There are two 50mm lenses that have been vying for the title,
"Best 50mm lens ever!" and I finally bought one of them to try out. There are actually three
"best in the world" 50mm lenses but one is the very big and very heavy Leica 50mm f2.0 APO Summicron for the SL series of cameras. I took that one out of the running because it's just too big to travel around with and to try and be even the least bit inconspicuous with when roaming around on the streets. That left me with two I really wanted to try. One is the Leica 50mm f2.0 APO Summicron for the M series rangefinder cameras and the other is the Voigtlander 50mm f2.0 APO Lanthar, which is available both in a Sony mount and in the Leica M mount. I, of course, wanted the M mount version so I could easily adapt the lens to my Leica L mount cameras.
What's the draw of the two selected APO lenses? Well, as far as I know there only three real APOchromatically corrected 50mm lenses on the market right now. All of them are listed above. Unlike nearly every other lens out there an APO lens focuses all three light wavelengths (R.G.B.) on exactly the same plane. They mostly eliminate any sort of fringing or LOCA which should give you greater color precision and greater discrimination between color tones.
I chose to purchase the Voigtlander 50mm. All of the research I've done points to the Leica being a tiny, tiny bit better in the center of the image when used at the widest aperture. And it's slightly smaller. The Voigtlander is so, so close. Even at full aperture it's supposed to be as good as most top quality prime lenses once they've been stopped down by two or more stops. But the reason I opted for the Voigtlander instead of the Leica APO boils down to eight thousand dollars. The Leica lens is $9,000. while the Voigtlander is $999. I can think of a lot more fun stuff to do or buy for that additional $8K...
Since I was already happy enough in most shooting situations with my motley, existing collection of 50mm, and close to 50mm, lenses I was really just interested in seeing for myself how much difference there would be between the lenses I have and one of the two or three lenses that's held in such high esteem.
I have only been using the Voiglander on the Leica SL2 body since that's my highest resolution and newest generation camera. If you're looking for differences you might as well start with the camera that can best show them off.
The lens itself is rather mundane to look at. It's small, being a lens made for a rangefinder camera. The filter diameter is 49mm. There are no buttons or switches on the lens. No I.S. either. You have to splash out for a lens hood separately. It's not included in the purchase price. By most measures it's a boring looking lens --- which is okay by me because I'm presuming it will attract less attention. Certainly less than the magnetic attraction of the big, SL series 50mm APO. Much less of an attention-getter than the enormous Leica 24-90mm zoom!!!
I got the lens at the end of the day on Wednesday and immediately did an overall test. Making sure the lens focused on infinity with several different adapters; including the Leica branded M to L mount unit. I worked the aperture ring and the focusing ring and found them to be classic examples of luxe mechanical engineering. The feel of which encourages you to have the camera and lens in your hands constantly.
Once I was certain the lens was in good working order (it is a brand new product; not used) I decided to do a "trial by fire" the next day. On Thursday I took the camera and lens on location to a large public relations company H.Q. to make environmental portraits of five new hires. I set the camera to shoot .DNG files and further set the camera to show me an APS-C crop as I photographed. I knew I would would to crop down to that size but also knew that in .DNG the camera would write the full frame and just show me the crop in the viewfinder and then in Lightroom. If, after the fact, I wanted to use the full image instead of the crop that would be available to me in the raw file. Something I took advantage of in my subsequent evaluations.
Lately I've been photographing a lot of portraits with LED lights but on Thursday I decided to use electronic flash. I also put the camera on a tripod. I wanted a "best case" scenario from which to judge the performance of the new lens. The flash is perfect at freezing camera motion and subject motion while the tripod provides a solid and repeatable base for fine focusing manual lenses. I forgot to mention above but the two rangefinder lenses must be manually focused and have no automatic features whatsoever. You've been warned.
I carefully inspected samples from the 350+ shots I made at the P.R. agency. The lens renders much differently than the usual lenses I use on jobs. I've previously been using the Sigma 90mm f2.8 and the Panasonic 24-105mm on portrait jobs. The focal lengths worked for what I needed.
The Voitlander 50mm APO immediately slapped my face. I was expecting the results to be similar to all the other modern lenses. Maybe a bit sharper, a bit contrastier. The results were different. The files are all very sharp but it's the contrast and color saturation which stood out very clearly. I was impressed. Maybe even a bit intimidated.
With the modern convenience of punch-in image magnification the lens is very easy to focus exactly. The operation of everything is very straightforward. But the results are so obviously different from nearly every lens I have used in the past.
It's early times and it generally takes weeks and weeks of shooting to get used to a particular lens. Still, in the moment I'm thinking this is the combination I've always been looking for when searching for a personal/art/primary camera and lens. That's my mindset in the moment.
If you handed me a travel itinerary today this would be the camera body and single lens I would pack. It would be enough.
Is it worth it to buy an APO lens? I think so.
More experiments coming when we are able to move freely outside. Stay tuned. Somebody do something about this high pressure dome overhead... Thanks.
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