A rare Canon FD 24mm f/1.4 S.S.C. Aspherical hits the next Wetzlar Camera Auction with a starting bid of €6,000
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The maint point is unfortunately missing here: how many were actually made?
This, and the early use of an aspherical & extreme aperture will determine its collector-value.
Could climb to stunningly high summits...
This, and the early use of an aspherical & extreme aperture will determine its collector-value.
Could climb to stunningly high summits...
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Going by the price, not many remain. Unfortunately, those bits of information are extremely hard to come by outside of Leica.
It was a mass-produced lens, but we don't even know the exact number of 1200mm f/5.6L lenses that were made. Even that one has a large range of estimates.
There are two on ebay for $16,000+
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I don’t really get it. There’s an EF 24/1.4L II that retails for $1550 and no doubt has better IQ. Why buy a worse lens for 10x the cost to ‘collect’ it. Lenses should be used to take pictures.
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I watched a guy buy one of those in 1975. He didn't want his wife to know how much it cost, so he paid half the price in cash and put the other half on a credit card.
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I have never been much into "collecting" anything really. Everything ever made probably has someone, somewhere collecting it. I do have a 50 1.0L that I don't use often, but I didn't buy it to put on a shelf either.
I guess I collect a few of these, but the epic battles these two had defined part of my childhood.
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There's nothing rational in collecting, unless you plan to achieve gains in reselling at a higher price.
It's a case of "it's rare, I like it, I want it, and have the money". It's about fun.
And, is a Jackson Pollock worth a few hundred million$, after all, it's just linen with a few paint stains on it.
Fact is, there are many rich collectors seeking rare cameras and lenses, mostly Leica. Why not?
PS: I once started collecting screwmount and bayonet Leicas. After a while, I hated the idea of not being allowed (scratches...) to use them. And sold the lot, to buy more "usable" stuff.
But if ever I find a Noctilux 1,2/50, at a very attractive price, somewhere in a barn in Northern Lappland...
It's a case of "it's rare, I like it, I want it, and have the money". It's about fun.
And, is a Jackson Pollock worth a few hundred million$, after all, it's just linen with a few paint stains on it.
Fact is, there are many rich collectors seeking rare cameras and lenses, mostly Leica. Why not?
PS: I once started collecting screwmount and bayonet Leicas. After a while, I hated the idea of not being allowed (scratches...) to use them. And sold the lot, to buy more "usable" stuff.
But if ever I find a Noctilux 1,2/50, at a very attractive price, somewhere in a barn in Northern Lappland...
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I wouldn't call it "buzz". There were photo magazines: Modern Photography, Popular Photography and Peterson's Photographic. At one time, I subscribed to all three. At that time, Canon was the only manufacturer making aspherical lens elements, by grinding them. Another widely praised FD lens was the original 300 f/2.8. Everybody was astonished that its sharpest aperture was f/2..8.
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Not correct, Sir!
The Leica M Noctilux 1,2/50mm, with its two aspherical ground lens surfaces, was made from 1966 (!) till 1975.
So, the Canon was a bit late to the party...by 11 years.
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Well, while I agree with you on only being a collector....
I AM becoming a BIG fan of collecting and adapting vintage lenses to modern mirrorless digital cameras.
Sure the new glass is almost perfect in it's images, and in some cases...that is the problem.
I find the imperfections and warts on some old vintage lenses in their design and implementation to have a way of rendering that I consider a bit more artistic.
I find many of them great to use for portraiture...the softer lenses on skin is nice when shooting women. Todays lenses have a tendency to show "too many" pores, haha.
And while it doesn't float everyones' boats, and it can be overdone....I am a big fan these days of swirly bokeh...and bubble bokeh...etc. I'm enjoying playing with some lenses that blur out the background in what can be described as a "painterly" fashion.
And the good thing is....many of these lenses can be had for a song. Although, the word gets out on some and the prices start to rise.
And also, film is still rising in popularity and many of those old lenses still work GREAT on old film cameras and that's increasing the prices as people scour for them to use on old film cameras.
Anyway....I'm with you that things like this need to be used. And I think there is a place for them in the repertoire for getting different looks, classical looks, that some appreciate at times over the clinical perfection looks with todays modern lenses.
cayenne
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Vintage lenses have their own unique looks.
It is akin to comparing a modern wine to a vintage one.
It is not safe to assume that no one is capturing images with these.
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And they can even be better than modern ones (Apo macro Elmarit, Apo Summicrons, Apo Telyts etc...).
No, I don't have MTFs or sharpness charts, but own the corresponding modern lenses.
So, no objective proofs, but my subjective certainty!
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Ah, yes…the look.
Like the sound. There are people who prefer listening to music on vinyl, and think it sounds better than the ‘cold and clinical’ remastered, digitized, lossless audio.
I am not one of those people. I like to hear snap, crackle, and pop from my breakfast cereal, not my speakers.
Like the sound. There are people who prefer listening to music on vinyl, and think it sounds better than the ‘cold and clinical’ remastered, digitized, lossless audio.
I am not one of those people. I like to hear snap, crackle, and pop from my breakfast cereal, not my speakers.
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According to the interwebs that $1300.00 original selling price would be about $7000.00 in today’s dollars. I can’t imagine there were too many people willing and able to plunk that down back then. The U.S. was in a recession with double-digit inflation then too. No wonder it’s so rare.
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off topic but the audio thing isn't so simple and some (not all) the pro vinyl crowd have a point. Ignoring the snake oil audiophile BS with claims analog sounds better (completely debunked myth) it is more about the mastering and not unusual in some genres for the original vinyl pressing to be mastered better vs modern digital remasters. Just because digital containers have higher potential quality doesn't mean the contents has been engineered to take advantage of that, some times much much lower. Much like if you took 16bit photo container and instead of putting 14bit of light info in it you put 4 or 5bit in there folks wouldn't be wrong for saying the 8bit jpeg looked better for high DR scenes. Potentially the 16bit file should have wider DR, less posterisation etc etc but depends on what has been done to the source, same applies to audio.
Not always trending to worse but far from uncommon for modern masters to be compressed to the point you may be looking at a DR of around 4 or 5 (worse in some cases) vs much higher for the vinyl version thus some folks who care gravitate to vinyl version. I've worked with several people with pro audio engineer and e-eng backgrounds who hate audiophile nonsense but prefer some (not always) vinyl versions. Of course they don't listen to it on vinyl but in a digital format but files authored from the original vinyl vs modern remasters, the wider DR versions being unavailable generally in direct download digital or DVDA or CDA forms.
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Cinematographers and movie studios buy these and have them rehoused into cinema lenses. I have one. It’s quite lovely. I didn’t pay those prices though. It’s gotten quite mad. I have one of every FD Prime, and now I’m afraid to use most of them due to how much they have skyrocketed in value. I’ve had insane offers for my set. Definitely tempted in this economy…
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These are good points but they are more relevant if you are talking about a lossy audio format like mp3 etc, neuro’s point still holds if we’re talking about let’s say 192khz digital masters either with or without the mechanical sounds of a turntable accompanying the track.
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