For some time I had found that my lovely Leica M and my wonderful and most used lens Summilux 50/1.4 ASPH are not focusing perfect as Leica equipment should be. It was not a big issue until I read an article on Thorsten Overgaard website. It was an Interview with Peter Karbe about the 50mm APO lens. That article actually enlighten me with a lot of clarity on rendition of my Leica Summilux 50/1.4 lens. I have found that when used wide open the lens looses contrast in the blurred area. I actually liked it a lot and quite often did not fix this in post processing because it helps separate the focused object much better and thus the picture is not flat. So after reading Mr. Peter Karbe's explanation behind the engineering of the lens I understood I have to fix my focusing even if I do not want to separate myself from the camera and the lens. You see, the lens is design to keep the contrast on the focused object and rapidly loose it on the out of focus area.
Bokeh is loosing contrast rapidly
That meant that my lens was not performing like it should and I was not getting 100% of it. So I said "you know what- the lens and the camera are in warranty so lets see how customer service is handling the repair". I had one problem- I work with my Leica so I had to have it back in 3-4 days. As you may know this is unrealistic for any company even Leica. So I called them before sending mine for repair to see if the offer any loaners. To my amusement they non only offered loaners but also agreed to ship it to me overnight. So I had a working Leica M with 50mm lens, not like mine, in 1 day after they received mine in. Total days lost 2 :) . I called back after a couple of weeks to check what is wrong and they confirmed that the lens had some focusing issues. Original estimated time was sometime in June, which would have made about 2 and a half months of repair time. There was a new problem. I am leaving on a trip to Europe in June so I talked to a very friendly woman from the department and she promised to push as much as she could the repair shop. 2 weeks later I got a call they were ready to ship it back. I was amazed. I cannot regret any of the money I have spend on Leica products because they truly stand behind their brand name. They did clean the body and changed the shutter just in case, they changed and calibrated the lens and finally they have tested it on my body. The result is simple perfection in focusing as you can see bellow. The lens is much tighter now.
For the confidentiality of the people I dealt with over there at Leica US, I will just say: THANK YOU!
The sheet I used for testing focusing can be found here.