Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/05/16
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At 11:40 AM +0800 5/17/03, Y. Li wrote:
>Thanks John. No, I had no filters, no hood on, but still vignetting. I just
>can't imagine a Leica lens at the price tag performs so badly.
>
>Y. Li
I don't have the 28/2 and haven't used it, but there is one basic
fact with respect to lenses for rangefinder cameras and that is that
the flange/film distance, and especially the distance from the rear
element to the lens is much less than in lenses for SLR's. This leads
to a number of design results; most good, and one bad.
The bad one is that light falloff in the corners is greater for the
shorter focal length rangefinder lenses. A couple of tricks can be
used to mitigate this, but the basic condition remains.
On the plus side, wideangle lenses for rangefinder cameras usually
have _much_ better distortion control, and generally much higher
performance with respect to most of the aberrations and are a lot
smaller. You mentioned the Canon 28/2.8 previously. If you mean the
EF lens, I have that one, and it is no match for any recent Leica
wideangle lens (again, I don't have the 28/2 but I do have a number
of others) except in eveness of illumination. If that is your main
criteria for quality, then use SLRs. If you want flare-free, high
contrast images with great resolution into the corners at all
apertures, virtually no coma or astigmatism or colour errors and
essentially no distortion, and wonderful build quality then use the
Leica lens. No contest.
I have a number of wideangle lenses for Leica-M and for SLR's. All
the SLR lenses are larger (sometimes huge), are more flare prone,
have noticeable and sometimes severe and complex distortions, are
noticeably less contrasty and less 'sharp', especially in the corners
and are not always that cheap, either.
Stopping down a bit will certainly help with the light falloff; the
fast SLR wideangles have severe light falloff wide open as well.
Judge the relative light falloff at f/5.6 or so.
At 50mm, this becomes less of a factor and in the longer lenses a
non-issue; in fact, the 90 AA has less light falloff than any other
manufacturers lens in this general range that I know of.
As far as the price tag is concerned, you are getting amazing quality
at f/2 and f/2.8. As I hear from various reports and users on this
list, the 28/2 is the equal of the 35/1.4, and that lens has
completely redefined what a very fast 35 can do. Yes, it has light
falloff.
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* Henning J. Wulff
/|\ Wulff Photography & Design
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|[ ]| http://www.archiphoto.com
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