I really wanted to like this lens.

Actually, that's probably underselling it. On paper, the Thypoch Simera 50mm f/1.4 ASPH looked suspiciously close to the 50mm I had been looking for: fast, relatively compact, Leica M mount and — importantly for me — a minimum focusing distance of 0.45m.

That last number got me.

Most rangefinder 50mm lenses aren't exactly enthusiastic about getting close to things. So a fast 50mm that could focus down to 45cm sounded great. I bought one for my Leica M10 expecting it to become a fairly permanent member of my kit.

Instead, I returned it.

And strangely enough, the reason I returned it was related to the exact feature that made me buy it in the first place.

First impressions

Let's get one thing out of the way: this is not a bad lens.

The Simera feels good in the hand. It's metal, nicely finished and certainly doesn't feel cheap. It doesn't quite have the density of a brass Leica or some Voigtländer lenses, but that's not something I would lose sleep over.

Then I turned the focusing ring.

Mine wasn't particularly smooth. There was an uneven feeling through the focusing range accompanied by a slight rustling noise. Maybe my copy wasn't perfect. Maybe this is normal. Either way, on a manual-focus lens the focusing ring is basically your main interface with the thing, so it wasn't a great introduction.

But even that wasn't the real problem.

The real problem was the focus throw.

0.45m close focus sounds better than it works

The Simera focuses down to 0.45m, which looks fantastic on a specifications page.

In actual use, I found it surprisingly frustrating.

The focus throw between roughly 0.45m and 1m is extremely short. Normally I actually like short focus throws. I don't want to rotate a lens halfway around the earth just to photograph something that moved two metres closer to me.

But there is a limit.

At f/1.4 and close distances, depth of field is already tiny. Combine that with such a short throw and very small movements of your finger suddenly represent quite significant changes in focus.

So you get this slightly ridiculous situation where the lens has been designed to focus unusually close, but precisely focusing it at those distances is harder than it needs to be.

That's the part I couldn't get along with.

For comparison, my Voigtländer 40mm f/1.2 focuses to 0.5m. Its focus throw between 0.5m and 1m is just a little longer, but that difference completely changes the experience. I can actually make small corrections instead of constantly feeling like I've overshot focus.

The Voigtländer feels like it wants me to use its close-focusing ability.

The Thypoch feels like someone wanted 0.45m printed on the specification sheet.

But what about the images?

They're good.

There. That was easy.

The Simera is sharp, contrast is strong, colours look accurate and the bokeh is generally smooth and modern. I don't have much to complain about when it comes to the actual image quality.

Nor do I have some grand revelation about micro-contrast, three-dimensional pop or whatever term we're using this week to explain why we spent too much money on a manual-focus lens.

It's a modern, fast 50mm and the images look like they came from a good modern lens.

There is some distortion, though, which surprised me on a 50mm. It's not catastrophic, but it is noticeable enough that I'd rather it wasn't there.

Still, none of this is why I returned the lens.

If I had loved using it, I could easily have lived with the distortion.

The problem with reviewing lenses from photographs

This lens reminded me why judging manual-focus lenses purely from sample images doesn't tell the whole story.

Look through my photographs from the Simera and you might reasonably conclude that it's a very good lens.

And you'd be right.

But I don't buy manual-focus lenses only for the final image. The whole reason I'm using a Leica M instead of a technically superior autofocus camera is because I care about the process of taking the photograph too.

If a lens gets in the way of that process, I don't particularly care how impressive its MTF chart is.

The Simera got in my way.

Not dramatically. It didn't ruin photographs. It didn't fall apart. It didn't produce images that looked like they had been photographed through the bottom of a beer bottle.

I just didn't enjoy focusing it.

And with a manual-focus lens, that's a fairly important problem.

What would I buy instead?

If you're looking at the Simera because you want a fast 50mm-ish lens with close focusing, there are a few alternatives I'd consider.

Voigtländer 50mm f/1.2 Nokton

Faster, with a more manageable focusing throw. The downside is that it's a fairly substantial chunk of glass to hang from an M camera.

Leica Summilux-M 50mm f/1.4 pre-ASPH

Wonderful lens and wonderful rendering, but we're back to the old rangefinder problem: 1m minimum focusing distance.

One metre feels approximately three kilometres away once you've become accustomed to modern close-focusing M lenses.

Voigtländer 40mm f/1.2 Nokton

This is still my winner.

Yes, it's 40mm rather than 50mm. But it focuses to 0.5m, the focusing throw actually gives me enough control at close distances, it's extremely fast and I simply enjoy using it more.

And enjoyment matters.

So, is the Thypoch Simera 50mm f/1.4 bad?

No.

That's almost what makes this review annoying.

The Thypoch Simera 50mm f/1.4 ASPH is optically good, fast, attractive and offers a genuinely useful 0.45m minimum focusing distance.

For someone else, it might be exactly the lens they're looking for.

For me, the ergonomics undermine its biggest selling point.

I bought it specifically because I wanted a fast 50mm that I could use at close distances. But the extremely short focusing throw in exactly that part of the range made precise focusing at f/1.4 unnecessarily difficult.

At around €1,000, I don't want to convince myself to like a lens.

So I sent it back.

Sometimes that's the entire review.