I have been following your posts on the Leica camera blog and I have really enjoyed them. I have also been following your progression of lenses from the 18 and 24 combination to the present 18 and 21 combination. Do you find the 18/21 sufficiently different in focal length? Wondering what your current thoughts about the 24 are. Great for indoor, low light situations or those where you want shallow DOF? Will you be trading it in for the 24 f3.8 as it also offers the edge to edge sharpness like the 21 and with the Monochrom’s high Iso performance you may not need a 1.4?
David English says:
The 18mm and 21mm are very close in focal length, so I’m not quite sure how I’ll choose between them in the future. They do have a different feel, more due to design differences than relative focal length. I’ll probably jump back and forth between them. I’m trying to shoot with only one or two lenses for each trip. That way I’ll have a better sense of how each performs on the Monochrom. No plans to swap out the 24 f1.4 for a 24 f3.8. Even with the high ISO performance, I would like to have one fast wide-angle lens. At some point, I hope to try the 24 f1.4 and Monochrom in a very dark environment, just to see how far you can go with this camera.
Hey David,
I have been following your posts on the Leica camera blog and I have really enjoyed them. I have also been following your progression of lenses from the 18 and 24 combination to the present 18 and 21 combination. Do you find the 18/21 sufficiently different in focal length? Wondering what your current thoughts about the 24 are. Great for indoor, low light situations or those where you want shallow DOF? Will you be trading it in for the 24 f3.8 as it also offers the edge to edge sharpness like the 21 and with the Monochrom’s high Iso performance you may not need a 1.4?
The 18mm and 21mm are very close in focal length, so I’m not quite sure how I’ll choose between them in the future. They do have a different feel, more due to design differences than relative focal length. I’ll probably jump back and forth between them. I’m trying to shoot with only one or two lenses for each trip. That way I’ll have a better sense of how each performs on the Monochrom. No plans to swap out the 24 f1.4 for a 24 f3.8. Even with the high ISO performance, I would like to have one fast wide-angle lens. At some point, I hope to try the 24 f1.4 and Monochrom in a very dark environment, just to see how far you can go with this camera.