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02-09-2015, 02:23 PM   #16
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QuoteOriginally posted by Pioneer Quote
They are lenses, that's all. They are not better than newer lenses, they are just different.

Like many older manual focus lenses they are built to a higher standard of quality, much like the cameras they were attached to. This of course does not mean they produce better photographs than newer lenses, just that they will feel better while you are taking pictures. As mentioned, they focus manually. Unfortunately not many Pentax digital cameras are easy to focus manually. The viewfinders are very bright but that doesn't help with focusing. The older ground glass focus screens were less bright but it was fairly easy to see the lens come into focus. You will probably want to buy and install a new focus screen with focus aids like the Katzeye brand.

Even though the lens coatings were very good in their day, they do not really compete well with today's coatings. You will see higher chromatic aberrations as well as lower contrast than what even the lowly Pentax DA 18-55 kit lens is capable of. They also tend to be a bit more subject to flare than newer Pentax lenses are so you should always have a hood on the lens and be extra careful if you are shooting into the sun. Additionally these lenses were designed for film so they may not work as well on digital sensors.

Even the newest of the Takumar lenses are getting quite old by now and a lot of them have had a very rough life. Things that often pop up are hazy and scratched lens elements, fungus, damaged filter threads, bent helical tubes, and other assorted ills. Some of these can be fixed, some not so well. At a minimum you should consider having them serviced by a competent technicians.

Another problem that is related to their age, as well as to general properties of anything that is manufactured within a range of tolerances, is the fact that you can own a cosmetically nice looking Super Tak 50/1.4 that performs very poorly while your friend can own the very same lens that performs like it was built by elves to photograph fairies.

To summarize, Super Taks are not the magic bullet that some people seem to think they are. They are very old lenses that were designed to compete with other lenses being built in their same time period, not to compete against modern lenses. The honest truth is that the Pentax kit zoom will almost always kick their butt.

However, if your camera is properly set up to focus these manual focus lenses, then they can provide you with a different rendering in your photographs that you may like. It will be a more vintage, lower contrast, more painterly type of rendering than what you will get from the Pentax kit zoom. You may like, some people do. But don't be surprised if it doesn't turn out perfectly at first, or maybe even at all.

BTW, although it may not sound like it I love these lenses myself and shoot them quite regularly with my Spottie and SV. But I also recognize their faults and limitations and am prepared to work with those. Like I said, no magic bullets, just interesting photography with limitations.
Excellent summary! About the only thing left out was that one of the attractions is price. Try buying a modern 50mm f/1.4 or 85mm f/1.4 or 105mm f/2.8 and see what the cost is. Of course the coatings are not as good, maybe the optics are not as good and they are manual focus and manual aperture. But it is great to be able to shoot with glass that you would not ever be able to afford if you bought new, modern lenses.

02-09-2015, 02:34 PM   #17
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That IS a good summary!
02-09-2015, 02:50 PM - 2 Likes   #18
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QuoteOriginally posted by Pioneer Quote
The honest truth is that the Pentax kit zoom will almost always kick their butt.
Ridiculous statement .. apart from that - very good .
02-09-2015, 04:03 PM   #19
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This question is asked, almost verbatim, about four times a year. The succinct answer may be summarized in a few simple points:
  • Reliably very good to excellent optically. This was true when they were made and is still true today. With the exception of coatings, modern lenses offer little improvement over and often are close copies of the screw-mount Takumar designs.
  • Excellent build
  • Compact
  • Great value
To balance the pros, here is a short list of drawbacks:
  • As with all vintage lenses, condition may be an issue. Lubricants dry out, fungus invades, and parts may simply wear to the point where they no longer work
  • Stop-down metering is the norm for all versions except S-M-C/smc when paired with Spotmatic F/Electro/ES/ESII cameras
  • Automatic aperture (lens stops down at time of exposure) is only supported on vintage screw mount cameras with that feature. On K-mount cameras, but lens must be manually stopped down at exposure time.
I own several Taks and each is on my "will not sell" list.

