Leica Users: Rigid 50/2 Summicron or Nikkor 50/1.4 Sonnar?

[Rolleiflexible]

Tom, you pretty much just bought every lens I've
been thinking about. Please post here again after
you've had time to explore them all.

 

[Venchka]

No reason really

V, why do you prefer the Nikkor for B+W work?

I thought about that after I said it. I looked through my rolls of film with each lens. It's closer to 50-50. I've used both lenses about the same amount for color and B&W. A slight nod to the Summicron on total use now that I have both. However, the Nikkor LTM still wins the battle of which lens to use on my Canon VI-T. Supporting both LTM and M mounts leads me to have a majority of LTM lenses. The best of both worlds.

There is no science involved, but I probably favor the DR Summicron over the Nikkor. On the other hand, I have a lot of photos taken with the Nikkor that I am very fond of. That's why I keep both.

 

[raid amin]

This discussion encourages me to keep my Summicron rigid and not to replace it with a Nikkor 50/1.4 but to [maybe] add the Nikkor. I am also tempted to sell my collapsible Summicron in such a case.

 

[lens_hacker]

The Nikkor is very different from the Rigid and Collapsible Summicrons, higher contrast. I prefer the Summicrons for C41 B&W as they normally print up with too high contrast. The Summicrons "tame" them.

The Rigid and Collapsible are fairly close. But the collapsible is so cool on an M3...

 

[Tom Hoskinson]

Tom, you pretty much just bought every lens I've
been thinking about. Please post here again after
you've had time to explore them all.

I've got to get into the darkroom and develop the darned film!

 

[André E.C.]

Funny, nobody mentioned the legendary Zeiss Sonnar Opton 50mm f/1.5, old glass indeed, but what a heck of an old piece of glass that is, surely one of the greatest 50's ever made, razor sharp at all apertures and incredible performance in low light conditions.

It's so good, that outperforms the usually better slower versions, 50mm f/2 for example.

IMHO, it´s superior to newer similar product offers by Nikon, I've used Nikkors 1.8 and 1.4 and prefer the rendition of the older Opton.


Great thread, thanks for all the info!



André

 

[Guillaume Zuili]

I know quite a few printers who have a Summicron DR on their enlarger.

 

[takef586]

I use 3 rf 50mm lenses: Planar 50/2, DR Summicron 50/2 and C Sonnar 50/1.5. In terms of the type of photography you do, (we are talking B&W here) the DR Summicron gives the most interesting rendition, though it is neither as sharp as the Planar or is it as perfect for conventional portraits as the C Sonnar, so if you want to look for something with a genuine "leica quality" try one of the old Summicrons as suggested here. I made several interesting portraits with this lens and Tri-X developed in Prescysol EF ( Pyrocat HD), and the results are exquisite. This old Summicron also has an intermediate type of bokeh - less creamy than the C Sonnar but with a broad brush like soft strokes, which can be very pleasing. Mind it, I am not at all a fan of Leica lenses as such - I much prefer Zeiss, but this lens in B&W is really quite something.
This is an example of the grays it makes:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59177039@N00/2586306889/sizes/l/
And here you see the background sketch like drawing:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59177039@N00/2589030547/sizes/l/

 

[df cardwell]

Zeiss Sonnar Opton 50mm f/1.5,

I grant you that the Opton Sonnar is a wonderful lens, but the Opton was never made in LTM.

The wartime Jena lenses were never DESIGNED for LTM, but were shoe-horned into a focus mount, and usually never performed acceptably, being impossible to calibrate for a normal working range. Few lenses were made well enough to last very long (hand filed parts of soft aluminum, and so on, due to nightly bombing and shortage of material). Lenses which survived the war are few, and have 63 years of use to be overcome. The other LTM Sonnars have their OWN problems.

On the OTHER hand the Nikkor and Canons were made under ideal circumstances, and were designed exceedingly well for their purpose.

I know quite a few printers who have a Summicron DR on their enlarger.

Silly choice because the DR Summicron is EXACTLY the same as a plain vanilla Summicron of the '50s, just in a mount that will focus more closely. But back in the dark ages, there was a legend that any imperfections the taking lens imparted on the negative would be removed if the image were printed THROUGH the same lens to print it. Actually, lots of folks used their taking lens to print with because enlarging lenses were expensive and in short supply after WW2 and the early '50s. As late as the '70s, though, taking lenses were used to make big prints, 16x20 or bigger, for their correction might be as good or better than Focotar or Coponon: both types of lenses were out of their design ranges. Leica suggested the 2.8 Elmar as the best choice. By the mid '70s, though, normal enlarging lenses were better than taking lenses at the higher range --- today there is no comparison.

