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Pentax and m42 Leica lenses

E. von Hoegh said:
For protection, you want the very very rare Kruppstahl Leica, a limited series made for high Nazi officials.
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Geez, I can't afford that. Would two Nikon SP's equal one Leica?
 
Yes, the first year blocks were modified stock GM. And of course they were much modified for F1 racing.
My dad had a convertible first generation Olds F-85 in the early 70's. That was a quick little car. What everybody said back then was to not let the engine get too hot, as the heads would warp. The impression given was that that was a problem with them. I suspect now that it was a generalized concern, as a lot of regular guys were still skeptical of aluminum.

Anyway it all goes to the point I was making, that aluminum is every bit as good as "steel", done properly.
 

As was demonstrated by Marc Birkigt's mostly aluminium V8... in 1914.

There was no excuse for that abortion of an engine in the Chevy Vega.
 

Another false legend, at least with respect to the Rover version. My POS overheated regularly -- thermostat failure every time, and of course they failed closed -- and boiled spectacularly every time. Never lost a head gasket, though, but I did worry. I suppose the block could have warped with the heads, but that's really hard to believe.

To get back to lenses, back when I was starting out with my humble little Nikkormat my Leica-using friends ragged me unmercifully, boasted about their Leitz lenses' wonderful sharpness, superior to anything Japanese, now and forever. They also gave me a hard time about using an SLR; everyone knew that the deity's own camera was a thread mount Leica with a highly precise rangefinder.

Funny thing was, they all shot hand-held, so pissed away whatever superlative quality their lenses may have had. Equally funny thing was, I was getting macro shots with my humble 55/3.5 MicroNikkor, on its own mount and on its little M-2 ring, that they couldn't take with their Leicas. Visoflex, schmizoflex. "Horses for courses" had no traction with my Leicanuts.
 
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I wish I had known about this thread long before now, as I'm just tonight reading it for the first time.


Published in the May 2001 issue of Popular Photography, Herbert Keppler did exactly that. In his "SLR" column, that month entitled, "Can You See the Difference in Pictures Shot with a Super-High-Quality Modern Lens and an Inexpensive Old SLR Lens?" Mr. Keppler compared two identical scenes, one shot with a Leica M6 with the 50/2 Summicron and the other with a Pentax Spotmatic armed with the 50mm f/1.4 Takumar, both at f/8 on Kodak TMax 100. Each were enlarged to 8x12 using glass negative carriers for maximum flatness. He displayed full-sized detailed sample images from each print, center and corner. Both samples were virtually identical. He believed you'd have to go to at least 16x24 to see differences, if any.

What does it prove? That at that particular aperture and enlargement degree, all other factors being equal, they were one and the same. Change any of the other factors and the results could change. I wish I could provide a link to the article, but I don't believe one exists. I am writing about this with my personal copy of the issue right here in front of me.

Bottom line though, it's the image that counts. The camera and lens is but a tool to interpret the mind/eye vision, nothing more. I admit to owning an M6, but I also have a Spotmatic and a Yashica TL-Electro, among myriad others in my collection. On any given day, it could be any of those that expresses my vision the way I want. More often than not, it's my Pentax MX or my simple but trusty TL-Electro I've used since 1976 that gives me the image result I was looking for.
 
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cobbu2 said:
I am writing about this with my personal copy of the issue right here in front of me.
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I think that you can post here scan (or photo) of the article, value of having this on apug overrides eventually copyright issue .
 
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And your bottom line is what really matters in the end.

From my own experience I can tell that wide open my Summitar and my Pentax lenses are different in a noticeable way. The Leica vignettes more and yields a type of distortion that doesn't look very good especially with stray direct light in the scene. The Summicron I have tried is much more neutral at its widest aperture, very similar to the Pentax.

Stopped down to 5.6 or 8, which is where I like to be for most things, I literally must check my notes.
I don't print very big, only to about 16x20, using a Leitz enlarger. If I printed bigger, I couldn't tell you how they would fare.

But back to the bottom line, the best photographs are had with those cameras we love and are used to using. The small differences in lens quality are highly insignificant if you think about the total importance of any photograph. Would iconic photographs be less iconic if they were made with Pentax or Olympus lenses? I don't think so. Who cares?

 
Mustafa Umut Sarac said:
Colors are elegant and classy like difference between chinese oil paint and Dutch Rembradt paint.
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Oil paint was never used in the Chinese pictoralist tradition. Perhaps better spend some time and money on education instead on the flashy consumer goods you apparently worship.
 
Ok, here are scans of Mr. Keppler's article... I beg forgiveness in advance if I am making any transgressions here. Note the samples, they tell the story. But keep in mind the only story they tell are the singular conditions of this particular comparison and no other generalities are claimed. Mr. Keppler emphasized that point in the article.





Whether this really clears anything up or not is for you to decide, perhaps it can even muddy the waters. But you can't argue with its objectivity.
Well said Thomas! It's easy and or fun to get caught up in the technical and the equipment aspects of our passion, but ultimately, the deciding factor is our images and how we and others respond to them.
 
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That article is merely echoing what anyone who has actually used the equipment already knows.
Thanks for posting it.
 
E. von Hoegh said:
He's talking about brands of artist's oil colors.
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That's one of the divides between artists' and (many) photographers' mind-sets: even a third rate artist will be gravely mortified if told that better tools would "improve" his/her art; or that his/her works bear the signature of this or that tool...
 
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