Review of Asahi S-M-C Takumar 55mm/1.8

Takumars are often great wonder of quality, and so are normals like this Asahi S-M-C Takumar 55mm/1.8. My most used lenses are the normal primes (around 50mm) so naturally I wanted a Takumar of some sort in the normal range since I collect them. I managed to find an auction with some great stuff…

The purchase
I got this on swedish ebay in a package with a lot of stuff. There was this Super-Multi-Coated Takumar 55mm/1.8 lens and then:

• Asahi Pentax Spotmatic SLR in great condition
• Tele-Tokina 105mm/f2.8 lens which turned out to be really rare
• Soligor 35mm/3.5 which I sold
• Gossen Sixtar lightmeter
• big Braun 370 BVC flash I can’t get to work (corroded batteries)
• filters and accessories

All for about $40 and then shipping. I think that was a good price. Some of the items are now sold, I keep the ones I use.

The lens
It is a M42-lens with manual focus and aperture. To use it on a DSLR I need a M42-adapter. Like many of the Asahi lenses from the time it has a button for Auto / Manual-mode and you can use this to open and close the aperture while focusing. Very handy. This is well buit, you can feel the quality turning the ring – the focusring is very well balanced, not to stiff, not to loose and fast (not to much turn). It is hard to describe the feeling, but you just know that it’s good quality when holding it.

The Super-Multi-Coated Takumar lenses from Asahi was manufactured from 1971-1976, during the development of multicoating. The filterthread is 49mm. It’s a slim lens like many other manual, normal primes. This and other 50mm primes of the Takumar era goes for $30 on ebay.

Results
I think this lens is at it’s best with saturated images and nice soft bokeh. Good for the autumn leafs or portraits. On my Canon EOS 350D the cropfactor is 1.6 giving this lens the imagesize of a 88mm lens (although it really means less of the lens projection is being used). Can be sharp if needed too. I think this lens is best used at a shallow depth of field. Not because it is bad otherwise, but because that’s where it’s strength is.

For some reason I often get wrong focus with this lens even though it feels easy to focus. But when it gets right, it gets good. I’ve shot some photos in to the sun without problem so I guess the coating is ok.

I like this lens, but it has some great competition in my collection so it don’t get used every day.

Images

See images below. You can also watch my set at Flickr.

Pros

• Easy to focus, smooth ring turning and fast moving
• Very well built with metal
• Sharpness, although some think it’s a bit soft at f1.8
• Bokeh is soft
• Vibrant / saturated
• Value for money (one remaining bargain amongst mf-lenses)
• Good enough coating

Cons

• Min aperture f16
• Eventhough easy focus I feel that I miss focus often with this lens… not sure why, but I’m quite convinced it’s just me (or the small viewfinder in the DSLR I have) in this case.

Reading
Reviews at Pentaxforums.com
Topic at Manual Focus Forum
Super-Takumar version at MFLenses