Despite owning an original refurbished Lomo LC-A, I never really vibed with it and had more misses than keepers due to its zone focusing system. Almost a decade later, it’s time to revisit the same lens… but now made for the Leica M-mount with rangefinder coupling.
Read on to take a look to see how this lens performs; the good, the bad and the ugly Lomography.
The M-mount version of the Minitar-1 was released in 2015, featuring the same optical construction as its Russian counterpart found on the compact film shooter the Lomo LC-A. Composed of a relatively simple 5 elements in 4 groups in an ultra-compact brass body, there must be a certain trade-off… but that’s all part of the Lomography charm.
Let’s take a look at some shots from the original LC-A, focused through zone-focusing and auto aperture control:
Mounted onto the Leica M6, there’s an additional layer to the shooting experience. Whilst Leica street shooters swear by zone-focusing, much like the great Cartier-Bresson, the Minitar-1 in M-mount has the bonus of being rangefinder coupled, allowing for fine focusing through the rangefinder patch. At $660 AUD (at the time of writing) this may be one of the more economical 35mm (actually 32mm) options available.
Let’s take a look to see how it goes on a film Leica M6 body:
As you can see, this lens outputs an identical rendering to the original, with heavy vignetting wide open, frenetic swirly bokeh and the signature pincushion distortion. However, with the aperture stopped down, there is acceptable sharpness throughout the frame, much to my delight with the photo of the Sydney Opera House, a snapshot taken by setting the lens to f/11 and 1/1000sec (due to the bright sunlight) and zone focusing… I don’t think I anticipated having the seagull perfectly framed, nor capturing the falling hat.
For those who also shoot with a digital body, whether it is a Leica M or other mirrorless camera, you may find that older lenses render with heavy vignetting or even purple fringing in the corners due to the refraction of light off the microlens array, something that is not so much of an issue with analogue film. To counter these effects, modern lenses are almost always now constructed in a telecentric design, offering more even illumination and sharpness across the frame.
Let’s see how it performs on the digital Leica M10 body:
What surprised me most was the soft, slightly muted colours from this lens whilst retaining decent contrast, I can see why photographers opted to use slide film with the analogue LC-A. The pincushion distortion is on full display as you can see, something that could be corrected in post (but left here for the examples) With the pincushion effect and vignetting, the lens lends itself to centre-composed subjects, with the soft corners adding an additional draw to the viewer’s attention to the central subject.
You may notice a strange blur in the foreground of the last scooter shot, that is actually my knuckle from rangefinder focusing this lens, with the focusing tab being so small, I inadvertently partially covered part of the lens… something to be mindful of.
FINAL MUSINGS
What’s not to like about a vintage remaster? In an age of clinical pixel-peeping chart-measuring modern optics, sometimes you want a little character, which the Lomo LC-A MINITAR-1 Art 2.8/32 M delivers in spades. The only other manufacturer that I can think of who makes such flavourful lenses in a compact form factor, with historical reverence is Miyazaki san from MS Optical Japan (at almost twice the price of the Lomo).
Perhaps my only complaint with this would be the obscure 22.5mm filter thread, and the screw in cap to match (no pinch cap is currently available in that diminutive size), should you want to mount a filter on the lens there is an adapter available here.
