Takumar Macro 50 4.0
In the last week of October, I was able to visit Big Bend National Park. I guided a friend up a mountain, his first big, strenuous hike. He came within about 20 feet of a momma bear and three cubs coming down the trail in the
evening. What an excitement that was for him. Neither of us saw a mountain lion during our stay, but they are sighted often enough. What a beautiful place, and this year, all of the rains have turned the scenery into the greenest and most vivid purple riot of colors one can imagine. Absolutely stunning. Between the two of us, we had six camera systems (or maybe seven, ha), all the latest and greatest in aps-c and full frame 35mm digital photography. The shooting was fun and I learned a lot. One thing I learned is that next time I go to Big Bend, I'm mounting the Takumar Macro 50 4 on the old Canon 50D to do some serious shooting. I shot so many other cameras and lenses in Big Bend that that lens was neglected until we were leaving the park. I fortunately took a series of landscapes on the way out and all the way back to civilization, some just as we left the park, and many at highway speeds (the slight blur in the lower right hand corner is highway induced, or, maybe I was shooting at f8 and did not have enough depth of field). I really enjoyed what I saw from the old macro when I opened the files (I chose the most prosaic shot I could find for showing off the quality, character of this lens). I especially liked the fact that I opened them after looking at a series of high mountain photos taken with a sonnar design screwmount, the Jupiter 37AM 135 3.5. There is a world of difference from the macro, a tessar design, and the 135 sonnar. Both of these lenses provide plenty of quality and character! I know it is a Takumar thread, but those who shoot this old tessar owe it to themselves to side by side a series of shots from the two lens designs, preferably a series that exploits their strengths. I'll leave any specific description of the peculiar character of these two styles of lens to others. But I will say in a single sentence, the grandiose spacious smooth airy sonnar shots and the flat painterly disciplined colorful and contrasty tessar shots will bring home great images from a place like Big Bend. You need both looks, styles to catch the quality of the earth and atmosphere, especially mountain and vast desert scenery. I included the same shot twice here from the macro, one being an unedited jpeg from the Canon camera set to faithful, the least aggressive, plain setting for in camera jpeg (yes, I do prefer to work from a RAW file and so on, but just not right now). The other is a lightly edited version of the same jpeg in LR. I've always found that this lens makes images that can get by without processing, and when I say get by, sometimes images are really stunning without any edit. If touchup is applied, it only needs to be ever so subtle. I probably overdid the edited shot, but I added no saturation or tweaked any colors, just a little sharpening and a little tone curve to work the ends of the histogram out almost to the edges. I shot pentax M's on a K-3 in the park, and with the AA filter off in the K-3, pictures look a degree sharper, and with a CP filter, control of color and contrast is easy. The Ms did very well on the K-3. I think with that camera, editing for sharpness in general will be almost unnecessary with this old M42 macro. I like that thought. I did not shoot the macro on the K-3. The macro resolves a lot of detail, and you can zoom in quite a lot with great satisfaction if you like doing that kind of thing. It retains almost Zeiss like detail (I did use a Zeiss wide angle in the park and am enjoying deeply zooming in for fun). The Takumar lens will produce fairly big prints from the 15 megapixel Canon camera, and I suspect it will be superb on the K-3 since it shows superior qualities of resolution over the Ms. Yeh, it really does. I found that the ST 35 3.5 produced beautiful shots in the park even though several times I shot a series of shots wide open because I accidently moved the A and M switch to the wrong position. I've managed to do that with the old 20 4.5 a few times also. You sure can get some interesting surprises when you make that mistake. The SMCT 20 held its own alongside the three other very fine wide angle lenses I was able to use. Actually, it held its own against more wides than that since we shot crop and ff systems, all with top notch wide angle lens options. I just wasn't personally able to shoot all of them by a long shot. The old 20 sometimes needs some PP which is fine with me since its quality is unique and the lens is worth some time at the computer.
I was not able to use some of my favorite Takumars this time around (8 element 50, some auto taks, and 200 3.5 especially), but there will be a next time to try those out in the heavenly environment of Big Bend. I don't see a necessity for ridding myself of these great lenses while having access to, or owning the latest gear. This Takumar stuff can't quite be replaced!
One more thought. I'm not so certain that full frame is really so necessary at all for getting higher quality in digital. Of course, I'd like to be the first to try out my old Pentax film lenses on a Pentax FF camera, ha!
---------- Post added 11-05-15 at 07:59 PM ----------
Very fine. Love that 8 element lens.
