Yes, you're right, that the status was built from the 30's through the 50's as
Leitz and Zeiss Ikon competed for the professional market prior to the entry of
Nikon.
The field curvature was a "design feature" of the older lenses. I've read
something recently about old Zeiss and Leitz design philosophy: Most of the
photography with these small cameras was originally photojournalistic in
nature, so the subject was typically in the center of the frame, where the RF
patch could be used. So the lens designers worked hard to maximize the central
sharpness and the character of the out-of-focus images. The outer areas of the
field were allowed to degrade, as was the plane of focus in preference to sharp
central details. Their tools simply weren't good enough to design and correct
all the aberrations. My 35/2 Summicron (pre-ASPH) and older 50/2 have these
characteristics, which make them very nice people lenses, but they fall down if
you do across-the-frame , by-the-numbers evaluations.
The newer Leica designs from Solms of the 1990's have strived to make wide-open
performance as good as possible. This cost-no-object design has resulted in
very high quality mechanics and build-quality, very advanced optical designs
using aspherical surfaces, and (using German labor) very high costs/prices.
These lenses could probably be made in Japan for less. You can see this in
Cosina's designs, their new 35/1.2 (yes, f/1.2!) lens will likely have 3
aspherical surfaces and cost $1000-1200, where a Leica lens like that would
certainly be much closer to $2,000.
But the Japanese know how to charge for uniqueness: the Canon 50mm f/1.0 L-USM
lens costs a cool $2,000 (list $4,100!), where you can have a Noctilux for a
mere $1500-1600 slightly used. Compare Leica's newest M designs to comparable
lenses like Canon's L series or Zeiss. The Canon 85/1.2 is $1,400, and their
35/1.4 is $1,100. These are prices comparable to the best Leica prices you can
find.
Sorry for the lengthy OT post, but it's still interesting.
Skip
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>Subject: Re: [OM] First night in Leic*-land. ;-)
> From: "C.H.Ling" <chling@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 22:32:50 +0800
> To: <olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
>Skip, the 35/1.4 tested may not be the ASPH design and most likely not, the
>low SQF were due to high field curvature, much higher than you have expected
>for a fixed lens (I have read a lot of pop photo tests since 1994). On the
>other hand the Leica status was not built in recent ten to twenty years,
>they were from the period prior to that, most status were built from the old
>lenses. I believe the main reason is the easier to focus range finder (for
>focal length below 100mm) and the low shutter vibration.
>
>C.H.Ling
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