Super Takumar Lenses

[connealy]

If you are looking for a good combination of quality and economy, the

Pentax Super Takumars are hard to beat. I've owned a Spotmatic with

the 50mm f1.8 normal lens and have always considered the standard by

which I judge all my other lenses.<br>    Recently, I've

acquired a couple more Super Takumars. A friend gave me a fine old

135mm f2.5 lens that was one of the few survivors from a devasting

house fire. Shortly afterward, I purchased a 35mm f3.5 on eBay for

$35.<br>   I had to drive my wife to the airport in El Paso

yesterday, so I decided to take along the new lenses and try them out

at one of my favorite places, the War Eagles Museum in Santa Teresa.

No disappointments in performance, but I do have a few things to

learn yet about using my new tools. Both the wide-angle and the

telephoto are a little tricky to focus in low light. The wide-angle

has the great virtue of having the same filter size as my 50mm; I

thought it could also use the same collapsible shade, but I found

that it was causing a little corner vignetting.<br>    I

shot C-41 Kodak B&W film at the museum, and I really like the

tonality, latitude, speed, and fine grain. I wish my local one-hour

processor would exercise a bit more care in the processing, but the

convenience, availability and low cost of the film are hard to

beat.<br>    There a a few more shots from my afternoon at

the museum in <a href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?

folder_id=407194">this folder</a>.<br><br><center><img

src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/2463669-lg.jpg"></center>

[gib]

great shot, fun, fine lenses aren't they?

[rob_murray]

Great lenses there for sure..which film was that exactly that

you were using? I really like it for this plane shot.

Thanks

Rob

[connealy]

The film is Kodak Black & White 35mm print film. You can get it for under $3 almost anywhere and it can be processed at any one-hour photo shop in the same chemistry as the color print film.

[matt_needham]

I "inherited" several Spotmatics that my family dug out of closets when they realized I was collecting cameras. I regularly use them, and pick up Super Takumar lenses when I see a deal on a nice one. I like the 50mm f/1.4 so much I bought that adapter that allows me to use it on my K-mount bodies.

[grahams]

Mike - Not only are the Super Takumar's lovely lenses, but you have a wealth of other M42 mount lenses available to you, mostly at reasonable prices, like the original Carl Zeiss lenses. I have some of these, as well as some of the older Practika lenses.

[connealy]

Right you are Graham. I have a 135mm f2.8 mamiya/sekor that is really a fine lens. It is not quite as compact as the 135mm f2.5 Super Takumar, but I think it is just as sharp, and it has a built-in extendable shade. Would love to see some pictures from any of the non-Pentax M42 glass.

[rob_murray]

Black and White film, another question...I assume you scanned

from the negative and not from a print. Do the one hour labs

make decent prints from this film or do they have that awful

green/gray color to them? I have a darkroom, is this film hard

to print with at home or easy like Ilford XP films, if you know.

Thanks

Rob

[connealy]

I've never ordered prints from the C-41 BW film. I always just have PDQ process the film, and then I take it home an scan it on my Epson 2450 flatbed. That is not supposed to be the best scanner for 35mm, but I think the results are ok for web display and prints up to 8x10. My initial scans do have the color cast you mention, but desaturation in PS seems to take care of it. I don't have a darkroom, so someone else will have to comment on the printability of the film.

[furcafe]

And the nice thing about the old Pentax lenses (& other old M42 glass) is that you can use them w/more modern Pentax bodies (incl. the new *ist digital) w/appropriate adapters.

[titrisol]

Yes they are wonderful.

I love my 50/1.4 (radiactive type), it has a different kind of color transmission than the newer ones and color fotos have an incredible tonality.

 

I love the 200/4 and the 28/3.5 too. The 28/3.5 I got was still in its original box and had a square shade to avoid vignetting.

[gauthier]

I'm afraid that my four Spot bodies are my main workhorses... as well as the most recent cameras I own. The 35/3.5 is a sleeper -it was designed as a high resolution lens and it's still painfully sharp. The 50/1.8 is good, too.

 

Check my portfolio for lots of examples of Spot photography with 24, 35, 50, 55, 105 and 200 mm lenses.

[silent1]

I also have a radioactive (according to serial number) Super Takumar 1.4/50 -- easily the best lens I own. I'd been shooting a Schneider Radionar in large format, and an Industar-24 (coated Tessar copy) on 6x9, and thought I had sharp -- and then I dug up my Spottie with the Super Takumar. I can crop a nearly Minox sized piece out of the 35 mm negative and it's still sharp; the best focused images I've gotten from the Moskva start to look a little soft with crops much below 35 mm frame size. I'm attaching a 100% crop from 2400 ppi, about 6 mm square, shot with the Super Takumar (Tri-X in Caffenol, so a little grainy); there are details recorded that are smaller than the grain!<div></div>

[john falkenstine]

Hope...Hope...is this the same threaded mount as my "new" ST705 Fujica uses?, which BTW has a 1.8 55mm Fujinon..recently ran film thru the camera and found it to work excellent.

