THE FINAL WORD ON THE 24 SUMMILUX ASPH LENS

I found just about zero flaws with this lens and honestly, the ONLY flaw was the purple fringing that showed up in a couple of shots. But, my 28 summicron had this, my 50 Summilux had it, and it never really showed up in my real-world images.

Here is the bottom line: If you have $6k to spend on a wide angle for your Leica M8, I can recommend with 100% enthusiasm this 24 Summilux. It has taken over as my favorite lens on the M8 and M8.2. I ALMOST sold my 35 Lux, 50 Lux pre-asph, and 90 cron to fund one of these beautiful lenses. Yes, it IS that good.

Even as I sit here and write this, I am tempted. It’s funny because my stereo is on and the song ‘King Of The Night Time World” is on by KISS. Are they singing about the 24 Summilux? Ha! This is the best built Leica lens I have had through my hands. It is the best feeling (to me) and probably, the best performing. Imagine a 50 Summilux ASPH, but in a 24mm wide-angle view. That is the 24 Summilux. Now imagine how beautiful this lens would be on a full-frame M9! Droooooolll!

I’ll go one further and call it the world’s best 24mm lens for the 35mm format and one I will continue to dream about :) If I were to buy one, I would buy either at B&H photo or from Mr. Ken Hansen, my favorite Leica dealer. Yes, $6,000 is a chunk of change, but I am telling you that this lens is worth it and who knows? It may one day go up to the $8000 range when a full-frame M9 arrives. Leica lenses always go up in value and in the recent past, have performed better than the stock market!

So what’s next? My 21 Summilux real-world review will be up within 4-7 days, so check back soon to find out how I liked it. (review is now up and can be seen here)

I will leave you with more images from my time with the 24 Summilux and M8! Click any image for a larger view! Again, if you see vignetting in any of  these images, it was because I added it. The lens, on an M8 shows no real vignetting in real-world images. Did I shoot a white wall to find it? No, because I did not see any in my real images, and that is where it counts.

08/23/09 - UPDATE - Click HERE for more images STRAIGHT from camera with no vignetting, resizing or ANYTHING. Download the full size out of camera originals. CLICK HERE!

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LEICAS INCREDIBLE LOW LIGHT WIDE ANGLE MASTERPIECE

I remember it vividly. I was walking down a street in New York City. I walked in to B&H Photo and laid down over $6,000 cash money for Leicas new wide angle 24 1.4 Summilux lens. What a day. The sun was shining, it was 72 degrees, and I was on my way to a huge shoot that was paying me thousands of dollars. Life was good.

Then...I WOKE UP! Yep, it was a dream. See, in reality I know there is NO WAY I could afford to spend $6,000 on a lens for my M8. I already spent a pretty penny on my 35  Lux, 50 Lux and 90 Cron. Imagine having this conversation with your wife “Honey, I just bought a new lens today, and it was only $6,000!”

Ha ha..that would not go over too well. As understanding as my wife is with my camera obsession, even she has to draw the line somewhere. If she didn't, we would be out on the street with no home, no car, but instead a big bag of camera gear!

Honestly though, as soon as Leica announced this 24 Summilux lens, I started lusting after it. On my M8, it would be like a 32mm 1.4 lens...almost like a 35 Summilux on full frame. Almost. I love fast glass, but fast WIDE glass usually costs an arm and a leg. In the Leica world, they usually cost more than an arm and a leg. Maybe two legs, an arm, and 4 fingers.

Seriously though, the 24 Summilux with its super-fast aperture and wide-angle...man,  I could shoot in low light without ANY problems. Yes, this is truly one of those “Dream” lenses for all Leica M shooters.

So here we are. August 2009 and Leica has been so kind to send me these two lenses for a week so I can shoot them and test them. On my own terms. What are my terms? Well, if this is the first lens review you are reading from me, then you will soon see I am not a  technical guru. No charts, no resolution tests, or numbers. Just real-world shooting, which is what every lens is used for anyway.

I do shoot lenses at each aperture to show you just how sharp the lenses are wide-open and stopped down, but that is about as technical as I get. So sit back, relax, and read on to find out how I liked this 24 Summilux on a Leica M8.

LET THE FUN BEGIN! ONE WEEK OF PURE SHOOTING PLEASURE!

I CAN NOT LIE and will say up front that THIS lens is magical. It is one of those lenses that you just cannot take a bad picture with. The 24 Summilux is a beauty. When I opened the package and lifted the lens, it was actually smaller than I had imagined. I have read posts from those who bought it or tried it saying it was HUGE, HEAVY, and a BEAST of a lens. Huh?

This is absolutely untrue! On a Leica M8, it is well-balanced. On its own, it is a lens that has been hand-built with care and you can feel that when you hold it. I love the way the lens feels, handles, and looks. The aperture ring is the smoothest I have felt. The focus is smooth as well as solid, and the lens hood is a screw-on type that holds a filter in between it and the lens.

Leica supplied both lenses with the IR/UV filters already in place so I was all set to shoot!

The first thing I did was slap the 24 Summilux on to an M8 and I ran out the door, hopped in my super-duper fuel efficient Toyota Prius, and started driving. I shot some images of a few old houses, some trees, and some old factories. Even looking on the M8 LCD, I was blown away. I could tell on that little low res screen that these files had a special quality to them. So I kept shooting and I kept seeing these very rich images with amazing depth.

