Leica Elmarit 60 issues

I am making a book now with 777 portraits from Cambodia and half way through the Imacon Flextight scanning I realized the tonal range wasn’t good enough, so I converted my Sony A7RII to monochrome and now I am trying to scan 1:1 with a macro extender attached to the Leica Elmarit Leica Macro Elmarit-R 60mm. Basically the center of the image is overwhelmingly sharp, but the corners and lower parts of the images are catastrophic. When I crop down to APS-C it looks amazing, so good I almost can’t see the difference between the 18 mpx and the 42 mpx file in the centre.

So my question is; aren’t there benefits in using the centre of the frame, doesn’t optical resolution trump digital resolution? I am looking for another lens, but when I look at my APS-C files I wonder if increased distance to the film and centre sharpness is more important than megapixels.

And what lens do I need to buy? I use the Sigma Quattro DP3 for most of my color photography, so I trust the company, but people have been recommending the Sony 90mm too. So many conflicting messages..

Hi there, welcome to the forum. The only results from that lens that I’ve seen are here, tested by Marco Cavena 12 years ago on a Canon 5D MkII. These are right down at the bottom of the page where he has taken a sharp, detailed slide and photographed it at 1:1 with a variety of essentially ‘vintage’ film era lenses. It’s perhaps unfortunate that the ‘corner’ example is of the sea but even so you can see the grain and make your own judgement, there are better lenses than the Leica in this comparison.

Zuiko_macro_80mm_f4?

Of course then there was no “Vlad’s Test Target” which is a more useful way of comparing lenses but a lens that seems to be universally praised is the Sigma Art 70mm f2.8. Certainly a good starting point for your search though as a Fuji APS-C user I don’t use it myself as I have the 75mm Apo-Rodagon 2x which is more or less perfect for the 1:1.5 magnification, but only 24MP of course

APO Rodagon D 2X 4.5/75 mm vs. Sigma 2.8/70 Macro Art - Fight of the Century?

You might have a bad example though, I don’t like the sound of the fact that the lower part is not sharp, almost suggesting poor alignment, either of the lens internally or between your camera sensor and the target frame.

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P.S. Not sure what you mean when you say that you have converted your A7RII to monochrome?

Very authoritative tests on the site of the late Robert O’Toole, here showing that the Sigma 70 outshines the Sony for flat-field 1:1.

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Thank you Harry.

I removed the color array filter on my Sony A7RII, to make the scans as detailed, dynamic and true to the source as possible.

The results are quite amazing actually, except that softness in the edges at 1:1…

More info here: https://monochromeimaging.com/

Wow, I’ve never heard of that option before, I’ve heard of the benefits of monochrome sensors, mainly from Leica of course, but never knew that you could do what you’ve had done. Does it need special software to interpret the results?

…ah, I see:

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I have the Sony FE 90mm f2.8. It works very well with my former A7III and current A7CII to copy/scan negatives. If the original negative is sharp, the copy made with it will be sharp. It also works well as a portrait lens, although - being a macro - it does not focus as quickly as a non-macro. Good luck with your project!

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Hello, welcome to the forums! I actually have that same Elmarit-R 60-mm macro lens which I’ve used on a Sony A7RIV. I upgraded to the Sigma 105mm ART lens and it’s better on every level than the vintage Leica lens. That’s my recommendation. I can dig up vlads test target results for both if you want to see and give me a bit of time.

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Just want all of you to know that Negative Lab Pro has silenced Krisky’s account. Someone has flagged him for some obscure reason. So he can’t respond to any of your comments, but your answers are very valuable to him. He has bought the Sigma 70mm Macro and will compare it to the 60mm Elmarit when it arrives Tuesday and post his result if Nate decides to set his profile free. @Harry’s comments helped him to get a decent result from corner to mid frame on the Elmarit, which he is really grateful for, and also the recommendation of the Sigma lens itself. He is also very curious on vlads test target result @niels.shoots.film, and want to know if he also has one for Sigma 70mm Macro Art. Hope that the forum will come to its senses and unban him. Not a nice experience when you enter a forum for the first time.

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Is it possible that it was flagged by mistake and Admin hasn’t got around to looking at it. I hope so, I never saw anything contentious in those posts.

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Maybe because he mentions the president in the following sentence: “doesn’t optical resolution trump digital resolution?” If one bans that word and name in all forums then life will be difficult the next four years.

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But you didn’t get banned and the T word is in your post, so must be some other kind of error :-).

I don’t see the point of any of that described in “Monochrome Imaging Services” - NLP can make perfectly satisfactory B&W conversions from colour or B&W negatives and the Epson driver in Epson professional printers using quality papers and ABW mode or just ordinary application colour management can make gorgeous B&W prints from those digitized and converted negatives.

