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Leitz 75mm F/1.4 Summilux
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 5:07 am    Post subject: Leitz 75mm F/1.4 Summilux Reply with quote
I know, overpriced, oversexed, and over here LOL

But I got one anyway:

Leitz 75/1.4 Summilux

L1026243 by unoh7, on Flickr


Push by unoh7, on Flickr


L1026230 by unoh7, on Flickr


L1026201 by unoh7, on Flickr

above all wide open f/1.4

here at f/11:

Seattle Ridge by unoh7, on Flickr

F/8:

L1026239 by unoh7, on Flickr

Supposedly Walter Mandler's favorite lens, based on the Noctilux f/1.0. It's DOF is tighter yet WO. Mandler basically sired the famous 75s with the legendary 2.4 75 Elcan, upon which the CV 75/2.5 is based: that lens is one of, if not the best value in modern LTM/M glass. I paid 275 for mine:

lips by unoh7, on Flickr
F/2.5

But 2.5 is 2.5 and 1.4 will really take you places:

L1026262 by unoh7, on Flickr

Last edited by uhoh7 on Mon Jan 05, 2015 6:06 pm; edited 3 times in total


PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 1:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
this is a truly great lens, wonderful character, smooth oof etc. and i totally agree about the cv75/2.5. ive shot with the legendary biotar 75/1.5 and at half the price i found it not wanting in any area compared to the lux, though i do admit that often times the more subtle lens attributes elude my meager talent/eye. i love that last portriat.
tony


PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 1:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
I cleaned up the threat, use PM if you need to guys.

And everyone of course knows that 75lux means the approx. illuminance lighting used in toilets as perhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lux

Joking aside, please use meaningful titles, also easier to later search for it, except it is meant to be soon forgotten... Twisted Evil


Nice shots btw., quite nice lens(es) it seems. Smile


PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 6:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
TY Klaus, title amended as requested Smile

I love this from Puts:
"The Summilux-M 1.4/75mm is a true workhorse: you need the lens and then you use it or you do not need it and then you do not buy it. The lens has no glamour or myth attached to it and is not a collector's item. And when you need it, you use it indefinitely and that may be the reason why so few Summilux 75mm lenses are offered on the second hand market."

A little vinegar to my usual oily romance with glass Wink As well it shows the rather dramatic evolution of the 75/1.4 from "workhorse" to "Mandler's Favorite" over the past 20 years, in the minds of many shooters, with a correspondingly dramatic price increase on the used market.


PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 6:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
rbelyell wrote:
this is a truly great lens, wonderful character, smooth oof etc. and i totally agree about the cv75/2.5. ive shot with the legendary biotar 75/1.5 and at half the price i found it not wanting in any area compared to the lux, though i do admit that often times the more subtle lens attributes elude my meager talent/eye. i love that last portriat.
tony


Please don't hesitate to post comparison shots here from the biotar, I would love to see them. Smile What mounts was that lens made?

ahh:
"About 80% of the 75 Biotars I have seen were in Exakta mount. They were also made in Contax S (Pentax screw) and Praktina mounts. The rarest 75/1.5 Biotars were made in coupled Leica screw mount and Contax rangefinder mounts."
Stephen Gandy

So glad you brought that lens up.

Love to have folks chief in as to the comparison in formula

I've lusted after the helios 85/1.5 for years and see it seems to be a copy of the Biotar. I've never had good luck with Russian lenses, it seems by the time you get a good copy the time and expense is little savings--but I'm sure others are better at finding good stuff.

I'm amazed at the price variation for the Biotar, it seems a proper LTM copy is worth more than a 75 Lux! Now that I'm convert to the M9 I need either LTM, M or Nikon/Contax mounts. The 75 lux above happens to be calibrated perfectly, which is a great relief. Smile But for those who think I only collect overpriced L glass, LOL, today I get to pick up a special package for my Contax 3a: Zeiss 135/4 and nikkor 85/2, both in contax mount, and which I managed to snag at 100usd for the pair Wink

The 75 lux will replace this for frontline use:

Canon Superspeed 85 by unoh7, on Flickr
Canon LTM 85/1.5, which I really do love, and is in fact a rare lens, with only 1.5k ever made, and I doubt 900 survive. In contrast, over 15k 75 luxes were made.


PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 8:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
yeah, mine was the 'fat' version in exakta mount. i never heard of it in any rf mount. as i understand it, the helios is a biotar copy, and for me--and i dont want to start a war on this--theres just no comparison. ive posted a lot of biotar shots on this forum over the past 12-18 months or so. best bokeh ive personally gotten from a lens. the price has been pretty consistant at about $1300 give or take for a really good copy. everybody has their thoughts on price theyre willing to spend and this is at my upper limit. my thought being its the best ive used and among the best ive seen, so for my purposes no need to spend more. again, i have some pretty big limits to my talent/eye and the subtleties sometimes elude me.

if i was going to break my price rule it would be for your 75 summilux lens, and maybe for the konica 60mm rf and maybe the konica 21/35 m mount.


PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 12:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
That lens is wow...


PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 12:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
rbelyell wrote:
yeah, mine was the 'fat' version in exakta mount. i never heard of it in any rf mount. as i understand it, the helios is a biotar copy, and for me--and i dont want to start a war on this--theres just no comparison. ive posted a lot of biotar shots on this forum over the past 12-18 months or so. best bokeh ive personally gotten from a lens. the price has been pretty consistant at about $1300 give or take for a really good copy. everybody has their thoughts on price theyre willing to spend and this is at my upper limit. my thought being its the best ive used and among the best ive seen, so for my purposes no need to spend more. again, i have some pretty big limits to my talent/eye and the subtleties sometimes elude me.

if i was going to break my price rule it would be for your 75 summilux lens, and maybe for the konica 60mm rf and maybe the konica 21/35 m mount.


LOL I know how you feel. This was a huge purchase for me, only other lens i've spent so much on was 28 cron, which is not worth what I paid anymore, but I love it, so I don't care. This one seems just fantastic and I think I will get a lot of use from it. The only other really expensive piece of glass I crave now is the 50 Lux ASPH, which is so so sick on the M9. They have come down alot, so I probably will find one eventually.

But I have quite a few lenses I will sell over the next few years too. Smile


PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 3:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
This is a sick sick lens.


L1026295 by unoh7, on Flickr


L1026294 by unoh7, on Flickr


L1026291 by unoh7, on Flickr

all WO m9


PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 3:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Looks like a nice lens, I bet you two will have many nice years together.... Razz


PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 7:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Lightshow wrote:
Looks like a nice lens, I bet you two will have many nice years together.... Razz


You know how it is. You buy a lens, and you start a relationship. But once in a while you are totally smitten. The lens exceeds your expectations to the point you become obbsesive about redrawing the world through the new look.

I was very lucky to also get a very good 3-stop dark filter with the lens, which did cost more than many here will pay for any lens LOL (I very much admire the quest for great value). Anyway, that means I can shoot f/1.4 in broad snowy daylight, which gives me a totally new look. And while I'm sure the 75Lux is not as sharp at f/1.4 as a host of glass at f/2.8 or f/4, it's pretty dang good.

In fact I'm going to try some infinity tests to really see. I almost never shoot past 10 meters WO with any lens, since you will always do better at 5.6 or 8. But I have some lenses, like the Leica 90/2.5, which are astonishing WO at long distance.

But for now I'm just wandering around shooting things like I'm on LSD LOL


L1026272 by unoh7, on Flickr


L1026275 by unoh7, on Flickr


L1026280 by unoh7, on Flickr


L1026285 by unoh7, on Flickr


PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 10:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
A reasonably sharp lens it seems. Would it be made by ZEISS, I might even want it Twisted Evil

Joking aside, it looks pretty good indeed.


PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 1:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
The price of this Leica lens (used) on eBay varies between $4,000 and $10,000!

