I have just recieved my summicron apo 90mm,upon inspection I notice that the appture ring turns past F2 and F16 a tad. Has anybody noticed this or is this common or do I need yo send it back to leica for adjoutment? It has taken me a long time to save for this and I was not expecting a fault like this on lens of this price! I am open to any advice from my learned friends.

-- Graham Kilbey (G7MLW@BTInternet.com), May 16, 2002

Answers

Mine does the same: Don't worry, it's normal (in LeicaWorld)

-- Steve Jones (stephenjjones@btopenworld.com), May 16, 2002.

btw, it's an incredible lens...but takes a long time to get used to handling-wise. I often feel like throwing it out the window ("doing a Kristian" as its known), but when I get pictures back - they are sometimes jaw-droppingly good and I decide to keep it after all. Best of luck.

-- Steve Jones (stephenjjones@btopenworld.com), May 16, 2002.

The premium paid for Leica equipment covers many improvements over other brands, but quality isn't always one of them.

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), May 16, 2002.

My 35mm lux goes a bit past f/1.4. Not a big deal to me, as long as it functions and that the glass is near-perfect. Another fun thing to do is look for faint scratches on the elements- see if you can find some! *grin* I found quite a few on the 75 luxes I've gone through.

-- James (snodoggydogg@hotmail.com), May 16, 2002.

Graham, my 90mm Elmarit does exactly the same. Donīt worry about it and start shooting, you have a wonderful lens there!

-- Eric Kragtwijk (e.kragtwijk@hccnet.nl), May 16, 2002.

Graham: this is not a fault, any more than the fact that Nikon's ED lenses focus past infinity (to account for heat expansion and cold contraction in the ED glass).

Or that Leica puts little numbers on the focusing ring out beyond infinity to indicate the TRUE focal length (e.g your APO 90 has a tiny "00" or "05" or "10" to show that it's really a 90.0, or 90.5 or 91.0mm lens.)

Leica builds the lenses with extra movement in the aperture, and then calibrates the click-stops to the precise apertures on a lens-by-lens basis.

Usually the 'overrun' amounts to a small fraction of a stop, so it's not going to affect exposure even if you slam the lens to full open and run past f/2 (the actual aperture will only grow to f/1.96 or so).

At the small end the variation may be up to a full half-stop, depending on the exact model of lens. Just think of it as 'free' depth of field.

8^)

-- Andy Piper (apidens@denver.infi.net), May 16, 2002.

yes, i think this happens on most Leica lenses, Good when F2 is not enough F1.9 makes all the difference!! :)

-- Karl Yik (karl.yik@dk.com), May 17, 2002.