I really want that much more than you want. I lost my job and sold 6 Leicas and remain in to plastic one. As everyone buys their lens after search in galleries and flickr , I invite you to look in to the past experience.
I am not brand holigan , I bought all my Leicas after long journal , annal search in past 70 years.
Dont be offended , I dont intend to break no ones moral , but find a Da Vinci catalog BW or Rembrandt catalog BW , train your eye and look at your M2 results. There are lots of painting tricks at Renaissance , you will start to see what I mean. These guys developed their lenses with intention of owning classical art.
How can I make you believe Da Vinci is better than the fake one ? I am not trained as art teacher and I dont know to manage a pedagogy.
Its up to you , I spend countless hours when viewing single Da Vinci painting.
But image processing experiments opens lots of Gates to understanding the terms.
As steel makes a better engine than aluminum , a Leica makes you a better artist. It holds the image to upper class.
I suspect its about nonlinear distribution of high frequency noise.
Every lens does it in some way but Leica puts the noise where the detail is needed , a muscle ,bone , vain , shadow etc.
And the histogram is matchless , it gives the most punch.
Colors are elegant and classy like difference between chinese oil paint and Dutch Rembradt paint.
Color degrades are most elegant , its smooth and reveals the sculpture in 2D.
I can try to explain more if nothing is clear.
Everything is perfectly clear to me, and I disagree 100% with you. But my own purchases are not based on researching the last 70 years of camera making by Leica. It is based on using Pentax cameras and Leica cameras side by side for a few years.
If I take my usual Tri-X, TMax, or FP4+ film, shoot them in both cameras under similar lighting conditions, and process them together, and printing them with the same Leica enlarger - I don't see any visual benefit of the Leica camera. Period.
You see, I don't care what you say you see on Flickr and elsewhere. Flickr is a
really crappy place to study differences anyway, because of color calibration and peoples ability and equipment to digitize their material, etc.
It is probably fair to say that those who purposely purchase a Pentax Spotmatic and use a Pentax (or other M42) lens on it cannot afford to purchase extreme equipment to digitize their negatives, chromes, or prints either.
It is also probably fair to say that those who purposely purchase Leica cameras can also afford very fine equipment to digitize their results, and that in and of itself would make a big difference in how their results are displayed in a place like Flickr. That is a theory, and it is just as valid as anything else in explaining why some of those results would look nicer.
I care about prints, and believe you me I have seen lots of photographs in my days. I used to work at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts for three years, for example, and first chance I get I'd go visit the galleries to look at all of the work displayed there, or I would stop by the curatorial department of photography, and ask them to pull prints from the archives for me. When I look at those prints, I see pictures made with all sorts of cameras: Nikon and Leica mostly, and some are not known. And it is the very LEAST of my concern, Mustafa, because I am concerned with what that print in front of me tells me, what it makes me feel, how I react, or simply how beautiful it is. Do you understand when I say that it really doesn't matter what camera was used? It is perhaps the most trivial part of creating a great photograph, and something that mostly photographers that are too concerned with their equipment obsess over. It just doesn't matter, in my opinion.
I want you to believe me when I say that I am extremely discerning with the quality of my prints. When I am in the darkroom, I use the best enlarger I can afford, which happens to be a Leitz V35 with a Leitz Focotar lens, and in spite of my discerning eye (my eyes are perfectly fine, thank you very much; I do not need to visit the eye doctor), I have to literally look up what camera I used to see the difference. I have made thousands and thousands of prints, Mustafa, some small and some large. I use some of the finest equipment available. Cameras have been hand held and tripod mounted, in all sorts of lighting conditions. The same care is taken in producing the print, no matter what camera was used, and I have to look up what camera it was, because I do not see a difference that is strong enough to make an impact.
Add this up: I have many years of 'training' my eye at looking at photographs, belonging to a really great photography collection. I have used Pentax and Leica side by side for a few years. I have printed the results from both types of cameras and lenses side by side for a few years.
There. I'm going to stop this discussion now, because it's leading absolutely nowhere. I claim that the original poster will not see any important difference between a Leica lens and Pentax lens. You may claim differently. But I'd hate to see them waste the money if I'm right. If money is no object, then go ahead and get a Leica. Nothing wrong with that; let the OP make up their own mind about what's important in their photography.
:munch: