Leica Diary - Everything within Reason

Ever since the release of the Leica M9 in 2009 I wanted one of them. But, at the time I didn't have the funds to acquire such a device…. until recent.

Last week I bought myself a Leica M9 (black) along with two Zeiss lenses and an additional battery. The glass of my (second) choice was the Zeiss Biogon 2.8/28mm ZM T* and the Zeiss C-Sonnar 1.5/50mm ZM T*. These lenses were second choice, because I'd rather had the Leica versions of those lenses, but these are kinda hard to get your hands on (extremely long waiting lists).

UPDATE: In the meantime, I acquired a 35mm Summicron-M f/2, and a 50mm Summilux-M f/1.4 Asph. The Carl Zeiss C-Sonnar 1.5/50mm ZM T* is for sale at this moment.

The following posts should represent my experiences with the Leica M system camera, and I hope to address both the good and the bad things about this legendary camera system.

Note that this 'blog' holds the oldest post first. The reason for this is that you can read it in a chronological fashion. So the updates will be at the end.

Entries in Summilux (3)

Friday

Jan272012

Leica Summilux-M 50mm Sharpness

Friday, January 27, 2012 at 10:26

Last week, I headed out for an early morning walk. Playing a bit with my new Leica Summilux-M 50mm Asph, I was amazed by the sharpness of this lens at f/1.4. The following image was taken at the minimum focussing distance (~0.7m);

Frozen Heath @ 50mm f/1.4Viewing a part @ 100% shows a small hair 'caught' by the heath branch;

100% magnificationI must admit that it took 'some' luck to capture this, but it shows the quality of this lens @ f/1.4

Willem |

Carl Zeiss and Leica 50mm Lens Comparisson

Sunday, February 26, 2012 at 21:36

When I got the Leica M9, the Leica Summilux 50mm was nowhere to found. So, at the time, I 'settled' for the Carl Zeiss (CZ) C Sonnar 1.5/50mm ZM lens instead, and entered the world of the Leica waiting-list.

A couple of weeks back I got the call that the latest version of the Summilux was available, and so I bought it. Up till now, I have both the Leica and the CZ 50mm version. The CZ version hasn't been used since (and has been put up for sale this weekend).

Two weeks ago, I decided to put the CZ and Leica lens next to each other in a small (non scientific) comparison. The settings were the following:

ISO 160
Auto white balance
Aperture priority
All photos taken with a cable release

The following samples first show the entire (smaller) image. You can click the image to see the full size JPEG (clean export from Adobe Lightroom with default settings). After that, there's a 100% (left-top-ccorner) crop and a 100% center crop.

Samples are given for the following apertures: 1.4/1.5, 2, 2.8, and 4 (the ZIP files at the end contain all the files till f/16). The Carl Zeiss lens first, followed by the Leica lens, and so on.....

Click to read more ...

Willem |

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Friday

Apr062012

Leica M9 @ Night

Friday, April 6, 2012 at 9:56

Last Tuesday was initially the first time I took my M9 out at night. I've no idea why this didn't happen any sooner..... As you all know, the M9 isn't famous for its high-ISO performance. Basically anything over ISO 800 is really grainy (I prefer the term grainy over noise, since I convert most of my photos into black and white).

I went out with the M9, the 50mm Summilux, Carl Zeiss 28mm f/2.8, and my tripod and below are some of the results.

Click to read more ...

Willem |