NEW YORK NEW YORK – I’ve been shooting off and on with a Leica lens made in 1962: a 50mm “rigid” Summicron. Mechanically and as an aesthetic object it may be the most beautiful lens every made. It was the staple for photojournalists in the 1950s and 1960s. I’ve generally been using it in daylight stopped down to f5.6 or so and have been pleased with its performance and rendering.
My untested bias this that this uncomplicated design from the 1950s has excellent “bokeh”. In other words the out of focus portions of an image are creamy and transitions from focused to unfocused are smooth. I decided to test this hypothesis today so I mounted the lens and fitted a neutral density filter so it could shoot wide open (with thin depth of field) in daylight and retraced yesterday’s path through Central Park (which I shot yesterday with my Luxocron lens with pretty good results, bokeh-wise)>
I shot a hundred or so images with disappointing results. Say goodbye to nostalgia. The 1962 lens produced harsh, jarring bokeh. In fact at f2.0 the rendering of in-focus portions of the image was harsh. There were very few images that I found useable on these pages – see the twigs and daffodils below. This lens is going into retirement.
I’ll be continuing bokeh testing for the next few days.
Day 2,737 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
On this day two years ago (day 2007): Boston
