Transcription
Hey, this is Andrew Bansky, and today we're going to talk about the legendary Leica 50mm Apo-Summicron for the M Mount. Thank you to my friends at Camptech for lending me this incredible lens. I've had it in my possession for the past few days, and it's been a blast to use.
I've taken it through its paces. I shot a wedding with it, I went to a car meet and shot a lot of nice cars with it, and then I walked around and really got to get a feel for what it's like to use for myself. Uh, well, I'll tell you right away, this is an incredible lens. Um, I can make this the shortest lens review you'll ever see by just simply stating that it's perfect. You know, this is, this is the grail. This is the, the best M lens I've used, simply put, because it just does everything you want it to do. It's very predictable, and it just, it's just so refined. They should have just called this thing the Summicron V6 because the V5 I had before, uh, it really just felt like the precursor to this one. This just builds on everything I loved about the Summicron V5. So let's just dive right into this.
All right, so this lens is a jewel. Uh, the build quality is phenomenal. It just feels like a precision-built instrument, and that's exactly what it is. Throughout the entire experience, the entire time you're using this lens, it just screams quality. So the hood, I love the twist-out hood. This was the first lens, uh, that Leica made that integrated that, uh, twist-out method. You know, the Summilux, the pull and twist, lock it in place. This guy, you just twist it out, and it stays put. Really, really nice. Uh, the throw is perfect. It's got that, this is a brand new lens, so this has definitely got that brand new Leica lens tightness to it still. As you use it, it's going to loosen up, but I gather it's just going to be smoother than what it already is. It's not as smooth, though, that said, as the version five Summicron. Uh, the version five, when it's out of the box, it's stiff like this as well, but as you use it throughout the years, you can just focus it with your pinky. I wish that lens had a tab, but alas, this one does, and I hope that this one gets to that point, but I don't think it will because this one does have a floating lens group. I feel like it might feel closer to the 50 Summilux over time, the aspherical one, that is, but we'll see. But regardless, this lens is super easy to focus, is very precise, and I hardly missed any shots with it, which was very, very gratifying. Using this lens just makes me feel like I'm a master of my craft. It really does. It does instill confidence as you're using it, uh, down to the, um, the focus accuracy of it. All right, f2 is a big enough, um, depth of field for you to feel very comfortable with it, and that's exactly what this does. The 50 Summilux, my hit rate is way lower, only because of it being a 1.4 lens. So this lens, I feel like I got 95, 99, 99% of the shots I took with it, unless I was being really cocky and I shot from the hip or something like that, then I could miss a shot or two. But I mean, really, very, very easy lens to use through and through.
So this lens, uh, benefits from a floating lens group, like I said. One is spherical element. It's apochromatic. It is just flawless. So the only criticism I have about this lens, really, is the aperture clicks are very hollow. Hmph. That's the only thing. Uh, other than that, perfect. You know, uh, I, I can look past that. I did experience a few times where I was focusing with it and my finger caught the aperture, and I just changed the aperture unknowingly. Whatever. Uh, I'm sure I'll get used to it if I use this lens a lot more. Uh, the inside of the lens is gorgeous. It's completely finished in black, and you can see the brass internals. Uh, the rear element doesn't rotate like it does on the Summilux. Fun fact. And it just, just beautiful. And it's very balanced. That's the other thing. On the camera, I, I loved how, you know, with the 50 Summilux aspherical, as you're using it, as you focus with it, you feel the whole front of the lens get heavier. Whereas this guy, the 50 Apo here, it doesn't do that. It just feels balanced the entire time. So let's do the balance test. It's front-heavy, but forgivable. It's, uh, it's very nice in the hand. It really just, it rests and and sits well as you're using it. It's a very, very nice experience. The 50 Summilux is just a little bit heavier, if I were to compare to that.