Steve

02-09-2015, 04:05 PM   #20
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As opposed what Pioneer says, I feel there is definitely an edge to the Takumars which matches or rivals the quality produced by even a very high end lens. There is no comparison between the Takumars and the Pentax Kit Lens. Image quality of the Takumar is aeons ahead.. I CLAd a 200mm Takumar (which is not even the most popular one) and took a random test shot.. and wow, it was really impressive. Lots of Canon and Nikon full frame camera users use Takumar lenses, even professional photographers, and these people don't just user takumars because they are cheap. Just go to the Manual lenses forum and see how many full frame camera users use the Takumars. I've veen heard of professionals using takumars, and even heard of people who've sold their high end auto lens and stuck with a takumar because they loved it..

Bottom conclusion is, with PP you can produce an image with the Takumars which can rival any of the best lenses. The only technique you need to get used to is manual focusing. I'm not having a hard time using the manual focus even through the viewfinder, so I'm loving the Takumars.. In fact I wish I can have all of them, I just started buying them recently...

Also, the other caveat is, you can easily repair a takumar lens yourself, it does not have many moving parts, and you might not even have to unscrew many of them to clear the aperture blades.. So heck yeah, I'm ready to buy those worn down takumars as well!
02-09-2015, 04:06 PM - 1 Like   #21
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QuoteOriginally posted by Pioneer Quote
The honest truth is that the Pentax kit zoom will almost always kick their butt.
I have access to two versions of the DA 18-55/3.5-5.6 and neither is equivalent to any of my Taks at the same focal length...'nuff said. The kit is good, but not that good. As for CA...not with any that I own. Most Super Taks are as well-corrected as most current production primes...of course YMMV.


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02-09-2015, 06:35 PM   #22
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You can make up for some of the shortcomings of the inferior coatings of the Super Takumars with PP. Fundamental design is pretty good and can be seen today with the FA50 f/1.4
What cannot be understood or replicated is the near perfectly weighted focus throw and pure tactile pleasure that you get from a Tak. Carl Zeiss lenses give the same feeling of build but are a lot bigger / heavier to use, the FA Limited's (43 and 77) are to me the closest from a tactile just wanting to touch, caress the lens but are lighter and less smooth when focusing manually, you can feel the rest of the AF mechanism.
Buy one, try one and see how you get on, you mention you have a couple of M's, they may have better coatings but were built to a budget, the Super Takumar 50 f/1.4 was built to be a class leader, a showcase of Pentax design capability.

02-09-2015, 08:15 PM   #23
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QuoteOriginally posted by Pioneer Quote
The honest truth is that the Pentax kit zoom will almost always kick their butt.
At autofocus.
02-09-2015, 09:17 PM   #24
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QuoteOriginally posted by stevebrot Quote
I have access to two versions of the DA 18-55/3.5-5.6 and neither is equivalent to any of my Taks at the same focal length...'nuff said. The kit is good, but not that good. As for CA...not with any that I own. Most Super Taks are as well-corrected as most current production primes...of course YMMV.


Steve
I have had 2 different DA 15-55 lenses including the WR version and sold them both. They were good for what they were, but they were no Tak. Plus, later versions of the Taks, (S-M-C & SMC) had coatings as good as anything Asahi or Pentax had until Aerobright and Ghostless Coating came along.
02-09-2015, 11:29 PM - 1 Like   #25
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What is suprizing here,mis no one really talked about the process of actually shooting with a screw mount lens against a KMount lens.

K mounts, like the M 50/1.4 you have can only be shot in manual mode where you need to meter using either the green button, or the DOF preview. Shooting a K orM lens inAv mode shoots wide open all the time, where as M42 lenses we stopped down manually so when you shoot them on a DSLR (which I assume is the whole purpose behind this OPs post) you get a level of auto exposure that is not available on K and M lenses.

The A50/1.7 the OP has is different, the contacts permit shooting that lens in all exposure modes and also permit flash.

The real point of shooting any old lens is for most people it is fun.

I have 4 DSLR bodies, as I consider their resale value at upgrade not to be worth the loss of an additional camera. So now, my *istD and K10D both have diagonal split image finders, for use with manual focus M42 and K mount lenses. Sure, I have very good and expensive AF lenses for my K7 and K5, which are the mainstay of my camera system, but it is fun, and relaxing as a hobbyist to go out and shoot manual focus manual exposure stuff from time to time. You can play a lot with old glass, relatively inexpensively. My entire M42 kit (19 lenses ranging from 16mm through 300mm ) for example cost less than my sigma APO 70-200/2.8 EX. And most of it is also at least a stop faster than the sigma lens, so if you want to shoot a variety of focal lengths with big apertures cheaply, this is one way to do it.

