Hello Readers.For those with working experience with 90mm. lenses ..given the reputation of the excellent little Tele-Elmarit's tendency to flare,how would you rate any/all of the others, both older and new.Thanks for your advices. Regards.

-- Sheridan Zantis (albada60@hotmail.com), May 04, 2002

Answers

I currently own the 90TE (thin) and 90APO, so I can address those lenses. But let me start by defining the different types of flare I note: (I’ll probably get flamed here, as there are surely scientific names for the flare I am trying to describe, so please excuse my sophomoric definitions of same.) First there is veiling-flare, which imparts a washed-out ghosting or over-exposed look to a given area of the image where it is present; second there is a halo-flare where the point-source of light will “halo” or “star” around the edges; lastly there is ghost-flare, where the outline of the aperture is present, or repeated multiple times in the image.

90TE: Simply put, the little 90TE generates veiling-flare like a big dog when pointed towards a light source without the hood on -- and it does not need to be a light source in the image area, only reasonably near it. The hood helps significantly, but does not alleviate the problem completely. It also shows halo-flare quite often. (And in fact because of this, I am probably going to sell my beloved little TE, as I’d rather put up with the extra weight of the APO than the occasional spoiled image from the TE…)

90APO: By contrast, I have never noted any flare of significance from the 90APO, other than one or two instances of ghost-flare when it was pointed obliquely towards the sun.

Hope this helps,

-- J Flesher (jbflesher@msn.com), May 04, 2002.

I have only had the 90mm Summicron from the 1960s and the current Elmarit M, so my experience is a bit narrow. The Elmarit M is much better than my old Summicron at flare resistance, however it is not perfect. Every once in awhile I'll get cocky and think that the laws of optics don't apply to Leica lenses, only to be woken up when the film comes back. In certain situations, I can make any of my Leica lenses flare, and the Elmarit M is no exception.

The example here is from a day at the beach. I was shooting with the sun to my left rear with the Elmarit M set to f/5.6. I saw my friends behind me and decided to shoot a quick spontaneous shot. I racked my aperture to f/2.8 to compensate for the light loss of a backlit subject and swung around. The girls smiled while I was focusing and I clicked the shutter. When I got the film developed, I was disappointed to see the reduced contrast and flarey look seen here. Had I been a bit more cautious, I should have used my shutterspeed dial rather than my aperture to get the exposure right, and it might have not been a problem at f/5.6. BTW... the lens was clean, there was no filter and the hood was fully extended.

One other point... If this was an SLR, I might have seen the flare in the finder and adjusted. My M6 finder was clean because of the way I held the camera (viewfinder side down), so I didn't even think about it. 90mm Elmarit M flare

-- Al Smith (smith58@msn.com), May 04, 2002.

The current 90 Elmarit-M is also extremely flare-resistant.

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), May 04, 2002.

Thanks guys for your information.Al, despite the flare in your double portrait,at least you got the shot and the mood ...a sunny day,sunny smiles.For f2.8 aperture,the Elmarit did it's best.For a compact 90mm. it seems the new Elmarit is preferred.

-- Sheridan Zantis (albada60@hotmail.com), May 04, 2002.

Al

That is not bad flare by my accounts. You should see some of mine!

I agree that the Elmarit-M (current) controls flare very well - as do all the current Leica lenses.

-- Robin Smith (smith_robin@hotmail.com), May 06, 2002.