50 Summicron

 

Last week I acquired another 50mm Summicron-M vIV. It's recent manufacture, six bit coded and with the built in lens hood. The image above is from tests the first couple of days, an informal shot at the local convenience store, shot wide open. Of course it's sharp, it's a Summicron, but here's the proof, shot on the M10.

I already had a 50 Summicron, technically also a vIV but in the earlier mount with the focus tab and Canadian built. I bought that lens at Calumet Photo in Chicago for something like $300, about 22 years ago when many were unloading used analog equipment. It was cosmetically very rough but I got lots of good use from it. Even with all the wear it would be easy to sell it for lots more than I paid for it.

Why another one? The built in hood and the coding are advantages for current use on the digital body. It's clean, near mint condition, with the box and leather pouch and caps. The price was fair, toward the lower end of the range I've seen for clean examples recently and I've yet to lose anything on a Leica lens so there's that. But really I just wanted a newer and cleaner one and the opportunity presented itself, and there's been some recent unexpected additional income. Although it's the same optical formula as my older one, this one seems very slightly sharper on the M10, I won't speculate about why.

I like to have one lens on an M body for extended intervals, and the plan is for this to be my primary lens for the M10. It won't come off very often. For landscape outings I'll normally include a 28 Elmarit-M aspherical in the bag, small and light and also six bit coded so no chance of forgetting to enter the lens if changing back and forth. The 50 Summilux pre-aspherical will continue to live on the M6 body because I really prefer the way the 'lux renders on film but am not as happy with it on digital.