Leitz 50mm f3.5 and the 135mm f4 – A Brace of Elmars – Sublime to Ridiculous

Specifically the Leitz 50mm f3.5 and the 135mm f4, both LTM and both are late coated versions. Tony Warren recently wrote an excellent review of the 90mm Elmar should you wish to investigate that one.

Ergonomics

The 50mm has a front facing f-stop adjustment and doesn’t take standard screw filters (the horrible clamp-on filters and hood are an option) but otherwise the compactness and mechanical quality of the lens are superb, but the main attraction is it is ultra-compact and light.

The 135mm takes 39mm filters, has easy to use focus and aperture adjustment, and for a 135 is amazingly light at only a little over 400g. But but but ….. it is the most embarrassing lens to carry about. I wondered about hiding it in a carrier bag when I’m in public but decided that by holding the lens and camera vertically with the camera at the top, and grabbing the lens in the middle the ridiculous length of the lens is not immediately apparent being largely hidden by may arm. If you were to hang it round your neck you might get into trouble.

Why is the 135 so long? Partly it’s down to the small (by modern standards) maximum aperture of f4 giving an impression of length relative to the narrow width. More fundamentally this is a ‘long lens’ as opposed to a ‘telephoto lens’ – the latter uses a concave rear group to stretch the focal length of the short-focus front group (rather like a Barlow lens on a telescope if you are familiar with that). The 135 is not a telephoto lens so the lens is roughly as long as its focal length.

On the iiig there are no framelines for 135 so either get a separate viewfinder or, far from ideal, guess. Life wouldn’t be much improved on an M body because the frameline area is so tiny.

Focussing issues

The 50mm lens presents little problem on either a Leica body or a digital camera. (But remember to tape the lens extended to prevent collapsing it and destroying your digital sensor.)

The 135 is problematic hand-held on both film and digital: hand shakiness renders accurate focus difficult but not impossible – eased if you can brace yourself – and is worsened on rangefinder cameras because of the long focal length and short rangefinder base let alone any mis-calibration of the rangefinder system. On digital remember to make sure IS is both on and set to the correct focal length.

Bokeh

The 50mm is probably not the lens you’d choose if you’re looking for images that ‘pop’ with creamy OOF backgrounds. The two images below show the 135 at f4 and f8 with the park bench armrest at the near focus point (1.5m).

Performance

So how good are these lenses optically? I tested both lenses on my Sony A7Riii taking in-camera jpgs without adjustment other than converting to B&W with a yellow filter. Modern well-made lenses tend to be virtually perfect at f8 (though my Russian Sonnar is an exception) while aberrations become more obvious at wide aperture. In the two shots below taken at maximum aperture focus is on the central tea packet. In the case of the 135 in-focus items remain sharp across the field. The enlarged image represents an approximately 8-10 times (linear) enlargement.

After viewing many images my conclusion is the 50mm Elmar is a decent lens at narrower apertures, sharp and contrasty on normal enlargements, but not as good as modern lenses. The 135 is a remarkable lens optically, hard to find anything better I think.

Images

The following images were all taken at f8. Photographs made with the iiig are with a yellow filter and are on type 517 film exposed at 50-100 asa and developed in PMK Pyro. With hindsight (first time trying 517 in PMK) I’d expose at 25 or even 12 asa another time.

Conclusions

If you have a Barnack body then the 50mm f3.5 Elmar is the natural lens to choose – appropriate focal length and ultra compact – the camera and lens become almost jeans pocketable.

If you have a digital body and want a long focal length lens then the 135 is a no-brainer because of low cost, light weight and superb image quality.

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