Krisky - when you can see this - Lenses that are not corrected for digital sensors may not perform as well on digital cameras as they do for film cameras.

I have tried the 90mm Sony Macro and found it unimpressive.

The key things to make sure of is that whatever you buy is truly a flat-field macro copy lens and that its imaging circle, with whatever bellows or extender you put between the lens and the sensor well exceeds the diameter of your sensor.

Digital and optical resolution are totally different things and respond to different requirements. Digital resolution is “pixels per inch” - nothing more, nothing less, and the bigger you want to print the more of them you need. Optical resolution is the sharpness of the lens at resolving fine detail when it is properly focused. Of course perfect alignment from the media to the sensor is absolutely critical for edge to edge sharpness.

@Krisky can see you, but he is gagged, so he can’t respond to you, so I will answer your comment with some comments from him @Mark_Segal:

The 60mm Elmarit has practically no vignetting and performs extremely well overall. However, it’s a lens he primarily uses with film on a Leica R8 and R6, and it’s arguably outside the intended scope of the lens, considering it’s a 1:2 macro lens. It remains one of the sharpest lenses available and can rival the quality of many modern optics in several respects. Still, the lens has limitations—its coating is dated, and he’s uncertain about field curvature and other subtle characteristics. That said, after closely examining his scans, he sees exceptional sharpness at APS-C crop and mid-frame on full-frame, though performance deteriorates toward the edges. Even that has improved after securing the adapter more effectively, thanks to some excellent tips from Harry.

As for monochrome sensors, the claims made against them are factually incorrect. He has tested a monochrome sensor against standard Bayer sensors and found it to be superior in image quality. Demosaicing introduces significant degradation at the pixel level. A monochrome sensor image interpolates far more smoothly than an image from a Bayer sensor—whether printed via offset, LightJet, or inkjet, and at any size—because there’s no interpolation required at all. The logic here is similar to that behind Foveon sensors, although Foveon suffers from inherently higher noise due to its three-layer design (e.g., ISO 100 effectively becomes ISO 400). This issue is absent in monochrome sensors. Nonetheless, even Foveon sensors produce better results than Bayer sensors at base ISO for large prints—for example, 20MP images from his Sigma DP3 Quattro rival those from his 42.4MP Sony A7RII and the 37MP medium format Leica S2.

The monochrome sensor also renders grain more faithfully to the original negative. This has been confirmed by comparing the results to Imacon Flextight scans, as well as to scans he made using the same equipment prior to the monochrome conversion. He has also compared these with baryta darkroom prints made using a Leitz Focomat enlarger.

The good news is that camera scanning with a monochrome sensor, combined with the capabilities of Negative Lab Pro, is not only matching but even surpassing the quality of darkroom prints—especially in terms of dynamic range, rendition of the silver in pushed Tri-X film, and overall aesthetic character. The process is also far more inspiring and closely mirrors the logic and hands-on mechanics of traditional darkroom work, which elevates the entire workflow and ultimately impacts the final result on an aesthetic level.

The benefits of monochrome conversion are well established. While the improvements may not seem dramatic to everyone, they are very real: dynamic range is significantly increased, the sensor becomes markedly more light-sensitive, and both sharpness and resolution are notably enhanced. It also stays truer to the character of black and white film, rendering silver more realistically—and when used in real-world conditions, especially at high ISOs, the results are almost indistinguishable from traditional black and white film.There is no doubt about it.

Now, over to full frame and crop frame: When pixels per inch consist of “poor pixels”—for instance, due to the extremely shallow depth of field at 1:1 magnification, or because the lens resolves less detail at the edges than in the center—then using fewer but optically superior pixels might yield a better reproduction overall.

What he’s questioning is this: perhaps 1:2 reproduction on APS-C is equal to—or even better than—1:1 reproduction at twice the megapixels. Why? Because it uses only the sharpest part of the lens, avoids vignetting (there’s none on the Elmarit, while the Sigma Art reportedly suffers quite a bit), and allows for greater depth of field without stopping down so much that diffraction becomes an issue.

He’s looking forward to testing the new Sigma 70mm at 1:1 full-frame against the Leica Elmarit at 1:2 on both APS-C and full-frame (though he’s nearly given up on using the full frame with the Elmarit, since the entire frame is only acceptably sharp at f/13—and even then, diffraction begins to reduce sharpness in the mid-frame). He plans to share the results here for everyone to see.

