Asahi Pentax Super MC Takumar 50/1.4 : Sushi tools

Im almost out of stock archival images!! Oh noes!
this was from last weeks sushi escapade, I didnt realise how much I manipulate some of these scenes until I looked atthe files afterwards .

I dont mean by post processing , I mean moving items around, or removing things from the shot , or angling menus and/or napkins to reflect light around. As you can see in the shot to the left , Its a bottle of Soy sauce, 3 small dishes ( I dont know their proper name) and chopsticks that I removed from their wrapper but unseparated. The first few didnt work out, but once I removed the napkins and placemats , and slid the items directly under a spotlight, it was the shot I was looking for . My daughter says I used a menu to reflect the light onto the bottle.

 Super Multi Coated Takumar 50/1.4 at f1.4 and ISO 800 .


The news I was talking about was grabbing an actual autofocus pentax lens, the FA 50/1.4 that has the same optical formula as this lens, so we shall see how the images turn out.

Pentax Super MC Takumar 50mm/f1.4 : Miso Hungry ( desktop wallpaper)

Someone asked me for a desktop wallpaper recently, so I made this one from the *sushi set*

 I focused about 3 inches prior to the bowl and i had it away from the spotlights so it has a nice subdued lighting, and a rich colour to it all.

 The top part is the bowl of miso soup, and the bottom left is a piece of Red Tuna Sushi ( yum!) taken at ISO 800 on my Pentax KX and my lens of yore, Super Multi Coated takumar 50/1.4

Full size here, enjoy

Super Takumar 50/1.4 : Miso Soup for the soul

 Continuing with my theme of food establishment fotos, I took my eldest daughter to the local authentic sushi bar , well I guess she took me because I wanted to go to the coffee place :)

 We had a 24 piece party pack of sushi and maki and it was delicious except for the miso soup which I didnt like ( she didnt either)  being a kid she got away with " I dont like it" and I had to make do with " I left some in the bowl so I can take some photos of it ":)

 Im trying something new that I learned on another site , Thorsten Overgaards excellent site . For outdoors Im using ISO 100 for indoors ISO 800 , and I am also trying to use the lenses as close to wide open as possible , so this shot is:

 Pentax KX with 1971 Asahi Pentax Takumar 50/1.4 @ 1.4 ISO 800 and shutter speed of  1/60 second. The in-body IS ability of the KX is a godsend for these type of shots , and I also found that the density of the Takumar makes the camera really easy to hold steady as it ends up being well balanced.  full size here

 I mostly took this shot as I noticed the crazy bokeh of the spotlights in the restaurant , and I cheated alittle by sliding my bowl directly underneath one of them !

later , now Im hungry, just not for Miso

Contax Carl Zeiss Planar 85/1.4 T* : Portraiture excellence

One of the bargains I found that is normally not a bargain was my Contax Planar 85 lens , or to call it by its full name the:

Cpntax Carl Zeiss T* 85/1.4 Planar   I got for a really great price from a retired photographer in Saskatoon

The downside of it is that it wont work on my KX without some hardware modifications and I am reluctant to do so as its a rare German made version as I said before.

 The upside is : the incredible clarity and definition even on a 7 year old Canon Rebel XT , this was taken at a party for my daughter and using natural light only . Handheld and wide open my mother seems to pop out of the frame, but as she said " I look like an old woman" funny how being 67 does that to someone!

DDR Pentacon 50/1.8 : bargain lenses part Vb

Ok,
  I was a bit disappointed with the performance of the pentacon outdoors in the harsh winter glare, I need to buy a lenshood methinks! Saying that, I went out for a coffee with a friend of mine, and it was -21C outside, which apart from being cold as all get out was great for my car stereo, i dont think the sound has ever been so clear and crisp!

 I ordered my usual drink and for some reason this time it was bubbly, I mean REALLY bubbly, so before i put in my dairy product I took 3 or 4 shots with the Pentacon 50 wide open at ISO 800 .

 One major advantage of the Pentacon is that it can focus down to 0.3 metres, so thats what I did to see how the quality and depth of field are, and i must say i am pleasantly surprised  , the middle bubbles are in focus, the foreground ones arent and the ones at the back of the mug have the crazy Euro-style swirly bokeh that I like in these oldies. Im thinking I should print it out and see if the coffee shop will hang it up.........

Helios 44m-6 58mm f2 : Bubbling blue clouds

This summer I seemed to spend alot of time taking shots of sunsets and sunrises ( a good thing!) as we had so many that were gorgeous , or maybe it was that I never paid attention to them before, Im not sure which.

