Thanks again to all who shared their thoughts on my question about the 21mm vs. the 24mm Elmarit-Ms. Bolstered by that information, I ordered the 24mm, and it arrived yesterday at noon. By 1:30 or so, I was over the hill at the Santa Cruz harbor (I live in San Jose), trying out this new jewel.

Confirming what some had mentioned, my initial reaction to the lens is that it provides the much broader view of the super-wides, without being too insistant about the extreme wide-angle effect. You still have to be careful about keeping the camera level, but the 24mm provides a nice perspective, I think. Here's one of the shots from the first roll (Ilford Delta 100, exposed and developed normally, scanned from the negative).

-- Ralph Barker (rbarker@pacbell.net), January 20, 2002

Answers

Ralph- You say you still have to keep the camera level. Would that be easier with a SLR than a RF camera? Did you use an aux. finder, or did you just use the camera finder? What camera did you use with that 24? 0.58? 0.72? I don't think they turn out very many of that lens and it could be another that will keep up with inflation pretty well. How about that tire on the front of that hoist? Nice gash in it, eh? Probably costs as much as a Leica lens to fix!

-- frank horn (owlhoot45@hotmail.com), January 20, 2002.

Nice shot Ralph. I like the detail and the crisp contrast of the image. IMO, the Elmarit 24/2.8-ASPH is fast becoming a "legendary" Leica lens only a few short years after its introduction!

-- Eliot (erosen@lij.edu), January 20, 2002.

A very good frame Ralph!

That was my assessment of the lens as well, too bad it never got used much in my kit!

Its nice to see that someone is putting the magic of the red dot into its proper context!

Cheers,

-- John (ouroboros_2001@yahoo.com), January 20, 2002.

Frank,

I have the .72 model, so I'm using the auxiliary finder (my understanding is that on a .58 model one can "get by" without the aux finder by using the full frame of the normal finder as an approximation). Personally, I think keeping hand-held shots "square" may be easier with a rangefinder than with an SLR. The dimmer view and the pattern of the viewscreen diminish the fine-tuning of alignment for me. With the 24mm aux finder, there is a slight sperical abberation on nearby vertical lines, which makes aligning the vertical fairly easy - just center the bow. More distant verticals can simply be aligned with the edge of the frame. If time and circumstance allow for the use of a tripod, one can always use one of those little hot-shoe levels to check alignment, of course.

As to the gash on the tire, I, too, suspect that changing tires on the crane would be both expensive and a challenge - where would you put the jack? ;-)

Thanks to all for the comments.

-- Ralph Barker (rbarker@pacbell.net), January 20, 2002.

Great shot Ralph! Welcome to the 24-convert club!

;) Cheers,

-- Jack Flesher (jbflesher@msn.com), January 20, 2002.

PS: As for using the finder-frames of the .58 for the 24, I do that on occasion, but IMO it is still not as accuate as using the aux finder.

-- Jack Flesher (jbflesher@msn.com), January 20, 2002.

With the 24 lens on the camera, does the 28 frame come up? Of course, the camera window is not accurate with the 24, but, if you get all that you *must* have within the 28 frame, how much appears that is unwanted? It is TOO much? In other words, are you really all that handicapped without the 24 finder? A Leica Fotografie magazine I have says that the 24 takes 55mm filters. I thought I saw elsewhere that it took 60mm filters.

-- F rank Horn (owlhoot45@hotmail.com), January 20, 2002.

Frank,

No, on my .72 model, it is the 35mm frame that comes up with the 24mm lens. Without glasses, and shifting the eye to the left and the right to see the far outside edges of the viewfinder frame (ignoring the 35mm bright lines), the 24mm lens still includes more area in the aux viewfinder, plus it is shiftd more to the right. (The shift could be expected, as the aux finder is to the right, and over the lens compared to the standard viewfinder. Plus, without the use of brightlines, there is no compensation for parallax.) Thus, some of what you see on the left in the viewfinder might be cut off. I haven't actually tried to set up a test field to actually compare viewfinder views to what ends up on film, but the aux finder seems to be accurate, based on memory of how I framed some of the shots from the first roll.

-- Ralph Barker (rbarker@pacbell.net), January 20, 2002.