So let's dive into the optical qualities. Color fringing? None. Uh, I've shot chrome accents in the blazing sunlight, just, you cannot get this thing to fringe. As for sunstars, the Apo-Summicron has 11 aperture blades, which are mostly straight, and you will get some sunstars, but they're really not that noticeable. 11 is a lot of blades, so you're not going to really have like a ton of sunstars as you would with an even number like 10. Uh, with 11, it just becomes a nice, you know, straight-cut star, but not really that, uh, apparent. This lens is just, once again, nothing but subtleties. But what you do get, of course, is as you stop down the aperture, the the bokeh balls remain circular because of those 11 blades. Uh, vignetting is apparent wide open, which I, I guess didn't expect to see that much of it, especially, you know, at this caliber. But it's something that you don't really notice until you realize as you stopped down that there was a vignette wide open. You can fix it in post, you could just remove it. It's not super, uh, noticeable, but it's there. Uh, stopping it down also is not something that you're going to do a lot with this lens because it's flawless at f2, like just pure, pure, pure perfection. As you stop down, you're just getting an increased depth of field. On the M10, it out-resolves a sensor. Uh, on the M11, I just gather this thing would just be like a medium format system that you can throw in your pocket. It's just crazy the amount of detail it it resolves. And and I really want to talk about the sharpness now, because the sharpness is not like when you throw an image into your editing software and you, you know, increase sharpness at a pixel level and you get that harshness, right, where the skin looks too detailed or whatever. This lens doesn't really do that. This lens just presents all the information to you, and then you can do with it what you will. Uh, that is with regards to the contrast, the color, and of course, the detail. The each hair is defined, each crease in the skin is defined, but it doesn't jump out at you. It's very, um, subdued. So it's optically sharp, but at a contrast level, it doesn't really feel like it's been sharpened in post. I've used lenses, um, from Loxia, from Canon, from Sony that are sharp and are sharp, but you run out of contrast, or mind you, the contrast overtakes the sharpness, and you get this harshness in the skin. I, I'm thinking right away of the 85 1.8 that I had for a while, uh, from Sony. I just didn't jive with it because it just was super harsh. All the skin, everything was just always like, you know, it just looked like you applied a sharpening, uh, layer to it. But, but this lens doesn't do that. I mean, I hope it wouldn't, right, for the price they're asking, but I was really surprised to see that it's just very organic. It feels a lot like, like a lens at the end of the day. It's got that, like a look, um, but a little bit more well increased, I guess, or subdued. It's, it's harder to find because as you zoom into your image, it just, just keeps going. Um, and so that's where this lens really finds its own. It's, it's the king of subtleties, right? It, it does all the things that other Leica lenses do, but a little bit more subtle, right? It has that nice lower mid-zone contrast that the Leica lenses have, like my 50 Summilux has. It has that slight, slight halation to the highlights, but in smaller amounts because it really looks like when you're looking at images taken with this camera and this lens, I, I would swear it was shot on a medium format camera. The, the contrast, the colors, the pop, it's incredible. Even though it's an f2 lens, your subjects just jump out of the screen. The very first images I took with this were one, one was Jean Camptech, the other one was Emma, and then another one was this, um, lamp at outside of the wedding venue. And just those three images, I just, when I put the card into my computer, I gasped. I was shocked at how three-dimensional the images were. And that's when I realized, okay, this lens really does have something, something else that I've never seen before because the contrast, the colors are all there, and then you've got that patented Leica look to the image, but it really is there. It's really hard to describe, but the detail is just phenomenal, and your subjects really just jump out at you. The bokeh is very, very nice. Uh, it can get busy in certain circumstances. Field curvature is also at a minimum. I, I feel like this lens shines its most at medium distances, so let's say like two to five meters away with your subject. Well, actually, probably, yeah, I'd say two to three meters, let's say. So three-quarter portrait shots, head shots, that kind of stuff. You get a lot of, um, subject separation with it. And what's fascinating is it just looks like as if you placed your subject onto the backdrop, and your subject is super in focus. And with f2 on a 50 millimeter, you've got enough wiggle room for yourself to usually get the focus right, which is nice. And it does that 3D look that the 50 Summilux aspherical does as well, where it, if you have anything in the foreground, it looks like you just applied a Gaussian blur to it and you just put it in the front. It's fantastic. It's so gorgeous. That is, uh, a quality of this, uh, apochromatic design. It is just very, very, very, very perfect. And you've got this nice gorgeous color palette. It's creamy while crisp. Looking at, like, images is like looking through glass, looking through a window. This feels like that. Um, this feels, but just like on another level. And what's fascinating is just given the size that it's able to do that and resolve with such great detail, really what a feat of engineering. It's a treat, treat, treat to use. Uh, I was worried about it becoming stale or me wanting, uh, something else, but if you don't get past the wow effects, if you just keep reminding yourself how incredible this lens is, you're going to be rewarded in droves. It's a fantastic lens. Uh, the detail is really what sets it apart. You can look anywhere on your frame, as long as you got the focus right, and you've got the shot, it's super, super sharp. Framing with it is very second nature. It, it really does remind me of the evolution of the version five Summicron. It just does everything it needs to do perfectly. There's no coma. I, I shot images at night with it too, expecting at f2 for me to see some artifact. Didn't see any. Color fringing, like I said, there's none. Uh, bokeh is very, very nice. The balls are never overly defined, unless you're in the extremities of the corners, but I mean, that's it. Like, this lens just is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful to use. I feel like this could be my only lens I would ever need. It really is that good.
