It doesn’t matter how good a lens is in absolute terms if its user can’t exploit its excellence, or even if another lens gets the job done better. With that in mind, I did some serious target shooting this afternoon with both the 135mm APO-Telyt-M and the 180mm f/2.8 APO-Elmarit-R on the M10-R.
The Visoflex was used with both lenses for most of the shots. And the 135mm was put to the test on the rangefinder again. When focused accurately, both lenses are jaw-dropping sharp, easily capable of 1.5X upsampling, which is no small feat.
With the 180mm and using the Visoflex to focus, I nailed every shot, 100%. The 135mm had about a 70% success rate with the Visoflex, about 10% without, and with a couple of oddities. When it was off, it was off by varying amounts. And it seems that if I go slightly past the precisely focused frame when turning the focus ring towards infinity on distant subject matter that’s just short of infinity distance, I can’t go back to it just by reversing the ring the same distance by which I passed it.
This only happens when focusing near infinity. I’ve read that it has something to do with the rangefinder mechanism’s interaction with the cam on the lens.
Even though the 135mm is less than half the weight of the 180mm with a footless R-Adapter-M, the extra reach and almost guaranteed accuracy might be worth carrying the extra weight. And the 180mm lens alone on the M10-R is spectacular, in a totally different world from what it looks like with the APO-Extender 2X in use.
Decisions, decisions . . .
