Thypoch lenses hit my radar about a year ago. I'd never heard of the brand before but all of a sudden their 35mm, and then their 28mm lenses for M mount started getting tons of press and every review I read praised the performance and construction of the products. After watching a number of video lens reviews on YouTube, and reading written reviews ad nauseam, I took a chance on the 28mm f1.4 lens.
It's different than the Carl Zeiss 28mm f2.8 Biogon lens I already owned for M cameras. The rendering was subtly different. The CZ has a more "in your face" high contrast image signature while the Thypoch 28mm is equally exuberant at f2.8 but gives one a couple stops more speed and the ability to start playing around with out of focus backgrounds with more effect. At f1.4 the Thypoch is quite sharp in the middle of the frame and, like most fast, short lenses, has its share of vignetting. But not enough vignetting to squelch its appeal. The two lenses are different in other ways. The CZ is smaller and lighter. If you are traveling and hard up for space it's a better travel choice. It also occludes less of the viewfinder on your typical M series rangefinder camera. But the Thypoch is a good lens. Better than just about any 28mm from the past and in the same ballpark for optical performance with all but the ne plus ultra of Leica M 28s. That sold me on the idea that a new lens maker could come to market with a highly competitive product at a non-nosebleed price point. I kept it and use it mostly on SL and SL2 cameras but it's always in the M bag when I choose those cameras for projects.
Since I own the Voigtlander 35mm and 50mm APO lenses I never really looked at the 35mm Thypoch and reviews indicated that while it's a good performer it's the weakest of their product line. Since the product line is pretty great that's no real condemnation. But I'm flush with a number of 35mm M lenses, including the CZ 35mm f2.0 and the Voigtlander 35mm f1.4 Nokton MCII. All three of the current, in-house 35mm lenses are already doing a good job making me happy. And making good photographs.
But I didn't have a nice, fast 50mm lens for my M stuff. I have the CZ 50mm f2.0 Planar and it's fantastic. And then, of course, there is the Voigtlander 50mm APO and it's a brilliant workhorse of a lens. But nothing faster than f2.0 made to fit natively on the M cameras.
I've looked, on and off, at various 50mm f1.4 and even 1.2 lenses for the M. The fastest ones are too big, heavy and cumbersome. The Leica Summilux variants are too expensive. Or maybe just expensive. So I kept looking; casually. Several months into this year Thypoch came out with their 50mm f1.4 Simera lens. It looked great in the product pix. The reviews started to arrive. People obviously liked this lens and, since I often put M lenses on the SL cameras I was pleasantly surprised to see that it breaks the close focus limit that most rangefinder lenses bump into.
It's really a matter of rangefinders giving up framing accuracy and focusing accuracy below the .7 (point seven) meter mark. The Thypoch lens has a soft detent at .7 meters to let you know you are at the limit of the Leica M's rangefinder boundaries but you can go beyond that detent and continue to focus down to .45 (point four-five) meters. Or about 1.5 feet. It makes a difference mostly when using the lens with an adapter on a mirrorless camera and it's nice to have for those occasional close ups.
More importantly, the lens uses a floating element in the optical design that continues to optimize performance as the lens is focused closer and closer. This maintains the same kind of performance you can expect at reasonable, normal distances even as you get down to a 1:6.4 magnification ratio. That's pretty cool.
Final note on putting backgrounds out of focus: the aperture ring is a 14 blade construction which tends to optimize bokeh in a good way.
The real intrigue for me comes when looking at the optical construction. There is an aspherical element in the mix but even better, there are 3 pieces of HRI (high refractive index) glass and also an ED (extra low dispersion) element. This is a lens design optimized for high imaging performance but not over designed like some of the ponderous 11 element behemoths currently waddling around in the mirrorless market.
The lens is big enough to block a small percentage of the viewfinder frame on my M240 cameras but I can live with that. Not a "deal-killer." There's not much else to say about the lens but that it's nicely made and performs well. For those new to M system stuff, this lens is not autofocus and doesn't communicate electronically with the cameras.
I put it on the "we'll see what pops up" list and got on with life. The lens came in and out of availability at my favorite photo store. On days when I would decide that I'd like to have it and would head to the office to order it I'd see a message that the product was temporarily out of stock and the merchant couldn't pin down a time certain at which they'd have more. I let it all slide.
But the other day I decided to go out and see what our local "bricks and mortar" photo retailer was up to so I got in the studio high performance limousine and headed to Precision Camera. I walked in the front door and straight over to the glass case in which old Leica treasures are usually displayed. And there it was. A black, mint condition Thypoch Simera 50mm f1.4 lens with caps and hood. For a couple hundred dollars less than the new price everywhere. Of course I bought it. Who wouldn't?
I like the M mount lenses. Being able to use them on so many different types and brands of cameras, along with their small size, makes them a wonderful combination for most cameras. Now I should probably shed a bunch of legacy 50mm lenses and AF lenses for the L mount system. Winnowing down to an M centric collection of highly usable focal lengths.
I was happy to find the 50mm Simera. Even happier that it is black. I haven't shot much with it yet but here is the first frame I tried. Just testing out its wide open performance with correct distance focusing.
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