 Once again, the trusty Pentax KX and the soviet M42 gem Helios 44m-6 , the lens for some reason has a way of making the images *pop* I guess thats what you get when you copy a lens formula from Carl Zeiss , luckily as I mentioned before, it was 40 dollars and not 200+

This was taken at f4 and the sun had started to set, but the clouds above were still in the sunlight and gave off the awesome radiance that you see here

l8r

A little lens flare for a cool January day: Pentacon 50/1.8

Just a quick post here, I decided to see how that pentacon 50/1.8 did when it was sunny out this winter, not so good I fear, it is tremendously flare prone and even by using lightroom to within an inch of its life, this image still isnt as good as I would like it to be, but I put that down to my lack of l33t post-processing skillz than any deficiencies with Adobes excellent lightroom 3

  This is the tree outside my house taken at f2 ( f1.8 has no shape to the out of focus highlights) and you can see the hexagonal flares in the ice drops quite readily

Super Multi Coated Takumar 50mm/1.4 : Portrait in natural light ISO 1600

I went to a kids birthday party and took along my trusty KX and the Super MC Takumar 50mm/1.4 just in case :)

  This is my go-to lens when I want to just shoot and not worry about anything, I had a lot of fun and most importantly so did the kids, especially once the cake was broken out

This shot is at F1.4 wide open and amazingly its at ISO 1600! the credit goes to the KX's excellent sensor and Adobe lightroom 3s noise reduction algorithm , you can see that the eyes are in focus, and almost everything else is smoothly out of focus , the lighting from the right is reflected from outdoors and is bouncing off all the snow , roll on spring!

Contax Carl Zeiss Planar 85mm /1.4 T* sharp as a razor......well if someone else uses it

This is one of the sharpest lenses ever created, so of course I used it to take some abstract nature shots :)

  This one was taken wide open outside the YMCA as the summer sun dropped behind the trees and buildings , using the older Canon Rebel XT as Pentax wont accept the Contax /Yashica mount lenses unless you do some hardware modifications to it , its not destructive, but a bit pricey and fiddly the gentlemans website is here: Contax and Leica mods for Pentax   I havent tried them myself, but I hear really good things about the work he has done for others .

A small tidbit about this lens is that it is the MMG version ( G for made in W Germany, as opposed to the MMJ made in, you guessed it, Japan)  I really like this lens, but its worth quite  abit of money and I dont want to hack/mod it, so I will probably sell it in the near future and use the money for something almost as good ( details to follow!)

thanks for reading, now I am running out of archived photos and will have to get to work!

DDR Pentacon 50/1.8 : bargain lenses part V

Here is another inexpensive gem for a M42 lens, the East German Pentacon 50/1.8 , it appears to be similar to a carl Zeiss lens, but instead of costing 250+ you can find them on ebay for 30-50 dollars!

 I think Pentacon was a conglomerate of optics manufacturers that was created in the 40s/50s in  East Germany from a lot of the smaller businesses that were still around after WW2 , but I am not 100% sure about that . The lens I have is well made , and all metal and it feels really dense, Ill have to do some research to see what its construction internally is, because it feels like it has a lot of glass in there. Focusing is smooth and its called a 50/1.8 MC so I assume its multi coated , but again Im not sure. All I know is , it takes very pleasing shots and it can focus very close, about 30 cm  , which is almost macro territory!

This is a shot taken in my computer room using the M42 adapter on my Pentax KX , and its my daughters curly hair , I was so close the depth of field is razor thin, but as you can see, parts of the strands are in focus and are quite well defined  , this was wide open at 1.8 and using ambient light, so as usual, a shot I took for a goof ended up being a keeper , I should rely on my instinct more often and not try and force creativity

laterz

Pentax Takumar 50mm/f1.4 : A very Smooootth bokeh

One of the reasons I like these primes is that invariably they have excellent optics for a fraction of the price of a new lens , this is taken in the coffee shop ( I really do have other pictures!) and i focused too short on purpose and in Lightroom i adjusted the white balance ( maladjusted actually) to tungsten instead of fluorescent because I like blue and it accentuated the blue glow from the reflections from the microwave

 The only thing I really had to change was the noise in the image, the Pentax KX takes really good JPGs but I am now using mostly RAW as the vintages lenses have a tendency to over or underexpose depending on the f-stop used  ( no correction inside the camera like the fancy new lenses) and i found that trying to add 2 stops to a jpg ended up with banding

 The plus side is that when you use higher ISO settings, the RAW files actually look like film grain, so it fits perfectly my *vision* of what i wanted to accomplish with this project, shoot filmic imagery without using film :)

ISO 800 wide open at F1.4 focused about 1 metre before the object , and hand held , the body image stabilisation is a godsend!

Pentax Takumar 50mm/f1.4 : How good is it in low light?

