For one or another reason I checked recently some articles about the Leica 50 Summilux ASPH and 50 APO Summicron. There is quite a fuzz which one is sharper and etc. I have no doubt that 50 APO is sharper but what I did noticed was quite a bit of out of focus shots with 50 Summilux ASPH. Back in 2015 I had my 50mm Summilux ASPH checked by Leica because it was not focusing correctly. I did send both the body and the lens to Leica just in case the body had some other issues. It turned out the lens had some issues and was repaired quite fast by Leica USA for which I am very thankful. They were even so nice to send me a lender body and lens to use for my work. If 50mm Summilux ASPH is calibrated properly, it is very sharp wide open. To see how much different was mine from the shots online I did some test from minimum focus distance with f2 and f1.4. So I confirmed my point that it is very sharp in the center at f2. Bellow are some shots at f1.4, f2 and at the bottom 5.6 which is astonishingly sharp.
Little information about the shots:
- shots were done handheld
- ISO on all shots is 200
- sharpens or anything else was not altered. This is a straight copy from the camera in DNG format imported into Adobe Lightroom!
- camera body is Leica M240
- lens is Leica 50/1.4 Summilux ASPH
- the size of the watch is 28 mm
Original full frame
100% Crop at 1.4 aperture
100% Crop at 2.0 aperture