I do not want to criticize those who owns or likes that lens, but from an optical point of view, the Summilux 75mm F1.4 is technically inferior, for example, to the Samyang 85mm F1.4, which costs only £259.00 brand new!

The combination of a Samyang 85mm F1.4 with the new Sony A7r II is, in my view, much more interesting than a M9 with the Summilux 75mm F1.4. Besides having a much better sensor, Sony A7r II has in the body image stabilization, a spectacular viewfinder, and is today the best platform to work with almost any lens in the world.


PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 3:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
They sell from EUR2.000 onwards here, quite acceptable for such a lens.
To compare that to a piece of plastic is not really fair, I'd say...


PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 4:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
The optical parts of the Samyang lens are made of optical glasses, not plastics. The optical design of the Samyang is more elaborate than the Summilux 75mm.

That said, there is nothing wrong with plastic when used in barrels and other structural parts of a lens. Plastics are wonderful materials when properly engineered. Many professional lenses from Nikon and Canon use a lot of plastic to reduce weight. A good example is the professional 300mm F4 telephoto lens that Nikon launched yesterday at CES 2015 Las Vegas. That Nikon lens has 16 optical elements but weighs only 755 grams. In comparison, the old Pentacon 300mm F4 has only 5 optical elements and weighs over 2kg! Besides, consider that the Nikon 300mm is autofocus, has image stabilization, whereas the Pentacon 300mm is a totally manual (focus and diaphragm) lens.

Some people still think that lenses with a lot of metal parts are "superior". From an engineering point of view, this is nonsense, but some manufacturers such as Leica and Zeiss take advantage of this misconception to sell their "metal" lenses for ridiculously high prices.

What few people know is that is not easy to design a plastic part of high quality. Plastics are relatively new materials and their properties are less well known by the engineers than the metals. As a result, it takes much experience and resources to make plastic parts of really good quality . In contrast, any mediocre engineering department can design/produce aluminum parts for photographic lenses.


PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 6:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
There is no way you could get even close to that look with the Samyang. I had the Samyang and I never really liked it. Far too sterile. Some people really like the bokeh of the Samyang but it is too soft and blurred for my taste. I have never understood why people rave for the smoothest possible bokeh. Simply smooth is enough for me, I care more about having some texture and colour left which gives a bit of presence. I also am not too fond of the Samyangs microcontrast and the transitions from in focus to out of focus.

Don't get me worng, the Samyang is a very fine lens for its price, but it doesn't come close to the lux. All very subjective of course.

I have the CV 75/2.5 and the Leica 75/2 APO and I'm seriously thinking about swapping the 75/2 APO for a Summilux. I would then have the cheap/small/good CV for everyday use and the more expensive Summilux for those special occasions.

Last edited by Pontus on Wed Jan 07, 2015 3:32 am; edited 1 time in total


PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 11:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
more samples:
Here is 2.8 I think:

L1026318 by unoh7, on Flickr

My daughter snapped this one WO as are the rest here

L1026315 by unoh7, on Flickr
above is the notorious uhoh7 Wink


L1026307 by unoh7, on Flickr


L1026309 by unoh7, on Flickr

Gerald wrote:
The price of this Leica lens (used) on eBay varies between $4,000 and $10,000!

I do not want to criticize those who owns or likes that lens, but from an optical point of view, the Summilux 75mm F1.4 is technically inferior, for example, to the Samyang 85mm F1.4, which costs only £259.00 brand new!

The combination of a Samyang 85mm F1.4 with the new Sony A7r II is, in my view, much more interesting than a M9 with the Summilux 75mm F1.4. Besides having a much better sensor, Sony A7r II has in the body image stabilization, a spectacular viewfinder, and is today the best platform to work with almost any lens in the world.

