The career of becoming an Altglasoholic is a long process, at least for me it was and still is. Usually you get into vintage lenses at a price point of about two beer crates, maybe you got an Auto Revuenon or Vivitar lens or a 50mm from Minolta or Canon. You try out many of those and are happy for a while. Then you want to know what more expensive lenses can do, get one or another lens for a bit more dough. You instantly find them to be much better and are a proud owner of higher class lenses, maybe a Zeiss 1.4/50 or a Nikkor 2.8/28. Much later you will not be as sure anymore, that they really are much better than some of the good lenses you had tried at the beginning of your journey. However the curiosity always get’s the better of you and you are seeking more and more exclusive lenses, getting the legends that have become famous on the internet, because some bloggers wrote eloquently about them or because you compared and liked the images taken with them on several image sites. However, for me it had always been a No when it came to the ridiculously expensive Leica lenses, sometimes commanding several thousand dollars or euros, for an old, used, manual lens. In my opinion they didn’t warrant the high prices that were asked. I still think so. On the other hand I was always curious, just how good the Leicas really were. Were they better than maybe the Zeiss lenses that I already owned and valued?
One day I got to buy a Leica 2.8/40 Focotar enlarging lens for a good price from a forum friend. Soon after I took the lens to Munich for some Street photography. I was almost blown away by the colors of my images. They were able to separate elements in the image from others in a particularly lifelike fashion, being very saturated with plenty of tones, yet precise in the transitions.
It may only be one more of those cases where you have a new lens from a brand that you’ve read and heard a lot about and then you find it all to be true, even though you may later come to the conclusion that it’s not all that different from other lenses you already had. Trying to be objective, I tend to think that the Leica lenses, render color in their own wonderful way. It seems to me, that I like an above average percentage of the images that I take with the Leica lenses so far, particularly those that I take of people. It did get me to think my defensive position with Leica over. So in the last year I’ve talked myself into breaking the NO towards Leica with the following argument: It doesn’t matter, if Leica lenses are very expensive and that their value isn’t that great. The market for Leica glass is big enough, there are lots of Leica lovers out there in order for me to be able to sell the lenses again easily, if I didn’t like them or came to the understanding, that they’re no better than much cheaper lenses. I’ve convinced myself, that there’s no harm done, although I don’t know how well the sale of such a lens will go.
Since patience isn’t my strong point, I soon caught the Leica bug, making me buy a few of these old gems. I still tried to keep it reasonable, getting only the relatively “cheap” R-lenses. Among the latest two are the Elmarit 2.8/28 v1 and the Elmarit 2.8/90 v1 which I took on a late-in-the-day-bike-&-hike on a Sunday two weeks ago.
I got lucky with some pretty unique weather conditions, so I was able to make a few interesting photos. I’ve come to like panorama images a lot, because they best transport the width of the landscape I am regularly presented with in the mountains. So you’ll get a few resized panoramas here, which of course are much more interesting, if you can zoom in much further . Now see for yourself if you like the images I got to take with my new companions the LRE28 and the LRE90.
Pano 4 images
I’m very satisfied with the results from my new tools. The two Elmarits really did an outstanding job in my opinion.
One thing I am still sure of is that I’ll never be able to rectify to myself (or my wife for that matter) buying a Leica digital camera, even if it is the greatest photo-taking-experience ever. In the end what counts are the images I can get with my photographic tool and I’m convinced that by now pretty much all serious camera brands can satisfy more or less the same standard. What still matters are the lenses, not the cameras.
I’m thinking about comparing a few Zeiss lenses with their Leica -R counterpart in the near future. I’m very curious about how this is going to play out. Hopefully I’ll be able to try them out with the same luck as far as light and landscape go.
The other side of Bokeh 
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