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very good lens for Black and White Dionisis Partheniadis Photography

Hi, This weekend I found a Leica Summicron-C 40mm f2! I know you can easily find some on Ebay, both the m-rokkor or summicron-c versions, but frankly, I avoid buying lenses on ebay - I much prefer to assess a lens in-person which also sometimes opens the door to negotiations and bargaining. In this case, I was able to bring the price down because I noticed a slight haze on an inner element, noticeable when shining a bright light at an angle, but otherwise the glass was perfect. So I took my chance, knowing that this was probably fungus (or separation?) hoping it might be cleanable. It is by far the tiniest lens in my A7 kit, it is very well built, it focuses very well (when you actually find the focus tab). We got lucky with Arctic temperatures here in Montreal this weekend and using the lens with my gloves on was ... not ideal. I actually froze my fingers a few times I didn't do any "formal" performance analysis, but overall I am really impressed by the results, this is a very capable lens. It is amazingly small and 40mm on full frame is a really nice focal length, very versatile. This is something which amazes me: it is rather unsettling how little photographic impact lens anomalies actually have on the end-result. I have vintage lenses with front and/or rear element scratches, inner fungus or haze and frankly, I have yet to find a situation where there is an obvious impact, maybe excluding flare sensitivity. Here are a few sample pictures taken with this lens. Montreal Docks Cityscape by Colin Surprenant, on Flickr Battures Tailhandier by Colin Surprenant, on Flickr Spring Banks by Colin Surprenant, on Flickr Colin

Travel shoot at Kundasang, Sabah. With Mount Kinabalu as backdrop. Taken with A7iii, Voigtlander Nokton Classic 40mm f/1.4 MD: Vivi Gallery: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bdrc1989/

This lens has been dubbed, I don't remember by what famous photographer, the "water lens" for the way it treats the out-of-focus areas. It is quite sharp straight on from f/2 (but there are sharper lenses out here at that aperture) and becomes really really sharp stopping down. At least on my sample there is a super-correction of the borders at f/4: this means that the center is less sharp than at f/2, but the borders are sharper than at f/8 and almost as sharp at f/11. This lens is the twin of the Leica Summicron-C 40/2; what changes is the exterior of the lens, that in the Leica version sports a 39mm not-standard threading filter ring, while the Minolta uses 40.5mm filters. Also, rumors have that the Minolta version is multi-coated, while the Leica version is not. I don't know if that's true, but like you can see I've had no trouble even shooting straight into the light. "Tasso" forest ("Beaver" forest), Italy "Fossiata" forest, Italy