Testing testing: Leica 24mm Summilux-M ASPH
After waiting and saving over the last 10 years, I finally got hold of one of my dream lenses - a "24 Lux". Unable to afford a new one, this is second hand, and I traded my 28 Summicron for it. The 28 was superb in all respects; small, sharp, contrasty. But the 24 Lux has been calling me for years now, and I just happened to have had a couple of images in Orkney where I could have really used 24mm instead of 28mm. Plus, fast wide angle lenses, especially the 24 Lux, can create very cool images in the right circumstances. Not that I have any very cool images in this post I hasten to add. Justification enough for the swap in my opinion.Rather than bore you with specs and charts, what is this lens like to use? It's pretty heavy compared to the 28 Summicron. It makes the M into an exquisitely crafted, highly solid, dense chunk matter. It's not so heavy that you get fed up carrying it about, it actually feels just right (self justification of huge expenditure coming into play here). I use a Thumbs-Up which, with the additional weight of this lens, does aid the grip of the camera a lot. Focus is a little stiff probably due to under-use, and the aperture is precise and clicky as you'd expect. A beautiful piece of equipment.
The lens and hood protrude into the viewfinder field of vision - not really an issue as I usually shoot with both eyes open so my left eye can see what's happening in the obscured area. I've found that it's possible to shoot in sunlight at f/1.4 at 1/4000th with ISO set to PULL100 - I had thought I'd need an ND filter but it seems to be OK for not-so-bright English scenes.Framing is admittedly a bit tricky. The 28mm framelines in the viewfinder do have quite a lot of room around them if you peer around the viewfinder, but knowing how much is covered by the 24mm scene is a matter of experience that I'm gaining the more I use the lens. It's certainly not a show-stopper, you just need to figure it out in your head, which is quite involving anyway and makes you concentrate on what you are doing that bit more rather than just pointing and shooting.
The key thing with this lens is what happens at f/1.4. Otherwise, why buy the thing and put up with the extra weight. So of course it's all about subject isolation which, at a wide angle of 24mm, can create a very unique look. The shooting situation has to be right though. If your subject is more than a few feet away, you'll lose the effect.And this lens is particularly interesting in the way that the background is rendered. At widest aperture it appears to have a curved focal plane, so the background in the central area of the image is thrown out of focus but around the edges of the image it's more in focus. Weird and very specific to this lens as far as I can tell. It also vignettes at f/1.4 which I personally like a lot. If you're not a fan you can tweak it in post or simply don't buy this lens.So what does it look like at f/1.4? Here are some examples:
As you can see, in the right situation, if you are suitably close to your subject (which you need to be to get a person to fill the frame) you get some rather nice subject isolation and bokeh. Even on the wedding image, being a about 20 feet from the groom, there's still enough there to create the signature look of this lens though you'd need to view the image larger to see it better. When much closer as in the image of the fern, which was about 4 feet away, the effect is much more pronounced. You can see the same thing in the image below.
It's early days yet, but I'm really enjoying experimenting and getting to know this lens. When I had Canon gear I had their 24 1.4 L but it was one of the most frustrating lenses to use, and missed focus 75% of the time. Ironically the manual focus Leica is faster and more accurate than a Canon 1DX with their 24 1.4 L on it.So here we have a beautifully made fast wide lens which is crispy sharp wide open, and even crispier and vignette free at smaller apertures, with that particular sparkle that seems to happen with top end Leica lenses. It appears very well corrected, with straight lines in all the right places. What are the downsides?Firstly, there is purple fringing when shooting with wide apertures against a bright background, particularly noticeable with trees against the sky. It's an easy enough fix in Lightroom so not a problem for me, it comes with the f/1.4 territory.Secondly, the lens cap is the most useless piece of equipment ever made. It simply falls off. It's insecure and garbage. It has no real way of gripping the lens hood and drops off at the slightest provocation. I've nearly lost it several times already just taking the camera out of the bag. Very poor.Thirdly, the setup for using external filters such as the Lee Seven5 series is not good. At least you can use them I suppose. I use filters a lot for landscape photography so it's essential that they work as designed.You need to unscrew the hood, and screw in an outrageously expensive Leica series VII metal adaptor ring (part # 14479 ). This gives you a 72mm diameter thread that you can screw a slightly less ludicrously expensive Lee Seven5 72mm adaptor to, onto which you can then fit your Lee filter holder. The problem is that the Leica adaptor ring has is just a lattice through which light flows freely to bounce off the back of your filters and onto your sensor. I'm not sure they actually thought it through very well.
The effect of this is to ruin your image with some horrible reflections. It's bad enough that the Lee holder lets the same thing happen but the Leica adaptor makes it a lot worse. It looks a bit like this:
When it should look like this:
The solution to this is rather noddy. You basically wrap your lens and filters in a cloth. I generally do this anyway as I've found the Seven5 filter holder to be very "leaky", but you absolutely must do so if you use the Leica adaptor ring. You need to cover the underside as well.
Aside from these gotchas, this is a superb lens and well worth the wait. I'm still learning its ways and foibles, and now have to go out and take some pictures that are actually worthy of the lens itself.