SIDE BY SIDE COMPARISONS - IS THE LEICA WORTH THE EXTRA CA$H?

So, after shooting both lenses in all kinds of situations, I was still unsure. I mean, the Ultron was giving me great results for the most part and the softness at 100% did not bother me THAT much. But, I did find myself missing my old Elmarit while shooting the Ultron. While shooting the Summicron, I never did get a bad result and I did not have to worry about the lens not performing. The Summicron was motivating.

After reviewing shots from both lenses, I can see a difference. But, so far I have only provided my processed shots with a couple of out-of-cam originals. Still being unsure, I decided to do some other testing, which I normally do NOT do.

I am not a fan of techie reviews as they usually have NOTHING to do with real photography. But in this case, I had a decision to make and I had to decide if I would stick with the $550 lens that gave me soft corners, semi-soft centers, and cyan corners when using a UV/IR filter (even when coded as a 28 summicron). Or, do I stick with a near-perfect 28MM that gave me sharp, smooth, colorful results with no funky corners at a cost of $2500?

It sounds easy right? Stick with the Leica! But remember, I paid $550 for the Ultron and $2500 for the Leica! Is the Leica worth 5X the cost of the Ultron?? I can say that for portraits, I sort of preferred the Ultron in my early testing. For everything else, I preferred the Summicron. One of the first comparisons I did was to shoot my mom with each lens, wide open, using the same camera settings.

I told her I would never show these images to anyone as she did not want me to take her pic due to the towel on her head. I said, “These are just for my personal tests! I wont show them to anyone!” Ha ha...now she’ll kill me if she sees this, but I am sure she will get over it (or never let me photograph her again)!

Ok, the image on the left is from the Summicron and the one on the right is from the Ultron. Everyone who has seen this so far has said they preferred the one on the right, which is the Ultron. It appears to be kinder to wrinkles and blemishes, as well as giving a classic tone. Click image for larger version and to see the 100% crops as true 100% crops.

As you can see in the 100% crop when you click on the above image, the Summicron shot is much sharper, with higher contrast. These were shot with the same settings and processed using the same settings in Adobe Camera Raw. Which do you prefer?

While things are looking good for the little underdog Ultron, let’s get more into it. Let’s dig in and see the real deal here. Full size samples, 100% crops. YEA, the techie stuff. I HATE it, but it will be nice to settle this once and for all.

Below is a shot of an old, abandoned home and the 100% crops under it from each lens. As you can see, the Ultron has VERY soft corners...OUCH!

So for applications, when you need edge-to-edge sharpness, the Ultron does not get there, not even at F8. At F8, its good, but still off a bit! Below is a sample shot taken at F8 in mid-day sun with the Voigtlander Ultron. I can still see some dark corners and this lens was coded and had a UV/IR filter attached. So, even at F8, expect to see this in some of your shots. This was disappointing for a landscape shot, but it works well for portraits.

At F8, the Voigtlander Ultron appears to almost equal the sharpness of the Summicron at F8. When being shot wide open or stopped down to F2.8, the Ultron is softer than the Summicron, no doubt.

Here is a full-size original file from the 28 Summicron at F2, processed in Adobe Camera Raw. Just click the image for the full size shot.

At F2, the Summicron is sharp, but not overly crazy sharp and this is just about perfect to me. For buildings and landscape, the Summicron seems to pull out more detail and give a better tonal range.

For comparison, here is a shot of the hospital using the Ultron. Keep in mind that this was taken the day before, but was also shot at F2 and processed in Adobe Camera Raw, just like the Summicron hospital shot.

As you can see in the full-size original of the shot above, the corners are soft and there is CA in the branches above the hospital. But the Leica is not free from CA. One shot I took with the Summicron had it pretty bad as well.

We now have proof that both lenses exhibit CA if the situations are right for it. So, lets play catch-up. So far, the benefits of the 28 Summicron are: slightly better build, sharper performance, produces more pleasing color overall, and it does not suffer from the soft corners of the Ultron.

I also started to think...when Leica does release a full-frame M9 or whatever, the Ultron will have even SOFTER corners as these examples show its performance on a CROP sensor! Basically, the M8 is not even using the outermost part of the lens! If it shows soft corners on a crop sensor, then logic tells me it will be worse on a full-frame camera.

The Leica will also hold its value for me. If I ever decide to sell it, I could get what I paid for it. The Voigtlander would sell at a loss. Also...the coding issue. I coded the Voigtlander with the M-CODER kit and the camera read the lens as a 28 Summicron. It SHOULD have taken care of the corners, but in my next set of test shots, you will see it did not.

It started to appear to me that there were more reasons to keep the Leica. At the end of the day, I enjoyed the Summicron more for its unique signature. But, I had to do one more thing before I made that final decision. I had to test each lens on the same subject at all apertures.

CLICK ON TO PAGE 4 FOR MORE TESTS WITH CROPS ------>