 

[lens_hacker]

> The wartime Jena lenses were never DESIGNED for LTM, but were shoe-horned into a focus mount, and usually never performed acceptably, being impossible to calibrate for a normal working range.

It did not require any shoe-horning to fit a pre-war 5cm F1.5 Carl Zeiss Jena into an LTM J-3 mount. Basically, unscrew the optics module and screw it in. The shims are interchangeable between the CZJ 5cm F1.5 and the J-3. Collimated the lens to work wide-open and close-up. Infinity is best when stopped down a little, where the Sonnar Focus-Shift works in your favor. The Zeiss-Optpn will not fit into a J-3 mount.

TTL viewer makes collimation much easier.

Performance on both is quite good, as is the uncoated 5cm f2 in a black J-8 mount. Just to be fair, I put the J-3 optics into the CZJ Contax mount and shimmed it for the Nikon.

the 5cm F2 pre-war and wartime 5cm f2 Sonnar fits into a J-8 mount, shims are interchangeable.

 

[Tom Hoskinson]

> The wartime Jena lenses were never DESIGNED for LTM, but were shoe-horned into a focus mount, and usually never performed acceptably, being impossible to calibrate for a normal working range.

It did not require any shoe-horning to fit a pre-war 5cm F1.5 Carl Zeiss Jena into an LTM J-3 mount. Basically, unscrew the optics module and screw it in. The shims are interchangeable between the CZJ 5cm F1.5 and the J-3. Collimated the lens to work wide-open and close-up. Infinity is best when stopped down a little, where the Sonnar Focus-Shift works in your favor. The Zeiss-Optpn will not fit into a J-3 mount.

Of course, there is the current "M" mount Zeiss ZM T* Sonnar F1.5, I have one, and it is a fantastic lens!

 

[lens_hacker]

One day- I'll have to add the current Sonnar to the collection. It is a beautiful lens. But there would be nothing to hack!

 

[df cardwell]

It did not require any shoe-horning ]

Great post, hacker.... flies in the face of about three tons of data,
but it's easier to believe a simple truth. Handy, too, when you can do it yourself and see the results. Thanks


d

 

[lens_hacker]

This set of test photo's is from my second CZJ 5cm f2 converted to LTM using a J-8 mount, I've done 5 conversions so far:

Dead Link Removed

Shots at F2 and F4, those at F2 were spot-on with the RF. Infinity shot at F4 was also good. I just shot about 10 rolls on vacation with the two lenses shown here, will be scanning. The "look" is very similar to the Nikkor 5cm f2, which I tested on the same roll. The sky was a deeper blue on the Sonnar, and was closer to cyan on the Nikkor. I attributed that to the Sonnar being uncoated.

Just one more... 1935 Optics Module in a 1986 J-8 mount. The aperture ring is also compatible.

 

[df cardwell]

This set of test photo's is from my second CZJ 5cm f2 converted to LTM using a J-8 mount, I've done 5 conversions so far:

Dead Link Removed

I'm slow on the uptake (what's new ?)

So, you're using the Jupiter lens mounts to REMOUNT an early Jena Sonnar to Leica thread mount. Very cool, I like it.

It's too bad that when Zeiss was making LTM lenses in WW2, they didn't have a stash of lens mounts handy. But they didn't, and in the war years the mounts were cobbled up as best they could,
with soft alloys and hand shaped parts. And THEY didn't work very well.
But then, they were never intended for fine photography.

Re-mounting a pre-war lens into a post war mount IS a cool idea,
and seemingly a cool way to get André's Opton Sonnar onto Sander's M3.

AND it looks like I've got a nice winter-time project !

Thanks

d

 

[lens_hacker]

> I'm slow on the uptake (what's new ?)

The Flickr shots are just a set taken with the CZJ Sonnar showing close-up to infinity is good in the LTM mount. If I've posted that link before, apologies. I'm uploading more taken with the 5cm F1.5 lens. Similar results from close-up to infinity.

Recently, I was sent a cobbled together lens made from a mix of German and Russian parts. It looked like at an early attempt to copy the German LTM mount and optics block, using left-overs and mimicking missing parts. German glass in an aluminum mount. The focus action was as good as a J-3, but the machining was lower quality than either the German LTM lens or later J-3. It had the look of a one-off prototype. The middle group was uncoated and the cement was fogged, a real disaster. I replaced it with coated German optics, replaced some of the mimicked parts with German parts, and collimated it. It worked out quite well.

