 50mm Art. Compared to the mighty Zeiss 55mm ƒ/1.4 Otus, the Sigma holds its own, displaying nearly identical results!" (Imaging-Resource)
"It's no news anymore that Sigma's Art series lenses are both beautifully crafted as well as tough and it's really a joy to handle Sigma 50mm ƒ/1.4 DG HSM | A. [...] ...better than all the other 50mm lenses that we have tested to date." (Photozone [before testing the Otus.])
"From a resolution standpoint the Sigma is nearly as good as the Zeiss Otus, and clearly better than the Canon 50mm ƒ/1.2 L. [...] Of course, people buying wide aperture 50mm lenses are at least as interested in bokeh, autofocus accuracy, color rendition, and a number of other traits as they are in resolution...assuming those things all turn out acceptable to you, it’s hard to imagine a better value at 50mm than the Sigma 50mm ƒ/1.4 art." (Lensrentals)
"The list of advantages of the tested Sigma is really impressive." (Lenstip)
"As one of the key models in Sigma’s new range of high-speed premium Art-series models, the Sigma 50mm ƒ/1.4 DG HSM A is notable for high sharpness and control of aberrations, particularly at wide apertures. [...] the Sigma...is a highly desirable alternative to the more esoteric models available." (DxOMark)
What's the point of all this? Only this: all you need in a lens is for it not to hold you back. Beyond that, how good your pictures are is on you. The fact that you might be able to detect slight differences between superlative lenses doesn't necessarily mean one is functionally superior to another. Once "functional perfection" is achieved, do slight, detectable-but-nearly-invisible distinctions really matter? (For that matter, the Sigma itself could be way more than you need, and way more expensive than what you need to spend.)
I haven't tested this Sigma ART lens, and you should, of course, buy any 50mm lens your heart desires and your wallet can handle. People should do what they want to as long as it's not hurting anyone else. I have no objection. But I think I saw enough on my little tour last night to guess, plausibly, that $949 is probably all you really need to spend for a 50mm lens for a full-frame DSLR.
Unless you just delight in equipment testing...or suffer from asymptosis! Even if Leica's new lens turns out to be "better," that's still not going to mean that the other top-class alternatives aren't good enough.
Here's that link again. But don't let me tempt you. :-)
Mike
(Thanks to Kenneth Tanaka)
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Peter Wright: "'Asymptosis,' what a great new word! Having a mathematical bent, I understood it as soon as I saw it. The other reason I understood it immediately, is that it's a condition that Leica owners like me have in spades: When I bought my 50mm Summilux Aspherical, I thought it was absurdly expensive at $3,795, but an incredible lens to use. Now I see the 50mm APO Summicron is available at $7,795, and I have to keep reminding myself that owning it won't make a blind bit of difference to my pictures. I feel better already knowing that the condition has been named, and probably some research lab has a grant to work on a cure! But I hope they get onto it before an APO 35mm Summicron appears, or I'm sunk!
John Robison: "Don't forget to link to your article 'The 50mm Lens and Metaphysical Doubt' from a decade or so past. In my opinion, still very valid points."
Bill H: "Asymptosis can be highly contagious in a crowded space such as a gearhead forum. Stay away from such gatherings and your chances of avoiding the disease are much better."
Jeff: "And the SL50 isn't even close to Leica's most expensive current 50mm lens designed for 'full frame.' One can even adapt the now close-to-$11,000 Noctilux on other cameras. Even next to the 50mm Summicron-M APO ($7,795), the SL 50mm is a relative bargain in the world of Leica."
Tom Frost: "Don't forget, Edward Weston took his famous 'Pepper #30' with a $5 lens from a flea market (or maybe it was a second hand shop)."
Bahi: "A few months ago, I helped with an exhaustive test of the Zeiss Otus line for (and with) a client using his Canon 5DS R. We compared the Otus range, with adapters, to a bunch of Canon L primes. Every Otus delivered contrast and sharpness that were uniformly impressive but it was the almost total absence of CA in the Zeiss lenses in the harshest conditions, shot wide open, that was astonishing. I mention this here because we also threw in a Sigma 35mm Art lens and it really was impressive—not quite an Otus but respectably close and with autofocus. Thoroughly removing CA in post, which we did as part of the comparison for the other lenses, is not as straightforward as people often claim—the process can easily spoil colour throughout the rest of the image so requires some care.
"Despite the thoroughly impressive results, the client decided against the Zeiss line, though he could afford it, mostly because the lenses were so heavy that he realised he wouldn't make good use of them. I thought that was sensible. He kept the Sigma.
"Meanwhile, whenever I look at any of my own pictures, shot with entry-level Nikkors, a bit of me dies. Longitudinal CA that I'd never noticed now mocks me. I'm a man of very modest means and my next prime will be a Sigma Art.
"Kudos to Zeiss, though—if an Otus is within your buying power and carrying power, don't think twice."
