This doesn’t sound much bit it is immediately noticeable in your hand. The Summicron is definitely the champ here weighing in at only 240g, nearly 100g lighter than the Summilux. The big differences between these two lenses is how each lens renders the image, ease of focus and size/weight. Obviously f/1.4 is faster, but in real life f/2 is still really fast. There’s not a great deal of practical difference between f/1.4 and f/2. So that’s what I went for and here’s my finding…
I was looking for a lighter, more compact lens that could deliver Summilux quality and the only answer as far as I could see was the Leica 50mm Summicron f/2. So I got to thinking what lens would be best for travel. It’s also mounted on an M Monochrom most of the time and the Monochrom is noticeably heavier than the M9. This isn’t an issue unless you are carrying it about all day. That sounds ridiculous if you compare it to DSLR lenses, but for a Leica lens it is quite heavy and quite big.
I use this lens for nearly everything from street photography to portraiture and really never thought of using anything else until I started to travel with work. The 50mm Lux, for me, epitomises everything Leica is about… amazing sharpness, incredible bokeh / depth of field and the ability to capture an almost 3D feel in selective focus. I have shot various 50mm lenses on my rangefinders including various Leicas, a Zeiss, a 1963 Canon and a Voigtlander, but the one I keep coming back to and the one I truly love is the Leica 50mm Summilux f/1.4. To me, the “what’s not” going to be framed is as important for composition as the “what is”. I can move the viewfinder about and see exactly what’s going to be in the frame and what’s not. I like to have a little bit of “bleed off” to play with. I also find a 50mm lens more natural to frame on a Leica than say a 35mm or a 75mm. I don’t like to alter a scene by being so close to a subject that they change what they were doing because they have a camera in their face and I find 50mm is the perfect length to get close… but not too close. I’m a street photographer that doesn’t like to get in the way of his subjects. I’ve tried numerous other focal lengths, but when it comes down to it, I’m a 50mm guy. While the optical construction in front of the aperture is a Gaussian type, the arrangement of the lens elements behind it is similar to that in the Summilux-M 1:1.4/35 mm ASPH.I’ve finally admitted to myself that I’m a 50mm guy. The aspherical surface of the first lens in the rear group helps to reduce spherical aberration and flatten the image field. To realize the apochromatic correction (resulting in a common focusing plane for three light wavelengths), three are made of glass types with high anomalous partial color dispersion, while two of the others have a high refractive index. A total of eight lens elements are used to achieve this exceptional performance. Stopping down to 2.8 visibly reduces this light deterioration towards the edge of the image, with practically only the natural vignetting remaining.ĭistortion is very low at a maximum of just 0.4 % (pin cushion), which is practically imperceptible.
#LEICA 50MM SUMMICRON TYPE 3 FULL#
in the corners of the image - of just 2 stops at full aperture in 35 mm format, or around 1 on the Leica M8 models.
Vignetting is limited to a maximum - i.e. The use of a "floating element" ensures that this is retained, even for close-up shots. Its key features include excellent contrast rendition, all the way to the corners of the image, even with a fully open aperture. the exceptional correction enables all aberrations to be reduced to a minimum level that is negligible in digital photography. On the Leica APO Summicron-M 1:2/50 mm ASPH.