So one thing that I was actually a little bit nervous about when using this lens was if I would find it was a bit too clinical, too stale for my liking. And I was surprised to see that maybe in the car meet environment, I would have preferred having the 50 Summilux for that increased subject separation, which is why I said this lens excels at closer, medium distances for portraiture because that shallow depth of field does add something. Another element to this lens that, you know, you can't really get in other lenses. Uh, the fact that your your subject is super sharp and super in focus, and the background just melts away, as does the foreground. But when you lose that shallow depth of field, then it could be, you know, almost not any other lens. I'd like to say, unless you're magnifying. But I feel like you could use another lens to get a very similar effect. As it stops down, it's clinically sharp. I feel like the, the, the target market for this would be people that do still lives, that do, um, landscapes, portraiture at medium distances, like I said, and just, you know, high, that really require that high detail and that that that reproduction value this thing creates. But, for other purposes, I feel like sometimes you would kind of want a faster aperture. And then the argument could be had that, you know, a 50 Summilux, for example, can shoot at 1.4 and then stop down to f2 and get a very similar look. Whereas this lens is always limited to it being an f2 lens. And so that would be something that, you know, would probably pull at my my brain a bit. Because when I had the 50 f2 Summicron version five before, I just kept thinking about the Summilux. I kept whenever I wanted more shallow depth of field, I would think, man, I just wish I could have that. And then I wound up getting one, and I haven't really looked back since. There are a lot of things I miss about the Summicron that this one did remind me of, which is that just beautiful uniformity in the image and the ease of focus. Shooting at f2 is a very interesting experience, having, you know, primarily shot with a 50 f1.4 for the past few years. And the reasoning is as follows: I've become so accustomed to having this fast aperture lens that I usually just want to shoot at that maximum aperture at 1.4, and that I almost forget the lens can stop down half the time. Because when you have a lens like the f Summilux that just performs so well at 1.4, you don't really want to stop down more than that unless you have to, unless it's super bright or you're doing a landscape, whatever. With this lens, because you're limited to f2, your composition changes, your mind frame changes a bit, and you treat your images differently. You approach your subject differently. I feel like you can compare it to shooting a monochrome camera, right? Having a, like a M10 here versus the M10 Monochrome, you approach your subject matter differently and your craft differently, right? And I feel like that could be, uh, the same argument. Having the limitation isn't the constraint, mind you, isn't necessarily a bad thing. It, it will just give you a, a different avenue to work with, and you fall into that, and you, and you work as such. So with the 50 Summilux, it could almost be like a one-trick pony kind of deal where you're kind of limiting yourself to 1.4. It's really hard to remind yourself to stop down, at least for myself. Whereas with this, this lens, f2, f2.8, f4, you're just missing, you know, just a slightly bit more of shallow depth of field as you stop down, but it's not like you ever had a lot of it to begin with. So that's why I said, as you start to get into further distances, once you're out of that, you know, two, three meter range of portraiture, then you don't really need f2. You can go to 2.8, f4, and wherever, whatever your lighting requires. I really enjoy shooting slower lenses wide open. All, this is not necessarily a slow lens, but like my 35 Summicron, I love shooting that thing at f2.8 wide open because you compose differently, you frame differently, and you've got just a little bit more of that wide-open charm that you would, you know, that you do get when you're shooting a lens wide open, right? The bokeh balls are a little bit more busy. In the case of the 35 Summicron, you've got like this, this smeared corner, gooey, anamorphic-looking imagery. This lens has some charm wide open as well. It's not there in in buckets, but there's there's some to be had, which is nice. It's very subtle, like this lens is just all about its subtleties at the end of the day. And and so shooting at f2, uh, is a nice constraint to have that I do miss about having a Summicron as a daily, uh, driver, so to speak. This is, uh, this has just been a really nice lens to use, and that's why I said I can have this as my only lens because having that constraint just fueled my creativity in a different way. I was taking a lot more, uh, urban landscape pictures. I wasn't afraid to compose and work with the lines around me, whereas with the 50 Summilux, I'm usually thinking about isolating a subject, right? And so this lens made me start stopping down my 50 Summilux more just to try to get a very similar experience. So it was a, it was a very refreshing experience to use at the end of the day, and and I, I think that's really one of the many, um, appealing factors of this lens. So yes, it is super expensive, but it's optically refined and perfect, and I've never seen a lens do things like this lens does. It is so small and portable that you can travel the world with it, and it's going to be completely not in your way, and it will reward you with beautiful, contrasty, colorful images. Uh, and the colors that this thing takes are always, always, uh, with high fidelity. And and low light or indoor lighting, incandescent, fluorescent lighting, this lens was like a match made in heaven with the M10. The white balance was usually spot on, and I barely had to edit any of my shots that I took with this. So we shot a wedding with it. The lighting was very favorable, I'll be honest. There was a lot of frosted glass, and the light was pouring in, but I did not have to edit my shots. If I ever had to do anything, it was just increase or decrease the exposure. This lens really just unlocks a new potential to my M10, and I can't imagine what it does on an M10R or an M11 where you have that added that megapixel count. Um, but that being said, I still find 24 is ample, and this lens proves it to me because I'm zooming in on my images at 300%, which is just stupid, but there's still detail to be had, which is fascinating. Uh, this really is an incredible lens that you can buy and keep for the rest of your life. So yes, expensive, but you know, it's going to go up in value throughout your lifetime. You know, if you're planning on keeping this for the long haul or testing one out, I would highly suggest buying one and seeing if you have the funds, obviously. But otherwise, maybe the Summilux might be an option. So stay tuned because I'm going to release a video where I compare this to the 50 Summilux H-Spherical. See you guys in the comments below. Thank you so much for watching, and if you haven't already, feel free to like and subscribe. Oh, and thank you guys for the 5,000 subscribers. It means so much. See you guys.