LOL Well you are welcome to your "view", but I doubt there is much experience behind it. I know the sony sensors very very well, having owned both A7r and A7, they don't hold a candle to the M9 in the real world of my workflow--which is not to say there are not wonderful shots made with them. Best platform to work with any lens? Sorry, many of the best lenses made do not work well with the Sony sensor at all because of it's thick cover glass. ZM 18, SEM21, SEM24, 28cron, ZM35/2, 50lux asph all hate the sony. A spectacular viewfinder? Sure if you like TV, and headaches--which I never get anymore with the RF. I could go on, but I think the A7 is a nice camera, I just far prefer the M9 today after many many hours with both. It makes sharper cleaner images with better colors, and requires much less post, in my experience. BTW I made the first ever post on this forum about the Sony A7 series, and was one of the first in the states to get a copy of the A7r, which was the first camera I've ever sent back because of the results. I still own an A7 today.

As to the Samyang, it's a lens that has never interested me, despite seeing many many samples, by very good shooters. Nevertheless, I don't join the threads on the lens to lecture those owners on how their cameras, which I don't own, are old and the lens is really not more than good. For one thing I don't own it so I'd be careful to claim to understand it.

The price on this lens was 3050USD inclusive, so you are totally off on prices as well. But I grant it should go for under 2K. It doesn't, and I wanted one. So I bit the bullet, and have a great copy (by luck) Smile

Certainly the best technical 75 that I know of is the 75 cron, which I would be very surprised if it does not beat every 85 made today in sharpness and color rendition. To achieve that level at f/1.4 the Leica optical engineers felt they would have to make a huge lens.

But the 75 cron does not really light my fire either. You can do your assessments on paper or you can do them in real life.

In real life, so far I love the 75Lux Smile

But please, Gerald, feel free to post your samyang shots for comparison.


PostPosted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 1:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
kds315* wrote:
A reasonably sharp lens it seems. Would it be made by ZEISS, I might even want it Twisted Evil

Joking aside, it looks pretty good indeed.


Twisted Evil Twisted Evil Twisted Evil
Razz
Cheers,

Renato


PostPosted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 5:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
kds315* wrote:
A reasonably sharp lens it seems. Would it be made by ZEISS, I might even want it Twisted Evil

Joking aside, it looks pretty good indeed.


You mean Cosina? Wink

Well maybe that ZM 85/2 is actually made in germany, like the 15.

It's hard to know what "Zeiss" really means anymore, though of course Leica has all sorts of branding going on as well. Not with many M's however, outside the little minoltas, from the CL days.

But the ZMs are all awesome really, I love my ZM18 to death, and most are very good values. I have the ZM 35/2 which shoots fantastic on the M9 without any coding at all. That new 35/1.4 looks impressive as well. If only Zeiss would grow a pair and give us a good digital M body to support their M lens line. Such a no-brainer today, but they are chicken. Laughing

I have two 'real' zeiss lenses though...you know, they say "jena". Cool Both from 1937, the days when Zeiss was man enough to build a great camera, and both sonnars. Both for contax RF, but that's fine with proper adapter on M9. A 50/1.5 whichI showed recently in the thread about natural coating and 135/4 which just showed up Smile

But, Klaus, you know way more about that lineage, especially the great SLR zeiss lenses, of which I'm very ignorant. But I suspect most weigh about the same as my fat lux or maybe more!
Razz

Oh here we go at f/5.6 to see if this Canadian monster really puts out:

Ohio Gulch by unoh7, on Flickr


PostPosted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 7:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Gerald wrote:
The optical parts of the Samyang lens are made of optical glasses, not plastics. The optical design of the Samyang is more elaborate than the Summilux 75mm.

That said, there is nothing wrong with plastic when used in barrels and other structural parts of a lens. Plastics are wonderful materials when properly engineered. Many professional lenses from Nikon and Canon use a lot of plastic to reduce weight. A good example is the professional 300mm F4 telephoto lens that Nikon launched yesterday at CES 2015 Las Vegas. That Nikon lens has 16 optical elements but weighs only 755 grams. In comparison, the old Pentacon 300mm F4 has only 5 optical elements and weighs over 2kg! Besides, consider that the Nikon 300mm is autofocus, has image stabilization, whereas the Pentacon 300mm is a totally manual (focus and diaphragm) lens.

