Originally posted by pathdoc My advice to you would be to forego the Takumar for a while and find a corresponding Pentax A lens as your stepping stone towards Takumar territory. With the Takumar, you have to deal with two things - the manual focus, and the fact that your viewfinder gets ever dimmer as you stop down. In my mind, that's trying to run before you can walk. Get a Pentax A lens and you can still control aperture through the camera body and meter wide-open; this will make your first steps in MF much smaller and easier to handle. The Rikenon is also good, but metering requires use of the Green button, which is not a hassle once you get used to it. That being said, if you get a good copy the build quality of the Rikenons is absolutely beautiful; my 50/1.7 is a bit loose and sloppy on the focusing ring but my 28/2.8 and my 55/1.2P are mechanical works of art and show what is possible.
If you want more or less full control of the lens through the camera, but just want to focus manually, get the Pentax A; if you want to use the aperture ring yourself, get the Rikenon. Let the Takumar go for now. Remember also that some of the Takumars had thorium elements and are mildly radioactive, with yellow discoloration of the affected elements that will require exposure to UV light to remove. The radioactivity may or may not be an issue for you; the yellowing almost certainly will be unless the previous owner has recently got rid of it.
Thanks, I get the drift. Perhaps Takumar will have to wait for another day and that Thorium thing seems to be giving some creeps
...I have no experience with MF lenses so, is it very complex to adjust the aperture through the ring rather than a dial on the camera while trying to set other exposure settings? What would you say on the glass quality of XR Rikenon 50 mm F 1.7 vs Pentax A 50 mm f2?
---------- Post added 11-29-15 at 06:49 PM ----------
Originally posted by Quartermaster James No worries.
---------- Post added 11-29-15 at 06:55 PM ----------
Originally posted by monochrome Of those three, I would choose the Rikenon and use Green Button / Stop Down Lever metering.
Thanks, after some positive responses, Rikenon is a serious contender.