First off, my apologies to those who already read most of this on the LUG.

I took delivery of my new 28/2.0 yesterday. Physically, it's indistinguishable from the Elmarit, except for the extra number on the aperture ring. Same size front and rear elements, same hood, same dimensions. It has no little black specks in it, and the aperture and focus rings work just like they should. I just finished looking at scans of 5 slides from the first roll of Provia 100F shot with it. These are initial tests, and are not formal. I leave tests like that to Erwin Puts - mine are done just so I can get the flavour of the lens, used the way I will normally be using it. For Erwin's review of this lens, see: http://www.imx.nl/photosite/leica/mseries/testm/m2-28.html

The test shots were all hand-held, done in three locations indoors to test out the performance wide-open at fairly close focus, and some outdoor shots from my front porch in bright sunlight to check the performance at 5.6 to 11 at longer distances. The slides were scanned on my Polaroid SS4000 at full res, and examined at "Actual Pixels" size in Photoshop (yielding an effective 36x52 inch image on my 19" monitor). The only concession I made to maximizing resolution was tucking in my elbows, holding my breath and sqeeeeezing.

The executive summary is: "Of all the outstanding lenses Leica has made for the M, this one of them".

Outdoors, f:5.6 and 11 - snow and deep shade in the photo of a leafless tree: resolution down to the film grain; no flare visible in the shadows; specular highlights in the snow are perfectly sharp. What I initially thought was a bit too much softness in one corner turned out to be a scanner focus artifact. The solution of all the tiny twigs on the tree is the best I've ever seen from a 35mm wide angle, with no "bleed" around them from the light in the sky behind.

Indoors, closest focus, f/2.0, focussed 2/3 of the way out to the corner of the frame on a Royal Doulton-style figurine: quite high contrast given the available lighting, terrific resolution at theppoint of focus. DOF is very narrow here, and things go out of focus within an inch or so, at least when judged from a 34x52 inch image size on the monitor.

Indoors, f/2.0, 1 meter focus on part of my messy desk - the printing on some slide file pages (about 3/32 of an inch high in real life) was readable in the center of the image. Not bad for hand-held shooting at 1/60.

The bokeh looks fine, in both the indoor and outdoor shots, but I'll need a lot more shooting to come to any firm conclusions about that. For now, I noticed nothing distracting.

It looks like a keeper to me.

-- Paul Chefurka (chefurka@home.com), March 03, 2001

Answers

Thanks for that. Well written and on track for my use. I have been thinking about rounding out my gear with a 28/2 or a 35/2. I really like the 28/50/90 combo. I think you have helped make up my mind. If I may be so bold, what is the approximate price. I doubt it will be out here in Oz for a while, but I may be able to get it in Singapore. Cheers, P Nelson

-- Paul Nelson (clrfarm@comswest.net.au), March 03, 2001.

It was approcimately $3300 Canadian.

-- Paul Chefurka (chefurka@home.com), March 04, 2001.

Paul

Thanks for the comments. Somehow and I don't quite know why, I found it a little depressing that your lens test consisted of examining the image after it had been scanned - as good as your scanner is there is no way it can tell you a lot about real microdetail. I remember the days when one would make a large print, or better still project some slides and check out the image at 4 x 5 feet size or larger. I know it was only a first impression and it is saying nothing about you - but why not project the slide - with a good Leica projector you could have found out much more from examining the image there than from scanning it?

It must be time for my "digital skepticism" period again....

-- Robin Smith (smith_robin@hotmail.com), March 06, 2001.

Robin, while I don't share your dismay, I do understand it. I'll try tyo explain where I'm coming from in this whole "digital/Leica" thing. It may not make you feel any better, but it might provide some food for thought.

First off, my main interest was to get a feel for the resolution of the lens. For this purpose the scanner is (IMO) perfectly adequate. 4000 ppi will resolve the film grain on Provia 100F, and with many of my lenses (even the Tri-Elmar at 28mm) resolution degrades well before that point. The scanner will resolve dust particles on the slides that are smaller than most image details, so I have no qualms about getting a good impression of the image resolution. Yes, I could project the slides and look at the screen, but frankly scanning is easier and gives just as much useful information in this area. Yes, it's only a 36x50 image as opposed to a 48x70, but that's plenty for the kind of evaluation I wanted.

Of course, the one thing a scanner won't give as good a read on is the colour rendition of the lens/film combo. For this a light-box or a projector is still king. But you don't need a 48x70 enlargement to judge colour.

There's one other reason I judged a scan rather than a projected image, and it may be a bit more controversial than just the potential loss of visible resolution. It's that I never project my slides. I'm a great believer in prints, since they are accessible to people with far less hassle than slides. I'm don't do photography to sit in a dark room alone and look at my slides on a screen, and I'm certainly not going to make my friends sit through slide shows when I've got a couple of new shots I want to share. I make prints, and these days that means scan and inkjet. Before I had a scanner I shot nothing but colour neg film, and had chemical prints made. When I put together a digital darkroom I tried for over a year to get good prints from negs, and found I just couldn't. When I switched to slide film it took about a week, and the prints began to roll out with very little effort. So for me the slide is just a replacement for the negative, with the advantage of a built-in colour reference and projectability if the desire should ever strike.

So my desire to judge the scan had something to do with the fact that this is how most of my work with that lens (and all the others) will be displayed. I have no misgivings about the digital aspect of my work - I've never had such good prints even when I was going to a pro lab, and for me that's the name of the game.

-- Paul Chefurka (paul_chefurka@pmc-sierra.com), March 06, 2001.