Buying a 50mm when already owning a 28-70mm zoom?

[Paul Howell]

In terms of Zooms, the question for me is speed and distortion. Starting with Zoomar lens made for the Swiss Alpa followed by the S1 zooms made for Vivitar then Canon L glass and Nikon Ed zooms along with Minolta G, Leica and Contaxt zooms, zooms are sharp enough to reslove Tmax 100. Some zooms still suffer from distoriton at the long and short ends which in noticable under some sitatuions, most of the time not critical, but loss of speed with film, unless you shoot Tamx 3200 that is an issue in low light. If you can live with a F4 to 5.6 and want to travel light a zoom is peferct. In terms of Leica R mount, the Leica versions of the 28 to 70 are likely to be good enough. Too bad that Sigma did not make the Art lens in Leica R mount, there are likely best zooms ever made.