But as others have said, from a quality perspective, clearly coatings are better today, but look at the photos in the takumar club, there are many in that single thread that could easily be published.
It is the photographer, not the equipment that takes photos!
02-10-2015, 01:19 AM - 1 Like   #26
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QuoteOriginally posted by Lowell Goudge Quote
What is suprizing here,mis no one really talked about the process of actually shooting with a screw mount lens against a KMount lens.
That is surprisingly often missed indeed - I particularly like Takumars with K-1 the combination of size and quality is unbeatable. Here (link: https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/12-post-your-photos/273641-people-hmmm-ac...ax-k-01-a.html) is my set of shots with Super Takumar 50mm 1.4 ( 8 element ) with K-01 - and (if somebody is interested) after scrolling further down you will see description of my approach to shoot with these delightful old primes.
02-10-2015, 02:48 AM   #27
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Well, I think the annoying truth is that after reading more about them and the comments on this thread....

...I badly want one now!

I'll stick it on my growing want-list!

Cheers all.
02-10-2015, 11:47 AM   #28
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QuoteOriginally posted by manntax Quote
That is surprisingly often missed indeed - I particularly like Takumars with K-1 the combination of size and quality is unbeatable. Here (link: https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/12-post-your-photos/273641-people-hmmm-ac...ax-k-01-a.html) is my set of shots with Super Takumar 50mm 1.4 ( 8 element ) with K-01 - and (if somebody is interested) after scrolling further down you will see description of my approach to shoot with these delightful old primes.
Very nice work manntax but very few people here will be able to get these results from a manual focus lens at all, let alone wide open at f1.4. I used a K1000 and a 50/2 exclusively for almost 20 years and we both know that focusing action with kids that well using MF lenses takes a lot of practice.

But, they can be a lot of fun sometimes and it sounds like the OP will be giving one a try. Good luck and enjoy yourself. Just try not to be too disappointed if your results don't look quite like those displayed here by manntax.
02-10-2015, 12:17 PM   #29
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QuoteOriginally posted by manntax Quote
That is surprisingly often missed indeed - I particularly like Takumars with K-1 the combination of size and quality is unbeatable. Here (link: https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/12-post-your-photos/273641-people-hmmm-ac...ax-k-01-a.html) is my set of shots with Super Takumar 50mm 1.4 ( 8 element ) with K-01 - and (if somebody is interested) after scrolling further down you will see description of my approach to shoot with these delightful old primes.
repped for talent, well done!

one thing to note here... when i did the 50mm lens tests, i noticed that there was severe focus shift coming off of f/1.4, on all 4(?) of the legacy pieces of glass that i shot... you can't see it with an ovf, but at 14.3x magnification on an evf, it's clear as day.

you should be able to see it on a pentax lcd, that has magnification? test for it on your gear.

so when opening up to focus, don't go all the way open, even one click above f/1.4 had much less focus shift... i was focusing probably 100 yards away, and there isn't any infinity focus stop with adapted lenses on the a7r.
02-10-2015, 12:24 PM   #30
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QuoteOriginally posted by Pioneer Quote
Very nice work manntax but very few people here will be able to get these results from a manual focus lens at all, let alone wide open at f1.4. I used a K1000 and a 50/2 exclusively for almost 20 years and we both know that focusing action with kids that well using MF lenses takes a lot of practice.

But, they can be a lot of fun sometimes and it sounds like the OP will be giving one a try. Good luck and enjoy yourself. Just try not to be too disappointed if your results don't look quite like those displayed here by manntax.
You are quite correct that manual focus is a learned skill Though, I would point out that manual focus with action subjects was quite successfully done long before AF became available and for many bird, wildlife, and motorsports photographers, remains the preferred option. A few months ago, I started a thread dedicated to showcasing "impossible" manual focus shots.

https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/26-mini-challenges-games-photo-stories/28...cant-done.html


Steve
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