I have seen a 1957 50mm Summarit f/1.5 for sale for a good price. How does it compare with an early f2 Summicron? I find the Summicron - eve an old one - excellent at low light and maximum aperture.

-- David Killick (Dalex@inet.net.nz), June 16, 2001

Answers

I had the Summarit as my first Leica lens, it came on an old beater M3. My lens' glass was flawless, crystal clear and void of any cleaning marks. My first reaction was, "what is all of this bragging about Leica glass?" I bought uninformed, thinking that all Leica was equal. The Summarit was very dated at the time I bought it, and could be outperformed by any lens I owned. I was a bit put off. I did some reading and discovered many lenses that were mentioned over and over with names like Summicron and Elmar, so I bought a used collapsible Summicron and was shocked at the difference. The Summarit was used less and less, and then eventually sold. To be totally honest, from about f/2.8, it was not too bad, but my Nikkor f/1.8 was sharper wide open, more contrasty too.

To balance out the evaluation, there are many people that like the characteristics of the Summarit. Jonathan Eastland has several photos in his books attributed to it. I e-mailed him and discussed in detail the results he gets, and he said he gets many other correspondences saying the lens is trash, but he likes it. Another user of it is a LUG guy named Steve Holloway. He uses it side by side with his Noctilux. The pictures are not super sharp, but the bokeh is very nice. You can look at some of his work at the site posted below. Go through the essays and you can see many examples of the Summarit in action.

http://www.deepturtle.com/steve/photos

-- Al Smith (smith58@msn.com), June 16, 2001.

The best deal in a fast normal lens for a Leica right now is the current Voigtlander 50mm f1.5 Ultron-I've seen them for as low as $350.00. The old Summarit is not even on the same page as a current lens like the Ultron.

-- Andrew Schank (aschank@flash.net), June 16, 2001.

I would stick to a Summicron as you would need to stop down the Summarit to f/2 or 2.8 to get the kind of performance worthy of the Leica legend.

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), June 17, 2001.

In an early thread, which I can't seem to find, we discussed the lower contrast of the Summarit, claimed by Eastland to be a potential benefit. I said I wondered if this could be duplicated on a modern lens just by adding enough UVa or SL filters. Well, I tried it. I shot some portraits with my 50mm tabbed Summicron--first with no filter, then with one, two, three, and four filters (two UVa's & two SL's.) I would say there was a slight difference, visible only when comparing the no-filter and four-filter conditions. Mostly what I saw on my screen was a softening of skin details. But I couldn't really say that the shadow areas were much lighter, if any, or that they had any more stray light infused into them. Film was Kodachrome 64. I'm going to try this again with a different subject, but so far I'm not impressed with my idea as a means to emulate the characteristics of an older lens.

-- Bob Fleischman (RFXMAIL@prodigy.net), June 24, 2001.