 

[Rolleiflexible]

Funny, nobody mentioned the legendary Zeiss Sonnar Opton 50mm f/1.5. ...
IMHO, it´s superior to newer similar product offers by Nikon, I've
used Nikkors 1.8 and 1.4 and prefer the rendition of the older Opton.André

André, can you be more specific? What do you see in the Zeiss,
that leads you to prefer it over the Nikkor 50/1.4 Sonnars?

Sanders

 

[Rolleiflexible]

It did not require any shoe-horning to fit a pre-war 5cm F1.5 Carl Zeiss Jena into an LTM J-3 mount. Basically, unscrew the optics module and screw it in. The shims are interchangeable between the CZJ 5cm F1.5 and the J-3. Collimated the lens to work wide-open and close-up. Infinity is best when stopped down a little, where the Sonnar Focus-Shift works in your favor. The Zeiss-Optpn will not fit into a J-3 mount.

Is it really as simple as swapping out the lens elements?
Is this something I can do at home? Do you know of any
lens hackers who might take on this sort of project for
a simple guy like me?

Interesting.

 

[Rolleiflexible]

Summitar

I picked up a coated Summitar with a
round aperture this week -- interesting
lens, to be sure. I liked its look on this
roll of film. (Attachment shot at f/2.8,
on a Leica IIIa.) Based on only this roll,
it seems that this Summitar resolves
detail a bit more finely at the focal plane
than my Summar does, while still giving
a kind of "painterly" (I hate that phrase)
look to the out-of-focus areas. I am
guessing that the Summicron would give
a more literal rendition in the out-of-focus
areas. Maybe this Summitar is a good
compromise between the two.

Too many lenses, too little time. Alas.

 

[André E.C.]

André, can you be more specific? What do you see in the Zeiss,
that leads you to prefer it over the Nikkor 50/1.4 Sonnars?

Sanders

A much smother out of focus areas rendition, I compared with images of a friend using the Nikkor, I recognize the Nikkor is sharper, yet harsher out of the center, IMHO.

And I'm a Zeiss user, therefore, I prefer the look they deliver.


PS- Nothing against Nikkors, I had several and still own two 50's, they're great optics.




André

 

[lens_hacker]

Is it really as simple as swapping out the lens elements?
Is this something I can do at home? Do you know of any
lens hackers who might take on this sort of project for
a simple guy like me?

Interesting.

The most difficult part of this is collimating the lens. I found a through-the-lens viewer for LTM lenses, but it is not necessary. You can mount yor camera on a tripod, set the shutter to "T" or "B", and use the image formed at the film gate.

Kim Coxon hosts the instructions that I wrote for the J-3:

http://pentax-manuals.com/repairs/j3service.pdf

My Canon 7 is used in the illustrations for collimating the optics. Teh same method works for the CZJ Sonnar to J-3 conversion.

The tools necessary are some fine screwdrivers for the small set screws. Getting the parts, a J-3 in LTM and the CZJ Sonnar are the most time-consuming. And sometimes risky- a friend of mine found a Collapsible Sonnar and I had to break the news that the rear group was "wrong", the lens would not form an image, and the optics module was glued into the barrel. I replaced the incorrect group with that from a 1961 J-8 and collimated it by unscrewing the latch (term?) on the collapsible mount out.

 

[asp dk]

Dear Leica friends
I am looking for a silent camera, which will produce fine tones in shadow and highlights with lens wide open. F2 or bigger aperture..Only daylight and candles are used, (old churches). I am looking at the M6, since I years ago had it for a year and liked the negatives in the darkroom. Could anyone guide me to a good 50 and 35 lens among the many well reputated? Can the R-series work silent also? Advices for film are also welcome - they should be as good to highlights as previa, but maybe faster..Grains like the old Tmax are too hard for this assignment.
I have worked b-w years ago, and now I am going back to analog, since the digital does not give the same at all, when it comes to real sharpness and resolution..The pictures I am going to take, are to tell a story, not only prove that I was there...
Kind regards, Claus

 

[eddym]

I picked up a coated Summitar with a
round aperture this week -- interesting
lens, to be sure. I liked its look on this
roll of film. (Attachment shot at f/2.8,
on a Leica IIIa.) .

Sanders... give her cake.

 

[Rolleiflexible]

Or -- what? Death?!

 

[eddym]

Or -- what? Death?!

Hey, it's her shirt. The choice seems easy to me.