35mm vs the rest

A couple of weeks ago I took a picture of a tree using an old Leica body and an old Jupiter 50mm lens. Got the colour negs developed and scanned to disc. The result is the photo on the left - converted to B&W. Taken at f2 to isolate the tree from the background

Today I was in the same spot and I thought I'd try and re-produce the shot with my lovely Panasonic Lumix LX5. I zoomed it to the equivalent of 50mm on 35mm film - which is only 11mm. Although the lens is an f2.0 at 11mm it is f2.7 wide open. The result is on the right.

The lighting was different so the contrast of the left can't be all down to the lens and could be added to the one of the right but then the background would be even more prominent.

Bottom line is you just can't get the depth of field and feel with a small sensor and short lenses.

Tomorrow I think I'll try it with my Nikon D80 and see how pleasing it is with a 35mm f1.8 - weather permitting!