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Lens Quality Control
Leica pays a lot of attention to quality control, but this does not mean that brand-new lenses are free of issues. Discriminating users might find that lens performance is less than expected.
In fairness, it is extremely difficult to ensure full optical performance with high performance lens designs. Moreover, some designs can prove difficult to manufacture reliably (without great expense, e.g. a high “fail” rate and demanding production tolerances), and sadly this means that truly superlative designs might not be produced at all—we just might never see these.
Many Leica M lens designs push the performance envelope, and thus even minor deviations in optical alignments of any kind can drop that performance below its “on paper” potential. This is of course true of all lenses of all brands. APO lenses in particular are computed to avoid color errors and coatings, alignment and spacing all have to be perfect to deliver that APO performance.
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Diglloyd Guide to Leica is by yearly subscription. Subscribe now for about 25 cents a day ($90/year).
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Diglloyd Guide to LEICA contains in-depth coverage of Leica M system cameras and lenses, with additional coverage of Leica M Monochrom, Leica Q.
Special emphasis is placed on Leica M lenses and certain Zeiss ZM lenses.
- Make better images by learning how to get the best results right away.
- Save money by choosing the right lens for your needs the first time, particularly the Summilux/Summicron/Elmarit choice and/or Zeiss ZM.
- Make better images, a sort of “cheat sheet” saving yourself months or years of ad-hoc learning. Processing parameters are discussed and shown.
- Jaw-dropping image quality found nowhere else utilizing Retina-grade images up to full camera resolution, plus large crops [past 2 years or so].
- Real world examples with insights found nowhere else. Make sharper images just by understanding lens behavior you won’t read about elsewhere.
- Aperture series from wide open through stopped down, showing the full range of lens performance and bokeh.
- Optical quality analysis of field curvature, focus shift, sharpness, flare, distortion, and performance in the field.
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