Gordon Cahill: "Re: 'Really? Someone needs a better 50mm lens than this? And, why?' I don't 'need' either of them. I 'want' the Leica. And I will have it. It's not human nature to be satisfied with just what you need. It is human nature to bitch about others who have stuff you can't justify or afford. Such is life."
Mike replies: And power to ye Sir.
Another significant new product introduced at Photokina: the much-anticipated Sigma ART short tele.
Sigma has made a real splash, consistently, over several years now, with its high-end ART series of lenses. I've reviewed only one, but I used two samples on two different brands of camera, and had many good things to say.
The new Sigma 85mm ƒ/1.4 DG HSM Art lens makes the ART primes into a complete set, adding to the 20mm, 24mm, 35mm, and 50mm (I would get either the 20mm or the 24mm but not both, and probably the 35mm or 50mm but not both).
The two greatest restrictions on lens designers are 1. intended selling price, and 2. size and weight. Sigma seems to be defying the laws of lens design when it comes to the former; its art lenses significantly undercut the competition's pricing without any noticeable cutting of corners or sacrifices in performance. (I look forward to what Roger Cicala has to say about that, and reserve the right to change my opinion later in light of whatever he says!) But with all the ART lenses, restriction 2. is where you, the buyer, will make your sacrifice: these are solid, hefty lenses. In fact, Sigma hasn't even told us the weight of the new 85mm yet. They probably don't want people talking about it!
This is a big lens, though, five inches long and with a whopping 86mm filter size. (My first medium-format camera had a large filter size on its 80mm normal lens, and I was impressed with how big the filter was. It was a 67mm.)
But hey, it's just a decision. At least it's a clear one. You buy into this lineup, you deal with size and weight. You don't want to deal with size and weight, you look elsewhere. Simple, clear equation.
The lens has 14 elements in 12 groups, which is either delightful or risible depending on your point of view, and with that many elements, you bet your socks it has great multicoating—it has to. (Thank zooms for improving multicoating so much over the years.) It also has a beefed-up HSM focusing motor, said to have more torque, for moving all that glass around. Two of the elements are FLD, which Sigma says is the equal of fluorite (which Canon uses), and one still-exotic anomalous partial dispersion/high-refractive-index element. It has a rounded, nine-bladed aperture.
Best of all...it was very likely designed by the same wizards who designed the other Sigma ART lenses, which is good news. My personal opinion is that those guys, whoever they are, have photographic taste as well as scientific expertise and design skill. I could see it in the 35mm ART. That's just my bet, but I'd bet on it.
It will cost $1,199.
Mike
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Announced by Leica at Photokina is the new Summilux-SL 50mm ƒ/1.4 ASPH. lens for the beautiful full-frame SL mirrorless camera. Hey, you didn't think Leica was going to take challenges from Zeiss and Sigma lying down, did you?
The new design features internal focusing, weather sealing, and 11 elements in 9 groups including two aspherical and four anomalous partial dispersion glass elements. Price is $5,295.
And speak of the devil—we were just talking about this the other day—the Leica Sofort is a Leica-branded $299 Instax camera! I'd almost buy one for the "Automatik-Hektor" lens name alone. I haven't heard that name since Uncle Arthur Kramer, lens guru of the old Modern Photography magazine of revered memory, used to build delightfully bad Leica jokes around the phrase "when Hektor was a pup." (Hektor was the name of Max Berek's dog. Max Berek was an early lens designer for Leica who gave the Hektor lens its name.)
There's a nice review at Engadget called "Leica's Sofort instant camera is better than it looks." But any $299 Leica meant for having fun looks pretty good from here.
Mike
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Chuck Albertson: "At $300, it's Automatik For the People!"
Several big announcements today...
Canon 5D Mark IV sports the familiar clean and classic lines of the series
Canon introduces the 5D Mark IV. The latest iteration of the famous 5D series, once known as the ultimate amateur Canon DSLR but now preferred by professionals as much as by amateurs, has three of the four improvements on the wish-list of PDN (formerly Photo District News) from a year back: 4k video, USB 3.0, and Dual Pixel CMOS AF (ideal for low-light focusing). Missing is the 10-FPS burst mode they wanted, and still TBD (to be determined) is what most 5D Mark III users were asking for: at least two stops more of dynamic range.
The new body features a 30.4-megapixel CMOS sensor with a Dual-Pixel raw mode that allows you to shoot raw files with double the resolution of a standard 30-MP file.
There are two new Canon EF lenses: the Canon EF 16–35mm ƒ/2.8L III USM ultra-wide zoom which will cost $2,199, and the Canon EF 24–105mm ƒ/4L IS II USM standard zoom for $1,099.
The Canon EOS 5D Mark IV ships in September and can be pre-ordered now for $3,499.
Fuji XF 23mm ƒ/2 with its snoot-type (inward-sloping) rangefinder-style hood
Fuji introduces the XF 23mm ƒ/2. A slower but also smaller version of Fuji's wide-normal lens, the long-expected and eagerly awaited 23mm ƒ/2 is optimized for the X-Pro2 (it will make the camera less front-heavy and won't get in the way of the viewfinder in optical mode). Of course it can be used on any Fuji X camera. Available for pre-order in silver or black, the lens costs $449.