When I returned home, I processed some of the shots and here is what I came up with in my first 3 hours with the 24 Lux:

So, I was very pleased with the low-light ability from my first outing. I cannot show them all here, but the sink above was taken in pretty dark conditions. The lens sucked in all available light and made the scene look brighter than it actually was. Amazing... and this to me is a sign of a GREAT low-light lens. Another lens that does this is the Canon 85 1.2L, another very sweet lens. But, this Leica 24 Summilux is even better than that one in regards to “sucking in the light”. It’s also wider, gives an even smoother bokeh , and the sharpness is pretty amazing. But the 24 Lux and 85L are totally different lenses and are not lenses to be compared. It is just that the 24 Lux had that “light sucking” ability that I saw mainly in the 85L and i liked it!

So after seeing the results from my first outing, I took a short train ride to downtown Chicago and spent the day with the 24 and 21 Summilux. It was here where I realized that I much preferred the 24 Summilux to my previous all-time favorite 24, the Leica 24 Elmarit. If you read that review, then you know how much I love that lens. Well, take that love and multiply it by 10 and that is how much I love THIS 24 Summilux. I love this lens so much, I almost went to extremes to buy my own (and may still do so...Ill explain later)

So I arrive at my Hotel in Chicago with my lovely wife. It was about 11 at night and I walked around to see how the 21 Lux would handle low light. You will see those images in my 21 Lux review coming in a few days. The next day we woke up and walked for 7 hours while shooting. I wanted to see how the lens worked in sunlight as well as at smaller apertures.

Shot after shot this lens never ceased to amaze me. With the M8 and the 24, you do not need an external viewfinder as you can use the whole frame of the M8. It works perfect. With the 21, to frame accurately, you will need the external VF. So for me, the 24 is the sweet spot here for an M8. I never had any focus issues with the 24 and shooting the M8 and 24 was a PERECT combo for the streets of Chicago.

Here are some real-world samples as well as a few crops:

100% CROP - M8 AT ISO 640 - 24 LUX AT 1.4

From this higher ISO crop, you can see that the 24 Summilux is pretty damn sharp at 1.4, wide open. Also, remember this was at ISO 640 (accidentally) so its not even as sharp as it could be. This lens has a beautiful way of rendering an image.

As you can see, I LOVE shooting wide-open at 1.4. I can’t help it. I am a fool for the beauty of a sharp, in-focus subject with the focus falling off into a beautiful creamy blur. With a 24mm lens, you will not get crazy bokeh like you would with a 50 or 85, but on this lens it is amazingly beautiful. The out-of-focus areas are smooth, creamy, and some of the best bokeh I have ever seen in a 24mm lens. No, scratch that. It IS the most beautiful bokeh I have ever seen in a wide angle.

100% CROP OF ABOVE IMAGE - SHOT AT 1.4!

So let me say this. If I had $6,000 spare cash laying here right now, I would BUY THIS LENS!!! No question. I have shot with the Canon 24 1.4L lens and this lens just destroys it. Leica dealer extraordinaire, Ken Hansen usually has this and the 21 in stock. B&H also has the 24 Summilux in stock.

Many will wonder about vignetting, barrel distortion, and CA. Here are my thoughts: The lens does not vignette on an M8. In some of the shots you see here, I have added vignetting. For example, the shot above of SUPERDAWG and the WATER FOUNTAIN you do not see vignetting. These were shot WIDE-OPEN at 1.4. So vignetting is a NO issue. How will it do on a Full-Frame M9? Who knows, but maybe I will get to test this lens again on a future FF M?

Barrel distortion. While I did notice some on the 21, the 24 is absent of it in my time with the lens. Now, keep in mind, I did not shoot brick walls with it as I just do not shoot and print pictures of brick walls. If the lens does not have any distortion in my REAL images, then its good enough for me. I did not see any distortion in any of my images with the 24 Summilux.

Purple Fringing. Well, this lens does exhibit some purple fringing when shooting in certain types of lighting at 1.4 or F2. By F2.8 the lens is free of this effect. I was told that if you process your RAW files through Capture One 4.8, then it fixes this automatically. I decided to test this out by processing the same image with Adobe Camera Raw and C1 4.8.

Below is the same image processed in Capture One:

Capture One did NOT fix the CA in this image. It may not be as bad as the one processed in Adobe Camera Raw, but it did not remove the purple fringing in this image. But it was pretty extreme here and this was shot at 1.4, wide-open, where this lens exhibits this behavior the most. The legendary 50 Summilux ASPH also suffers from CA in certain situations as does the 28 Summicron.

My opinion of the CA/Purple Fringing on this lens? It does not bother me in the least bit, but I can see how it COULD bother some people when shelling out $6000 for a lens. But, out of 300 shots, I saw this in only two of them. Again, stop down to F2 and you will barely see this. By 2.8, it is gone. Even high-end, medium-format lenses suffer from this, so it is not only Leica. My fancy Nikon, Canon, and Zeiss lenses have had this issue as well. This would NOT stop me from buying this lens, no way, no how! BTW, this purple fringing IS fixable in Photoshop. Also, this MAY indeed be an effect caused by the sensor in the M8 and not the lens at all. The 24 Summilux is a very contrasty lens with incredible detail retrieval and I feel it is better than the M8 sensor. I cannot wait to test this on a Full Frame M9 :)

OK, HOW ABOUT THE QUALITY OF THE LENS WHEN STOPPED DOWN?

How about stopping down to F2.8 or F5.6? Does the 24 Summilux hold on to its quality, get even better, or does it go downhill? Well, I can HAPPILY say that its razor sharp at 1.4, as well as up to F8. To save space, I am going to show you three crops. I would put them all up, but they all look about the same! This lens performs superbly at ALL apertures!

You can use this lens wide-open or stopped down and get the same superb results. At F4, it is slightly sharper than 1.4, but not by much. In regards to sharpness, this lens has it. In regards to beautiful bokeh, this lens has it. It’s a lens you can use with extreme confidence in just about ANY situation. It excels in low light as well.