As for printing, the book will be small in physical format, but the content is deeply meaningful. He has already invested $30,000 into the project, with another $20,000 allocated for printing.It’s a gut-wrenching undertaking. That’s why he feels so frustrated about being silenced here—because the contributions from this community, along with the capabilities of Negative Lab Pro, have breathed new life into these negatives. And with that, the future of the entire project has been revived—after he had nearly given up following the disappointing results from Flextight scans. And that’s saying something, considering he’s been using that scanner professionally since the early 2000s. Flextight always had problems with dynamic range, but it’s quite shocking to see how superior camera scanning with Negative Lab Pro is to Flextight in rendering high contrast black and white negatives.

And one more note for APS-C users here on the forum:

The Leica Elmarit 60mm Macro is extremely sharp in the mid-frame, making it an excellent choice for any Super35 (APS-C) camera. @Krisky has conducted extensive testing of the lens across all f-stops, and for those considering investing in it, it’s worth noting that the lens is at its absolute sharpest at f/8 on APS-C, and mid-frame when used on full-frame. After seeing the results, @Krisky actually regrets not converting an APS-C camera instead of his full-frame A7RII—he would have been more than satisfied with a 24MP crop sensor paired with the Elmarit. The lens comes highly recommended for users of crop sensor systems.

Excellent information, thank you. The story with the 60mm Macro-Elmarit on APS-C is also reflected in the somewhat revered 55mm Micro-Nikkor f2.8, in my experience anyway. Disappointing in the corners at 1:1 but very good at 1:1.5 on 24MP Fuji, though not quite as good as the 75mm Apo-Rodagon f4.5 2x for that format, not as good as the 80mm f4 Componon-S either. I may be suffering from sample variation I suppose.

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@Krisky also suspected sample variations. He owns two 60mm Elmarit lenses, one from 1978 and the other from 1983, and found no noticeable difference between them. However, after reviewing his setup, he discovered that the original Leica macro extender was slightly loose. Thanks to your suggestions, he was able to resolve this issue and achieve a more accurate result from the lens. The findings are now quite definitive: at f/8, the lens is incredibly sharp in the center, while at f/13, it’s sharp (but not as sharp as f/8) across the frame, although not quite as sharp as it would be on an APS-C sensor. F/8 is significantly sharper in the center than both f/11 (a compromise between the two) and f/13, and Krisky feels that using either of the latter would result in an unacceptable compromise.

He’s now seriously considering the Leitz Focomat lenses as a long-term option. The Minolate Dimage lens was also an appealing choice, but only for APS-C again..

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He also tested the Helios 44M-4 MC with a Fotodiox helicoid adapter, just for fun, and discovered that it’s completely unusable. Even the lens featured in Dune II doesn’t hold up in the enigmatic and often gut-wrenching process of camera scanning. I hope I don’t get flagged for using the word gut-wrenching now..

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Noah - thanks ever so much for intermediating this discussion and for conveying these most interesting comments from Krisky. I do hope he and Nate can come to a positive understanding on his Forum status.

I do find some of his commentary a bit puzzling, starting with his comments on the Flextight scanner. I agree that our more modern higher-end camera-based scanning systems can outclass it in respect of effective resolution, as I’ve tested and seen that myself; however I am surprised about the comment regarding its dynamic range. I’d be interested in seeing some comps for the B&W subject matter he references. If it appears to be the case, the next question is whether this relates to hardware or software - I do suspect the latter, in which case perhaps there are options. But anyhow, the camera-based approach is just a lot more efficient; very good as the best ones were, I think film scanners have essentially had their best days.

On the subject of demosaicing, we can produce such wonderfully smooth gradients from Bayer-equipped sensors that I would be interested in seeing direct apples-to-apples comparisons between Bayer and Monochrome that are optically significant. As I understand it (and I could be mistaken) the Bayer filtering is on top of all those photosites each one having its own luminance value and the interpolation is for the colour mixing. Those filters are so tiny and the math so sophisticated, and heavily tested and improved over decades now, that I really wonder. Maybe the monochrome is still and well visibly superior but I’d be really interested in seeing the evidence.

On his main concern about Sigma vs Elmarit, I can’t contribute specifically because I have not tested either of those lenses. His own testing will give him the best guidance on which, if either of them, to keep. While lenses do tend to perform better in the center than the edges, I don’t think he needs to be satisfied with keeping only part of the FF sensor information to achieve satisfactory sharpness edge to edge. There are lenses that can do that, for example, the Schneider Apo-Digitar 80mm Macro that I am using. Rodenstock also makes/made such lenses, but they are either discontinued or expensive or both. The key thing is that the image circle be sufficiently larger than the sensor diameter, and of course the optical corrections in the lens design.

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