Last month I finally decide to fill up the gap between Canon 17-40L and Canon 70-200 f4L in my bag. When I bought this combination some years ago, I was under the impression that in this so called "normal" range, I'll not need a objective, as using normal focal lengths is - well boring. Since then I realized hard way, that there is plenty situations, where it's not possible to "zoom" with legs and difference between 40 and 70mm was too big to handle. And since the money was burning hole in my pocket, I felt that something needed to be done. The obvious choice to fill up the gap between existing objectives would be Canon 24-105 L. Since I quite often try to include sun in my compositions, and I also like night cityscape photography, the way how the objective draws pointed light sources when stopped down is quite important for my photography. And here lies the problem: 24-105 only have six diaphragm blades, and that means that the sun-star will only have six rays, and I don't really like starburst with only six rays. So I looked around for something "alternative". My research finished with two possibilities: Zeiss 35-70 Vario-Sonnar f3,4 for Contax system and Leica Vario-Elmar 35-70 f4 for Leica R system, both of course with appropriate adapters for Canon EOS. On internet there is plenty of talks about Zeiss Vario-Sonnar 35-70 for Contax and reviews are very favorable. But there is one problem: this objective have eight aperture blades. That's better than six, but I prefer fourteen rays to eight in starburst... So I concentrated on Leica objective. Believe me, there isn't much information about it on the internet, and I was only able to source two photos of night scene taken with this objective, and since star bursts looked promising, I took a chance. And indeed, it have SEVEN aperture blades. Over next months I'll test it and will share my findings over here on some sort of "rolling review": 23.12.2011: First few sets of photos. The weather was rather unattractive for some time. The problem was, that I REALLY WOULD LIKE TO TEST THIS OBJECTIVE, so I went to entrance to old Ljubljana cemetery. And here are fist two photos to compare:

Leica 35-70 at 35mm, f16

Canon 17-40 at 35mm, f16

If you forget slight difference in exposure, you can see, that Canon is warmer than Leica, and star-bursts on Leica looks nice and sharp, while Canon produces star-bursts with rays that spread towards their ends. It also looks like Leica have less barrel distortion than Canon. I was pleasantly surprised last week, when even the sun sowed itself after a snow shower. Here are two photos taken few seconds apart.

Leica on left Canon on right; both photos taken at 35mm and f16

Here the difference in sunstar is very obvious, and there isn't much to add to the photos beside, that I like little Leica very much so far. The sunstar it produces is so much better than Canons.

05.01.2012

Technical data and Ervin Puts column about Leica R 35-70 f4 ROM can be found here, I'll only add, that it have seven aperture blades. Below is a photo that is proving it and another photo, a comparison between Leica and Canon 17-40L.

front view of Leica 35-70 f4 Vario-Elmar-R

comparison between Leica 35-70 and Canon 17-40L