Some people still think that lenses with a lot of metal parts are "superior". From an engineering point of view, this is nonsense, but some manufacturers such as Leica and Zeiss take advantage of this misconception to sell their "metal" lenses for ridiculously high prices.

What few people know is that is not easy to design a plastic part of high quality. Plastics are relatively new materials and their properties are less well known by the engineers than the metals. As a result, it takes much experience and resources to make plastic parts of really good quality . In contrast, any mediocre engineering department can design/produce aluminum parts for photographic lenses.


Don't try teaching an engineer Gerald. Sounds like a sales rep of Samyang talking and such always puts a red warning lamp on .... Wink

I haven't remembered me saying that the optics of the Samyang are bad Wink

Guess we leave that for now as it doesn't belong to the topic here anyway. It is about the Leitz Summilux 75mm, not the Samyang.


PostPosted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 8:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
I like the character of this lus75, obviously it has very good coatings too as the contrast and pop in low light stands out.

That said, the Fujinon-TV 1.8/75 could probably come close in performance, albeit only on APS-C. I have one and it's a lens I will never sell, I see the same things I love about the Fujinon in this Lux.


PostPosted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 8:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Thank you for sharing. These images are really nice.
Both lense and m9 are out of my budget, but who knows..


PostPosted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 1:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Gerald wrote:
The price of this Leica lens (used) on eBay varies between $4,000 and $10,000!

I do not want to criticize those who owns or likes that lens, but from an optical point of view, the Summilux 75mm F1.4 is technically inferior, for example, to the Samyang 85mm F1.4, which costs only £259.00 brand new!

The combination of a Samyang 85mm F1.4 with the new Sony A7r II is, in my view, much more interesting than a M9 with the Summilux 75mm F1.4. Besides having a much better sensor, Sony A7r II has in the body image stabilization, a spectacular viewfinder, and is today the best platform to work with almost any lens in the world.


every single statement in this post is wholly incorrect. every single one.


PostPosted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 2:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
kds315* wrote:
Don't try teaching an engineer Gerald.

I was not trying to teach any engineer. But why do you think I do not qualify to teach an engineer? Sad


kds315* wrote:
Guess we leave that for now as it doesn't belong to the topic here anyway. It is about the Leitz Summilux 75mm, not the Samyang.

The Samyang lenses entered into discussion because they are a breath of fresh air in the vicious atmosphere created by the traditional manufacturers of lenses, in particular, Leica, Zeiss and Nikon.

Many criticize the modern lenses, including the professional ones, because they use a lot of plastic parts. Those purists get angry when they know, for example, that the hood of a famous lens is made of plastic. The irony is that the criticisms are written in computer keyboards all made of plastic. Likewise, the mouse used by those persons are all plastic, too. Laughing

Do you want to see a sign of insanity of today's photographic world? Then check this out:



The Zeiss lens hood is just a machined aluminum tube with no optics, but is more expensive than the full Samyang lens! I challenge anyone to explain this absurdity.
Here is some information that might be helpful:

1) Today, the raw aluminum costs 0.81 US dollars a pound.
2) To make a one lens hood it takes about 100 grams of material.
3) The tube machining is done on a CNC lathe.
4) The cost of machining is very low, as the required accuracy is minimal.
5) The lens hood finish has nothing special.

The Zeiss managers certainly think that people who paid $4,000 for Otus lens would not mind paying $340 for a simple aluminum tube that costs a few dollars to produce. They really think people are stupid. In practice, the Zeiss name became a "license to steal".

In the end, the choice of aluminum as the material of a lens hood is a bad decision from a practical point of view. A lens hood made of unbreakable plastic would be much better. Hit a hard obstacle with a lens hood of aluminum and it bends. Most probably, a plastic lens hood would not suffer any damage.

An aluminum hood lens is as "rational" as a keyboard with all the keys made of aluminum. Razz


PostPosted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 3:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
It is beyond absurd that a lens hood costs more than an actual lens, a lens that may not be precisely stellar in performance but is nonetheless a great value and demonstrably competent piece of equipment.
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