[gene m]

Damn Mike ! Stop posting shots taken with cameras I don't own. I don't need to covet any more cameras.

 

The surface of the plane is beautiful.

[gauthier]

Donald: In my experience, the 50/1.8 is much sharper than the radioactive 50/1.4. Actually, I stopped using my 50/1.4 lenses when I bought my first 50/1.8. Not to say that the 50/1.4 is a bad lens: we both know it's a superb piece of glass. But the 50/1.8 resolves finer details at most apertures.

[connealy]

<i>Damn Mike ! Stop posting shots taken with cameras I don't own. I don't need to covet any more cameras.</i><br><br>Actually, I've been thinking I need to get back there with a pinhole or a Holga. Nobody objects to setting up a tripod at the museum and the planes are very cooperative subjects. The only problem is that the exhibits are festooned with signs (but I didn't see any surveillance cameras).

[gene m]

Signs and utility wires are the bane of photographers everywhere.

[jay_.]

<<If you are looking for a good combination of quality and economy, the Pentax Super Takumars are hard to beat>>

 

Except by Super Multi Coated Takumars, which are not that much more expensive but are vastly less prone to contrast-robbing flare and internal reflections.

[dan_fromm2]

Several centuries ago, when shopping for my first SLR, I was frightened away from the Pentax Spotmatic because it had stop-down metering. I ended up with a Nikkormat, which seemed faster-working and easier to use, and haven't looked back very much. I could just as well have got a Minolta SRT or a Canon FT or a Konica AutoReflex, but since my brother had Nikon gear I got Nikon too so we could share equipment.

 

Clearly the Spotmatic and M42 mount lenses appeal to many.

 

So tell me, folks, what I misunderstood about using a Spotmatic or other M42 body back when. And what advantages do lenses in M42 have over comparable old Nikkors, Rokkors, Canon lenses, or Hexanons? Lower price? Less expensive bodies? Greater abundance? Superior quality? What am I missing here?

 

I understand that tastes differ and that what suited me need not suit everyone else, and vice versa.

 

Cheers,

 

Dan

[connealy]

I would be surprised if the Pentax lenses were better than Nikons, but I think they're about as good. And, you can get them for close to the price of Russian glass. The Spotmatic is light and fast handling. I wouldn't be surprised if the Nikon metering offered some advantage in certain circumstances, but in the real world I think experience tends to obliterate such distinctions. For instance, I don't think I paid any attention to the meter in the shot of the jet; I really don't know where I would have pointed it to get a reading that would have been more helpful than my general knowledge of the capacities of the film, lens and camera.

[gib]

I think in a way, the relative compactness of the Pentax M42 lenses are more like the Olympus line. Way back when the cost was less than Nikon. Now, the prices are ridiculously low, for all metal, solid construction and very fine optics.

 

My first SLR was a SP1000. Sold it right after university when trying to consolidate my financial swamp. A few years later I went for a Nikon FG. Now I have a few AI Nikkors.

 

I have 28, 35, 50, 55, 105, 135, and 200 Takumar lenses. Also a Carl Zeiss Jena 20mm 2.8 lense.

 

I am mulling over reducing my collection and am considering get my Pentax bodies CLA'd and sticking primarily to them.

[silent1]

<i>Not to say that the 50/1.4 is a bad lens: we both know it's a superb piece of glass. But the 50/1.8 resolves finer details at most apertures.</i><p>

 

Aw, Phillipe, now you've done it -- you put another photo item on my (already much too long) list. Though I don't honestly understand how a lens can get significantly better; I suppose one might be able to tell the difference with TMX or Tech Pan, but certainly not with Tri-X, which is almost all I shoot in 35 mm. OTOH, I seldom need f/1.4 in a situation where f/1.8 wouldn't work, especially since I started using Diafine, so there's little lost.<p>

 

Argh.

[titrisol]

The super takumars were the first lenses to be super-multi-coated, and Asahi Optical acquired the patent for the process.

 

Flaring, resolution, etc are still better than the old nikons (pre 1970s).

All the other manufacturer had to pay Pentax Corp to use that technology and it took them a while to catch up

 

 

<<<Mike Connealy , jun 23, 2004; 12:41 p.m.

I would be surprised if the Pentax lenses were better than Nikons, but I think they're about as good. And, you can get them for close to the price of Russian glass. The Spotmatic is light and fast handling. I wouldn't be surprised if the Nikon metering offered some advantage in certain circumstances, but in the real world I think experience tends to obliterate such distinctions. For instance, I don't think I paid any attention to the meter in the shot of the jet; I really don't know where I would have pointed it to get a reading that would have been more helpful than my general knowledge of the capacities of the film, lens and camera.>>>>

[al_kaplan1]

Pentax was the first to hype multi-coating in their advertizing! They did hold some patents also, but other ways of multi-coating existed and other companies were doing it. The fabled 7 layer coating actually had several layers that served no optical function, but were merely there to allow one opticaly useful layer to adhere to another while keeping them as distinct seperate layers, or even to adhere to the glass itself! Leitz (Leica) was an early pioneer of multiple layers of coating.