I'm excited that Leica is finally making some "inexpensive" prime lenses. It will probably drive great uptake of SL products by some consumers who may have been sitting on the fence because of the previous high lens prices. But I'm now less excited about selling off a Lumix 50mm f1.8 lens which I gotfor a sale price of $350 sometime last year. While I'd love to have the all metal Leica version it seems to me that I already have the guts in hand. (That sounded gory...). Spending another $1,900 to duplicate, or near duplicate, a product I already own strikes even me as a bit wasteful....and as you are probably aware I have a high tolerance for wasteful extravagance when it comes to camera gear.
I have spent this week more or less paralyzed by the aftermath of our wildly destructive ice storm. How paralyzed? Well, there are only so many tree services and trash services in the area and even fewer if you weed out the shadier "entrepreneurs." Our property has lots of tall, old live oak trees and a number of them lost big limbs and branches (which I think are the same thing...). Some of the fallen branches were even up to eight inches in diameter! And long. And heavy.
As you might expect from someone who refuses to own a lawn mower or power saws of any kind you'll probably take it for granted that I don't own a chain saw. Nor do I own a big pick-up truck attached to a voluminous trailer in which to place fallen wood and transport it tfor disposal.
I think manual labor is noble and especially so when someone else is doing it for me. I've saved a fortune throughout my life by not slicing off a foot in a lawn mower accident or making divets in my forehead (and frontal lobe) by way of a skill-lessly handled chain saw. I also have no intention, ever, of climbing up thirty or forty feet into trees that have just demonstrated an inability to keep all their branches intact in order to detach more flimsy/damaged branches.
So, Monday was spent trying to get tree services on the phone and then, falling that, getting my friends on the phone to see if they had tree services that could be recommended. One supplier who, with his crew, were supposed to come by, saw the big wood into smaller pieces and haul off all the stuff that hit the ground during and shortly after the ice storm. They hit a snag when their trailer broke and had to reschedule for yesterday. They made it over and worked hard. While they were working the rain was stopping and starting. They didn't have their "climb up the trees" tools with them in the morning but promised to come back and mitigate two big, cracked limbs with big leaf clusters in the afternoon. We paid them for the first part of the job --- debris removal. But when they needed to reschedule the branch "take down" yet again I reached out to several referred services and found one that was willing and able to take out the branches that night. Good thing too as they were hanging precariously over my neighbor's driveway. The driveway in which the neighbors routinely park their two cars...
No they need to come by to chop up the newly gravitized branches and haul the new debris away but we haven't heard from them yet today and the light is dropping quickly. along with the temperature. I feel confident that they'll return and finish ---- mostly because we haven't paid for their services yet. Happily, the danger of the damaged branches falling on someone's head has been taken care of...All clear.
But organizing this kind of stuff all takes time and you really want to be on site when there's a lot going on around your property. Hence the paralysis. I've been hanging around the house waiting, calling, waiting, supervising, negotiating, waiting. Next up we need to get in touch with our home owner's insurance carrier and have the roof inspected. I didn't see any damage when I went up and looked but I'm no expert. I'm sure with the number of households in Austin that saw wide spread destruction the wait times will be.... interesting.
In the meantimes the various services we've used so far will come in at around $1200. Jeez. I could have bought a cool lens instead... but the CFO prioritizes house stuff over hobby indulgences and I don't have a majority on the board of directors so there's no sneaky way around it.
With all this being said, and after carefully studying the Leica and Lumix lens diagrams and descriptions of the optical formulas, I decided to really look hard at the differences... So this afternoon I put the Lumix 50mm on a Leica SL and rushed out into the sunlight to walk and shoot and see just how good or bad that Lumix lens really is. I'd shot with it before but needed a reminder.
Here's what I shot:
Just in case I'm keeping my pre-order for the Leica version in place. Anybody care to make this interesting? Betting on my insatiable avarice for lenses? There are crazier business deals floating around out there. Just ask Adam Neumann. He's planning to buy rental properties and then have the renters do their own maintenance to make them feel like owners. Yeah. I thought that was bat shit crazy too.
Look at these test images on your 90 inch, 10K monitor by clicking on them to make them larger. Otherwise---how will you see the differences? Certainly nothing to get excited about on a cellphone screen.
10 comments:
the eos r8 has captured my attention today, I'm not thrilled by canon's lack of weather sealing on their cheaper lenses but like the light weight, not totally sure whats happening with the shutter, electronic only by the looks, seems decent enough at first glance
Actual quality may be irrelevant. There’s an inspiration factor at play here. Visit the same streets with the Leica lens and my wager is that you’ll come back with an entirely different and vastly superior set of samples. On the other hand, that hydra-headed hydrant - or whatever it is - could be hard to beat.
