50mm Lens Comparison: Vintage to Modern on a Leica Monochrom

*late addition at the end – Leica Summar 5cm collapsible

I’ve been a fan of the 50mm focal length for some time and acquired a few interesting pieces over the years. The five 50mm lenses range from f/0.95 to f/2 and in age, from the early 1950s to one that’s still in production. One is very clinical in its rendering, and a few are quite dreamy. One of them somehow straddles the line between both worlds.

This is far from a scientific test. It’s more like a guy in his living room taking photos on a partly cloudy day in Seattle with changing light conditions. Two of the lenses are native Leica M-mount (50mm f/0.95 Noctilux, 50mm f/2 APO Summicron), and three are M39/LTM, Leica Thread Mount, (Zorki f/1.5 Jupiter 3, Zorki f/2 Jupiter 8).

All of the shots were taken with the Leica Monochrom exposed to -2/3, with auto shutter and ISO. Since this isn’t a scientific test in a controlled environment, take from it what you will. The idea is to get the general feel and character of each lens. When I did this little experiment, I had been using the Monochrom often, and was curious how each performed on this body. At a later date, I’ll throw them on the M11-P. I would like to see how the coatings on each lens affect the image. That should be interesting too.

For now, here are a few photos of each lens and the setup used. The photos of each lens will be in the order in which they were shot. Each image is available as a full size image in the gallery at the end.

Zorki Jupiter 3. An f/1.5 lens from the early 1950s.

The Leica Noctilux, in silver, is an f/0.95 lens that has been in production since about 2014. It has recently been discontinued.
This is your scalpel, the Leica f/2 APO Summicron. When I mentioned clinical rendering above, this is the lens I’m referring to. You may notice that little ‘ding’ on the lens hood, that will be a story for another time.
Next up, the Japanese Summilux. I wrote about this lens a while back; you can find the article here. It is as you might expect an f/1.4 lens. This copy is from around 1958.
And finally, the Zorki Jupiter 8, one of the best looking vintage lenses out there. This is an LTM lens with a maximum aperture of f/2. The aperture rings of each Jupiter lens have no stops. They move smoothly and continuously.
This outstanding beauty comes to us from the 1930s. It’s Leica’s Summar 5cm Collapsible lens.

On to the images! These were taken mid-day with partly cloudy skies, so the lighting conditions changed throughout the few minutes I was shooting. I think some of the images will be easy to figure out, even without the accompanying captions. *Something of note – I typically shoot the Monochrom at -2/3 of a stop. This helps protect the highlights. I added that same amount back into each image to give you a little more detail.

50mm Jupiter 8 at f/2
Leica 50mm Noctilux at f/0.95
Leica 50mm APO Summicron at f/2.
Canon’s ‘Japanese Summilux’ shot at f/1.4.
Jupiter 3 shot at f/1.5.

I’ve added a gallery of full-size images here.

Jupiter 8
Jupiter 8
Leica Noctilux
Leica Noctilux
Leica APO
Leica APO
Canon LTM
Canon LTM
Jupter 3
Jupiter 3

For some reason this, new to me, lens right from the 1930s was overlooked. Here’s a full size image of the roughly the same and same settings.

Leica Summar 5cm Collapsible at f/2

2 thoughts on “50mm Lens Comparison: Vintage to Modern on a Leica Monochrom”

  1. love the dreamy Jupiter 8. The Jupiter 3 could live on my camera. The others are great as well but if I had to pick only two it would be them.
    thanks for sharing this post.

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