Mini review Super Takumar 55mm f2

Now this is a funny little lens.
Lens: Super Takumar 55mm F2.0 M42
Year : around the early 1960’s
Price paid : $ 19.00 (yeah no kidding)
This is a lens that is fully manual and needs a convertor to be used on your system, this means it will work on all systems that provide a convertor. The mount is called the M42 mount and has it’s origins with the company Zeiss for it’s Contax S cameras but was also used by Pentacon a brand name and later Praktica. Because it was a great mount that could be used for many different systems the popularity grew very quickly in America it was used by Pentax so as you can see it was for that time the “universal” mount.

There are some different convertors available to mount these lenses on your DSLR, the one I would advise you to buy is the one that supports the AF confirmation system. This means that although the lens is 100% manual you will at least see when you have proper focus, the convertors will retail for between 20.00 and 40.00 US so they won’t break the bank.

Now one of the big advantages of the Sony A99 I find is the EVF and also with these kind of lenses it proves to be an awesome thing to have. Thanks to the EVF you can close the lens down without loosing light in your viewfinder, the EVF will just adjust for the loss in light and you will see a nice an bright image, same goes for getting the focus. When shooting manual I will not only use the focus confirmation mark but also the peaking option, this way it’s very easy to get the focus as perfect as possible.

So why did I buy this lens?
I was actually looking for two other lenses and one of my places to go is www.keh.com they deliver worldwide and have great service and prices, in the past I bought my whole Mamiya RZ67ProII system from them and some 645 lenses so when I was looking for lenses for my A99 keh was of course one of the choices I had on my list (next to ebay and marktplaats), when I completed my order I saw this little lens for $19.00 and thought…. “Well why not, for that kind of money what can happen” right? So I ordered the lens.

During the workshop with Manon this weekend it was the first time I testdrove the lens and I must say I’m hugely surprised. It seems to be an ongoing story but this lens is awesome. And let’s be clear, it’s not as good as the Minolta 50mm 1.4 which I also bought but…. there is a HUGE price difference. But that being said the lens beats most “kit lenses” I tried in the past, now when you read this series of reviews you will find out that I’m very enthusiastic about the lenses up until now, now don’t think I’m easily impressed……… but I have to say that I am beginning to wonder why almost every old lens I pickup for ridiculously low prices actually beat some of the newest glass available in the lower classes, one would expect that even the most simple lens manufactured today would beat a lens from the early 60’s right? Well I guess not…..

The first image was shot in the studio.
At around f11 the lens is RAZORSHARP and has great definition and 3 dimensionality. But that’s not that hard of course on f11 most lenses are great….

So after the studio session we also went out and the following images where shot wide open on f2.0

Now wide open the story is a bit different, the lens is not soft but also not 100% razorsharp, but I would say more than usable.
Let’s first look at a 100% crop from the studio session.

And here a 100% crop from the outside shot.

All images are retouched in Photoshop the way I normally retouch the images, tinting is done with AlienSkin Exposure.

Conclusion
For 19.00 US you can’t really go wrong, but I would like to add that if this lens would have cost me 50.00 US I would still love it but for a little bit more you can buy the Minolta 50mm 1.7 which has AF and works natively. But if you’re (like me) just interested in shooting with more exotic glass than this one is a lens you really cannot pass on.

Model : Manon
Styling : Nadine