kenafein asked me in the
Example picture thread why I prefer the Takumar over the Samyang. As I do not like to spam the example picture thread lets answer the question here.
The Samyang 85 F1.4 is a fine lens, but I noticed that in critical lighting situation the contrast & saturation could be higher. I always called it "my beautyful bitch".
With the right lighting it created amazing pictures, but if it was not handled right (by me) the pictures were (sometimes not even) just OK. So I did not feel confident enough with it and decided to let go.
The Takumar, as far I can tell after a few days, seems to be a little bit more "robust" in that manner. It seems to have a little bit more contrast in bad lighting situations and appears in such situation sharper to me.
The Samyang is build nicely but not to be compared with the Takumar. The Takumar is complete mady of metal and has kind of a limited touch.
The Samyang is solid, but I had to exchange my first lens. Due to tolerances there was a high friction when focussing.
The Takumar can not be used with a P-TTL flash (as it is not A-type lens). There the Samyang is definitely in advance. Besides that the Takumar is easy to handle. In my opinion better than M-type lenses, as you do not have to press the green button to measure the exposure. As the aperture is completely set manually, the camera will measure it "correctly". I figured out that I have to set the Camera to approximately +1EV to get a correct exposure and that seems to work fine.
Here some shots of both:
Samyang 85mm 1.4
The last one is kind of an example of for the low contrast I mentioned. I could correct it, but it just not perfect (and I had pictures much worse).
Takumar 85mm 1.8
I only have a few pictures yet...
Last edited by vespats; 08-27-2011 at 09:34 AM.