Auto Takumar 85mm/1.8 on Pentax Spotmatic Camera

The purchase
I bought this lens Asahi Auto Takumar 85mm/1.8 from my friend Daniel together with another lens. I guess this was about 800 SEK (approximately 76€, $98, £66 at the moment of writing) of the price, a bargain because I have later seen it on ebay for about $200. This is in good condition, only problem was a little stiff aperture ring but it loosened up with some exercise. Normal wear on hood and mount. A couple of other friends here in Örebro also bought lenses from Daniel at the same time and he shipped them all to me, so we had a little package-opener party.

Auto Takumar 85mm/1.8

The lens
Auto Takumar 85mm/1.8 is a M42-mounted lens. This means I can mount it on Canon EOS with an adapter. M42 also works with adapter on DSLRs from Pentax, Olympus ans Sony. It also work on all M42 screwmount cameras offcourse.

The optical design is 5 elements in 4 groups. It’s quite wide for an early Takumar lens, 55mm filterdiameter (smaller then many other 85mm-lenses though). It was produced 1960-1964. It has aperturering in the front, nothing I have though of that much, but now I kind of feel I like that design since I can hold the lens steady while changing aperture. Weight 330g. My copy came with an original hood. The whole thing is made of metal offcourse, no plastic feeling anywhere. It has a button which I can use to open the aperture temporarily, I seldom use it hough since I often shoot with his lens at wide apertures.

Asahi Auto Takumar 85mm/1.8 from side

Results
This is probably the best lens I own. Sharp but the bokeh is fantastic – really soft even in flares. The Auto Takumar 85mm/1.8 is good for portraits but also works great for naturephotography. It’s easy to isolate a sharp object to a milkysoft background. Close focus is 85cm, not great but ok. I like the focal length, on my EOS 350D the cropfactor makes it 136mm. Offcourse f-stop 1.8 is fast for a short telephoto.

I answered a question on Flickr earlier today, which lens I would pick if I could only keep one. The answer was Auto Takumar 85mm/1.8. In fact, the list below “cons” will be short since I can’t find many cons.

Mount of Asahi Auto-Takumar 85mm f1.8

A note on later versions
The later Super-Takumar and SMC version, one with different f-stop (1.9) have a different optical formula. Some people say those are much better, I have even read advise to avoid the Auto-Takumar but I feel that’s a bit stupid and write it down to the “all things newer is better”-myth. Sure, they have more glass and coating – which make their properties different and in som ways “better”, but to disregard this fantistic Auto Takumar lens because of that is insane. For me it still outshines all other lenses I have tried including modern primes.

Images

Leaf with butter background

Portrait of my daughter

Frozen leaf

Selfportrait

In town

Pros
+ Best bokeh ever
+ Fast f-stop, clear viewfinder image
+ Build quality… metal… solid like a tank.
+ Size (from what I’ve read most 85s are larger).
+ Button to let you temporarily open the “springloaded” aperture while focusing.

Cons
- Stiff aperture in my copy
- If it’s really important to you, I guess single-coating is a con. But I haven’t noticed it.

Reading
http://www.taunusreiter.de/Cameras/Pentax_Takumar_85mm.html
http://www.pentaxforums.com/lensreviews/showproduct.php?product=284 (they have mixed it up with Super-Multi-Coated)
http://forum.takumar.org/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=48
New: Asahi Pentax Auto Takumar 85mm f/1.8 Lens Review on MFLenses

• Review of Pentax Super Takumar 35mm/3.5
• Review of Auto Yashinon-DX 50mm/1.7 m42-lens
• Review of Yashica ML 50mm/2
• Review of Pentacon Auto 50mm/1.8
• Review of Asahi S-M-C Takumar 55mm/1.8

Pentax Super Takumar 35mm/3.5, an m42 lens.

The purchase
I purchased this lens from a friend on the net for 200 swedish kronor (about 20€). He keeps nagging about these Super Takumars, so I wanted to see what all the fuzz was about ;) He said the lens was worn, but it was just some external colour disappeared, everything else feels very good. Most of the time, the Pentax lenses go for some money both in Sweden and on ebay.

The lens
Pentax Super Takumar 35mm/3.5, has a M42-mount so for my Canon EOS 350D I’ve used an adapter. The build quality is extremely nice, and feel in the focusring is charming. The aperturering clicks in to it’s values, which is a good thing because with this one I think it’s really important to use stop-down metering.

Results
The bokeh is good, one details is that the flares are not round. But otherwise soft, pleasant bokeh. The colours feel very saturated and nice, rich. I had a hood on the lens when I took the images below, not a Pentax hood but a rubber hood in the filtermount. I think you can get sharp images, but some pictures I’ve taken feels soft in a positive way. I should mention that I don’t often work to get sharp images, it’s not often a very important criteria for me (as you might have noticed a lot of my images play with fog, light and such).

I really like some of the images I’ve taken with this lens since I got it, offcourse it’s not all down to the lens but it means something when you got a lens you feel comfortable with. It’s actually my first 35mm prime along with the Yashica ML 35mm f2.8 (which I’m also testing at the moment).

Images

Solros

Bakom station

Parkerad dimma

Svartvit utsikt

Stol i barack

Pros

• Great build quality
• Can be sharp, can be soft (control with f-stop)
  
• Ok bokeh
• Nice, saturated colours
• Feels really nice to use, fantastic feeling in the focusring :)

Cons

• Not round flares (not round aperture), if you like that sort of thing
• Can be a bit hard to find the right focus

Reading
Opinions from the Pentax Forums users.
There’s a lot of links if you search Google. If you have ideas please suggest them in the comments to this post :)

• Review of Asahi Super-Takumar 135mm/3.5 M42-lens
• Review of Yashica ML 50mm/2
• What makes a good lens?
• Review of Asahi S-M-C Takumar 55mm/1.8
• Review of Asahi Auto Takumar 85mm/1.8