I have also long hoped for a 50mm f2 for the L system. I thought it would come from Sigma first, with qualities of the 65mm and at a reasonable price. So when I read about Leica's announcement on your blog it was a surprise that came with feelings of excitement and thoughts about opportunity cost. I don't have a fity - for me the lens it would supplant is the Sigma 45mm f2.8, which I am very happy with. I think this is where Michael Matthews' point about inspiration versus quality tips the scales in the direction of a pre-order.
Puzzled by smaller jpeg choice, is something gained by that? And also, restricting aperture to 2.8 or 4 for non-portrait shots. Surely almost every image is going to be deleted so it can’t be the storage issue. Guessing just spontaneous quirks.
Glad to see the Panny 50 is sufficient, as it certainly is, although so many other 50s are sufficient also. One must have a bit of cabin fever to eye the gal next door.
Your avoidance of spinning motorized cutting machines is laudable, gives the lawncare guys gainful employment with incomes that are much more than teachers. But everyone has their eccentricities. Many would avoid the electrical equipment you have used for years because of risks of electrocution, while the actual danger is very minimal with attention to proper use.
Is color, like the rich reds you have posted recently, more a function of the sensor and camera settings than the lens? The spectral transmission must depend on the coatings and glass within the lens, but the sensor and the camera’s color management must play a sizable role, too…wonder how the pie is divided between the two.
color-yea
B&W-nea
(-;
Having been helpless to the influence of GAS for many years, I indulged all things Leica, Contax, Rollei and Hasselblad for many years through the 80's and 90's. They were all excellent, and at that time superior to the competition. However, all things lens wise, at least with the advent of the Canon EOS L glass and the newer formulations of glass by Mamiya and Bronica, not to mention the Fujification of Hasselblad, the playing field began to level.
At this point, I'm sure the run of the mill Lumix glass is superior to any lens I used from those days, and probably in real life use, as good as what the luxury glass makers are making today. There may be some differences when photographing test targets, and in color rendering or nano-acutance, but hand held in dynamic situations, probably not so much.
We humans are an interesting species. We very often see what we want. If we buy good things we find ways to justify the expense by noticing things that we maybe didn't notice before, be it a car or a lens. I'm no different.
Personally, I like really good glass, and the Leica branded lenses for my Lumix gear does seem appreciably better in some ways. But in actuality, the two focal lengths that I have that I own both the Leica version and the plain Jane Lumix version, I do find it hard to see any difference in actual use. Both the 25mm and 42.5mm f1.7 versions of a Summilux and Nocticron are really just as good at the f-stops where I'd shoot them. Maybe they don't have the same peak numbers, but the less expensive lenses are actually more even across the frame.
But yet, even though I know these things objectively, I will still very subjectively opt for the magic that I want to be there from the Leica glass.
One thing to look at, Lumix has been making the 12-35 f2.8 for years. It's was and still is a very good lens. So good in fact that they are now rebranding it as a Leica. It'll be interesting to see how many people with the Lumix version opt to sell those lenses to get the new, and identical, Leica version. The mystique persists.
If I were a betting man, and I'm not, I'd wager that you'll wind up with the new Summicron. There is nothing wrong with being more inspired to go out and make photos with new and perhaps better gear. However I do hope that you keep the Lumix version so you can make some direct comparisons.
It has occurred to me that the excellent photo of the hydra-headed water fixture, whatever it is, was *made* by the square format. It would look sorta ridiculous in a standard 35mm aspect ratio. Did you shoot it square, or crop it square?
I was interested in mikepeters comment about the subjective power of the lens a person prefers. I like to wander around town and shoot stuff, and for that, I like a somewhat longer lens, but not too long. The only lens in the Z system that sort of fits that definition is the $7996.95 58mm f0.95, which I am less likely to buy than I am a Ferrari. I could shoot with the excellent S 50mm and crop, or go with the excellent S 85, but both make me slightly uneasy and even perhaps unprepared. Therefore, it's the S 24-120, which is larger than the 50 or 85, but makes me feel more at ease, although I rarely move it off about 70mm. I think that may have something to do with where you prefer to stand, in relationship to the target. Or perhaps how you (literally) see.
JC. Saw it as a square, shot it in 3:2 with the idea of cropping in post. Then cropped in post.
And I agree with everything else you've written. It's all down to how you see...
Wow no kidding, the optical diagram and MTF look identical, with the Leica-branded lens having a metal outer shell which could account for the 100 gram weight difference. In case anyone's missed it, Panasonic Japan's web site goes into greater detail than the USA site:
https://panasonic.jp/dc/products/s_series_lens/lumix_s_50.html
I guess Leica figured why reinvent a good thing.
Jeff in Colorado
Where's the shot of the mannequin face, the Janga building and the B&W mirrored self-portrait? I can't decide without them.
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