One of the main reasons I like the older Prime lenses it that they have excellent optics and invariably they are VERY fast . This helps me in a few ways as first of all I dont like using flash too much on my family as we are very pale and a flash makes us look like twilight fans.

 Second of all, a wide open aperture thats under F2.0 has a razor thin depth of field that works great for portraiture as it can isolate your subject easier to cut out background or foreground clutter in the case to the left

I took  this inside a dimly lit coffee shop on an overcast day in january using ISO 800 and f1.4 wide open on my Super MC Takumar 50/1.4 , the Pentax KX body has really good higher ISO capabilities, and 800 is as good as 200 on my rebel XT , but the KX is 7 years newer :)

 As you can see from the shot , my daughters eyes and face are in focus and everything else is blurred, but not blurry to the point of annoyance, I find it actually quite a pleasing effect as the blur is subtle and smooth
the only reason I converted it to Black and White was I thought the tones and contrast looked better in B+W as opposed to colour :)

bye for now

Pentax Takumar 135mm/f3.5 : bargain lenses part IV

I was posting about bargain lenses and I realised that basically the rule of thumb seems to be grab a Pentax Takumar :) I forgot that I bought the 135/3.5 early on and even though I find it a *boring* lens I have taken quite a few shots with it that I liked!

 This shot is from a whale-watching trip we took this summer in the bay of fundy , and even with the crop factor making the lens 202mm the whales were still VERY close , and the definition of the lens isnt as bad as I remember . and the shot was taken at F8 , you can actually see the whales mouth under the water ! full size version is here

 The 135/3.5 is a hugely overlooked lens, because Pentax also made a 135/2.5 , but the 3.5 version is still a good buy, and is available on ebay for about 50-60 dollars!

Pentax Takumar 200mm/f4 : a bargain lens part III

Im dredging through my old flickr shots to find out various lenses that I have tried and liked that were inexpensive and i forgot about this gem, a Super Takumar 200mm/f4 from about 1970 , this lens is VERY well built and it has a smooth focus to it thats easy to use ( basically just like every other Takumar!)

 I got this for 62 dollars  off ebay and that was with 2 caps and a cool lens hood ( the hood itself sometimes sells for 40 ish) and the lens showed up and it was/is mint , and its barely bigger than the 135 tak , plus on my KX with the crop factor, the 200 becomes a 300! sweet! Right now ( jan 18 2011) there are about a dozen of these available for 100 dollars US shipped on ebay so if you want a really light and sharp prime telephoto lens, there you go

 This shot was taken using a tripod on international observe the moon night, why they picked a non full moon for this i dont know, but this is one of the hots that came out nice , shot wide open at f4 and ISO 200, the shutter speed is a surprisingly fast 1/400 of a second , just goes to show you how much light the moon does reflect  ,I also cropped out a little bit of the top and bottom to give the moon itself more impact in the frame

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

Pentax Takumar 35mm/f3.5 : a bargain lens part I

I got a message from someone asking whats a good way to start with manual focus lenses on the modern cameras , well here is part 1 of a quick suggestion list of what you can get for a small amount of cash.

 First off you need an adapter to utilise the lenses on a modern body, I used the official m42>pentax K adapter for my lenses, but if you are using say a Canon body , then you will need a m42> eos adapter, the ebay seller Fotodiox sells decent ones for a good price, I think mine was under 15 dollars shipped.

 Next of course you will need a lens, an inexpensive one at the moment is the one in my shot here, a Super MC Takumar 35mm/3.5 by Pentax,  mine was 20 dollars and as you can see it is mint, in fact that guy who sold it to me said it had taken perhaps half a roll of film in 1970 or so , and was unused until I popped it onto a body 40 years later , the threading still had black paint on it :) On ebay right now you can expect to grab this for about 60-80 dollars with lens caps and a hood  , like I said , the Takumars are going up in price rapidly , but they are very well made and have a great rendering to them that I find pleasing, especially the out of focus *bokeh* which reminds me of a painting . The neat part is that on a cropped sensor the 35mm becomes a 52mm to 56 mm lens , which is close to the classic film 50mm standard size.

here is a link to the full size image full size on flickr

The Takumar 28mm f3.5 : Perfect for Nature

This is the lens that started me off in the realm of vintage glass for my cameras.

 I was looking for an update  to a videogame and the lead designer is an avid photographer  quite reknowned in the world of underwater work , and he was talking about using his old Tair fotosnaiper lens on his modern body , so I did a search for vintage lenses on modern cameras and was surprised at how many sites were going on about dong that!

