Monday, January 17, 2011

Pentax Takumar 55mm/f2 : a bargain lens part II

Hi again, Part II of my bargain lens series:

 I already showed you some shots taken with the Takumar 50/1.4 and its awesome, and the wide angle 28 nature lens, plus the 35mm *normal* lens , but there is an overlooked gem in the Takumar range , the 55mm series

 This lens comes in2 varieties, the 55/1.8 and the 55/f2 , mine is the 55/f2 and it cost me 22 dollars , I bought it to use as my bad weather lens , or a lens i can pop onto a camera and not worry if it gets ruined or dirty, so of course I used in once in the rain and it took some phenomenal shots!

The shot to the left is during a fall rainstorm wide open at f2.0 full size hereand the camera was wrapped up in a plastic grocery bag and the lens also. The trick was to unscrew the UV filter from the lens, wrap the whole rig in the bag, then rescrew on the filter OVER the bag, then remove it again and you have a perfect circle for the lens , just pop the filter back on and a rubber band to stop the bag opening and you are good to go ( Its actually quicker to do than it took to type and read all this)

 One of the rumours about the 55 series of lenses is that they are identical, but the ones that didnt pass the wuality inspection for f 1.8 were remarked as f2.0s instead , I dont know if thats true, but it was on the internet so it must be . This lens can be found now for about 50 dollars, and the M42>EOS adapter was the fotodiox one I got for 10 dollars or so . The out of focus rendering is really cool, and with a bit of goofing with the light balance i made the shot look like the Vangelis Album cover to Beaubourg ,  by some strange coincidence, i was listening to Vangelis while doing the post - processing in Lightroom!

laterz

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