Still TBD: whether the new lens will be as nice as the near-flawless XF 23mm ƒ/1.4.
Also, don't forget that many Fuji items are on sale right now and that Fuji prices will undergo an across-the-board price increase in September.
Mike
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That was fun yesterday but wow, that was a lot of work. To wit, it took me all day to re-research and write. It's not actually that easy to write a book review in one paragraph, much less six times.
The lovely Zeiss Touit 12mm, a beautiful ultrawide (18mm equivalent angle of view), is on sale. The one pictured is for Sony E-Mount; it's also available in Fujifilm X-mount.
Sad confessions department: I first realized I had a problem with sugar (many recovering alcoholics do) one day many years ago when I was eating a candy bar and craving the candy bar at the same time. I knew then I would have to deal with that and I remember thinking, "okay, better get to it." (I now watch my sugar intake carefully.) So is that sort of the same thing as owning a perfectly wonderful Fuji XF 14mm ƒ/2.8 ($900), which I do, and still sort of wanting a Zeiss Touit 12mm? What does that mean? Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, is what I intuit.
It's on sale for $300 off, marked down from a thousand dollars to seven hundred.
To wit, if you intuit you need a Touit, time to get to it.
Mike
(I trust you got the title.)
P.S. If you want to try a Touit first, our friends at LensRentals are having a late Summer sale—rentals are 20% off. Just use the code BACKTOSCHOOL at checkout.
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In the first Featured Comment on the previous post, Gordon Lewis pointed out that Canon doesn't have an APS-C lens system either, and then he threw a bucket of bloody chum in the water knowing full well it would drive shark Mike into a frenzy. (Lewis is an agitator, and he knows this is true because when he read that italicized word just now, he laughed.) He asked, regarding a "complete" DX lens system, "what do you mean by 'complete'?"
Well. I have to rise to the bait, as Gordon no doubt knew I would.
The following mostly ignores already-existing lenses, which, with Nikon DX, as with Sony's ASP-C offerings, is a hodgepodge and, effectively, a mess.
Plus, I think the system could well be minimal, as long as it is carefully and thoughtfully designed. After all, DX lenses are not where the money is, and many people do use the kit zooms.
For me, then, for APS-C: first I'd replicate the classic three-lens set as iterated in the Leica CL kit, namely a 28mm moderate wide, 40mm normal, and 90mm moderate tele. Except that I personally prefer 85mm, so we'll split the difference. Then I'd add an ultrawide. Then I'd add a tele-zoom (tele focal lengths are where zoom makes the most sense, because it's for situations where you often can't easily control your standpoint).
For features, I'd add VR to the 85mm-e and the tele-zoom, and I'd personally also like to see it added to the 40mm-e normal because I like to shoot in low light and I really like image stabilization for help in low light. That might be a minority choice. I'd also include two two-element closeup filters for the tele-zoom or the moderate tele to add macro capability to the mix.
I'd make sure all the lenses all worked exactly the same way and had the same controls (except for the zoom ring on the zoom, of course). I'd give them all the same filter size, no more than 58mm, and I wouldn't make them too fancy—not much more than "ordinary good" standard like the current 35mm ƒ/1.8G DX, so they didn't have to be too expensive.
So:
14mm ƒ/2.8 rectilinear ultrawide (21mm-e)
18mm ƒ/2 standard wide angle (27mm-e)
26mm ƒ/1.8 VR normal (39mm-e) (Of course you already have the 35mm DX lens for an option if you like a longer "normal.")
58mm ƒ/2 VR short tele with closeup filters (87mm-e)
50–100mm ƒ/3.5 VR zoom (75–150mm-e) (based on the old Series E 75–150mm optical design. That lens was a honey.) (Longer zooms already exist for those who prefer them.)
For me the 26mm would have to have pleasing bokeh or the whole enterprise would be a bust.
For me a fine normal lens in the 35mm- to 40mm-equivalent
range is a must-have
That to me would constitute a whole system. For that matter, this would be a great set for the Sony "ex-NEX" A6300-style cameras, too, using the existing Zeiss 24mm as the normal lens.
Status and cool
The problem with this proposal is that it's basically strictly practical. Useful. And usefulness is not the only reason why people buy lenses. Lens sell because they're deluxe, special, extreme: the biggest, the best, the fastest, the baddest, or more expensive than you can afford because my wallet is fat, baby, and therefore I'm better than you. The name on the wine bottle, the bragging rights. Or contrarianism: something different than everyone else uses.
So maybe that would limit sales.
But a "complete" system doesn't have to be huge, as long as the offerings are thoughtful and well-considered, and make sense relative to a) photographers' actual needs, and, especially, b) the other lenses around it. A system that's well thought out as a system. That sensible, thought-through balance is what Fuji's lens line has in spades, and it's probably what is most sorely lacking in Nikon, Canon, and Sony's APS-C offerings.
Mike
(Thanks to Gordon)
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