Gallery: PAW 2004-25
Leitz 180mm f/2.8 Elmarit-R Field Test
Ogikubo, Suginami Ward, Tokyo
Several photographers who I respect greatly have been taking digital photographs using Leitz lenses on Canon EOS bodies with an R=>EF adapter. I've been playing with a 180mm f/2.8 Elmarit-R (first version) from a fellow LUGger on my Canon 10D. On my lunch break today, I took the camera and lens out for a walk around my house. There's a street called Kyôkai Dôri (Church Street) in front of Ogikubo Station. It's named for the christian church that lies at one end of it and is lined with small stores, boutiques, and restaurants. The photograph above is of a ramen restaurant, the boots below belong to a very old tôfu store that makes it own tofu using well-water. The proprietors must be in their eighties or so.
The quality of the Elmarit-R is stellar. Very nice color rendition and sharpness. Although it came out over thirty years ago, it has the optical flavor of a modern lens even though doesn't have apochromatic ultra-low dispersion glass or aspherical elements.
Of course, long lenses are much easier to design than shorter ones. It only has five elements in four groups - a very basic telephoto design. The lens weighs a ton, over one kilogram of solid metal and glass. The 2nd version is optically very much the same, but much lighter.
The R=>EF adapter cost me about $130 new in Tokyo and was made by Hansa. It fits very nicely onto the 10D body. With used Leicaflex and R2 prices hovering between $300-500, that's also a tempting option.
I don't know how the other LUGgers focus this thing, however. The lead photograph of the ramen shop (above) is an example. I had actually focused on the lantern in the background, but the plane of focus is on the noren curtain in the foreground. I need to get more experience using this lens, to learn how to focus it more accurately on a digital body.
Equipment: Canon EOS 10D, 180mm f/2.8 Elmarit-R; Canon RAW
Resolution Test
This is an example of the high resolution afforded by this lens. This is an office building near my house. Compare this to the magnified view below to get a sense of how much magnification it is.
The lens was stopped down to about f/5.6 shooting handheld at ISO400. The bridge I was photographing this from was shaking slightly. The shutter speed was 1/1500 sec. I shot this in Canon RAW format and only sharpened slightly at the default parameters in Photoshop CS RAW.
Using a Canon 10D, this lens has an effective focal length of 288mm. This is a bit too long to handhold effectively, resulting in some softness in all of the photographs on this page.
The lens has a tripod mount, but it's only on the bottom of the lens (for landscape photographs) and is non-rotating for portrait format.
This is a 1:1 magnification of the top of the building. You can clearly see the bolt heads in the I-beams that in shadow.
There is very little chromatic aberration despite this being near the edge of the frame. I can only detect a very small amount of purple fringing, on the guardrail in the top right corner for example. Given the degree of magnification, this is stellar performance.