 I started scouring around and found a guy 100km away who had a takumar 28mm f3.5 for 20 dollars , so I ordered it from him, and it cost me 28 total :) and I also ordered a m42 > EOS adapter from ebay , the lens shows up wrapped in bubble wrap and thrown into a xmas ornament thin cardboard box , plus it was a bit dusty , I was worried it might have been damaged, but it is a solid lens, all metal and crystal clear glass.

 I put it on the Canon Rebel and couldnt believe the quality of the images ,  the colours popped, and the field of view was/is awesome! For up here in Eastern Canada one thng we have in abundence is nature, and with sunsets, sunrises etc , this lens really comes into its own, F3.5 isnt as sexy or cool as some of the other lenses made, but I shot almost all of my sky stuff at f3.5 or f5.6 and the only troubles I had was avoiding the darn powerlines!

 The shot here for example was me running across the street in my pyjamas with a Pentax KX and the tak 28mm to grab a few shots of the brilliant colours before the sun was full risen and they all faded, the sky was only like this for about 90 seconds, but I think I managed to grab a decent shot of it, full size is here:  Full size tak 28 sunrise  

 This lens is still quite inexpensive and is a bargain IMO, smooth focus , solid build and a very good angle of view , ( 42 mm on my KX, 44.8 on my Rebel)

Highly recommended!

The Japanese leica lens: Super Multi Coated takumar 50mm/1.4

Ahhh , now we are talking epic vintage lenses, and affordable too . In the 50s after the korean war, the UN troops were quite taken by the quality of the japanese optics, as they were as good as the German gear , but at a lesser cost , after a while the Japanese really came into their own, and one of the forerunners was Asahi Optical , which became pentax after the style of their cameras PENtaprism conTAX , the Pentax brand became so well known that they changed from Asahi Optical to Pentax Cameras I believe

 Enough history, what I have is one of the best regarded Pentax lenses the Super Multi Coated Takumar 50mm/1,4 , I have a few takumars that  I use on a regular basis , but the 50mm is my go to, I have shot a wedding with it, quite a few portraits, landscape , candids etc, all came out better than I expected  , this lens is very clear , and sharp and optically to get the same quality in a modern AF lens you would spend over 1200 dollars , and this can be had for around 100 , but the secret is out and the prices are rising rapidly due to the Canon 5/7D video gang , the 7 glass elements are well made and the outer body is metal, so the lens is dense, and very solid .

 If you are used to modern plasticy autofocus enses, the first time you pick up a Takumar it feels like you are holding a hand grenade, a hand grenade of awesome!  What Asahi's design mantra atthe time was to create a lens that was better than zeiss of Leica, and they achieved pretty much that ideal, in the 60s this lens was $199 and i read somewhere that they took a loss on every one they made until the manufacturing process became less expensive , to convert that, $199 in the 60s is about $2000 now!

 This shot was taken at night time using my pentax KX using the official m42>PK adapter from the pentax site, it was 30 dollars and it lets my KX use ANY pentax lens made from the mid 50s until today ! Adapter info I stepped the lens down to f4 so the OOF highlights would be octagonal as it has 8 blades inside, it came out nicer than I thought, and here is the full size version  full size : click on original

Helios 44m-6 : the best bang for the buck M42?

I was thinking that I wanted a better camera and a more expensive lens, and while talking with a friend, he mentioned that most of my shots are abstracts and that they look quite decent, I told him that actually the most popular image on my flickr stream was taken with the Pentax KX and the old russian Helios 44m-6 that I had to modify to work properly .

 That got me thinking, so when I got home I looked through the shots i took with the 44M6 and decided to post process some of the others that I liked

 This is one of them, and I liked it because at the time I recall trying to angle the camera to grab the coloured lens flares in the  ice and water droplets . You can see the turqouise blue along the bottom about a 1/3 of the way from the left ( full size on my flickr page here: full size)

 Regarding the Helios 44 : What I have is the 6 iteration of it, and it cost me 48 dollars shipped! with lens caps and a metal hood , all of them are clones/copies of the excellent carl Zeiss Biotar 58mm/f 2 and each successive  version has its merits and drawbacks, some have 8 bladed or i believe 13 blade irises , some are single coated, ( mine is Multi ) and they are either fully manual, manual/auto or auto, so of course mine is Auto. That meant that it wouldnt step down as there wasnt anything in my camera to activate the machanism , so I took the bak off the lens, and put a piece of surgical tubing on the pin to keep it pushed it, in essence turning my 44M-6 into a fully manual lens and I think its a great piece of gear.

 If I had to choose 3 lenses to keep , this would be one of them , hop on ebay and see what you can find, you see 44m-2s for about 30 dollars and the optics are excellent

How big is the Helios 40 you ask?...........

Quite the tank! someone asked me how big the lens was, so I took a shot of it .

 the tripod collar actually hits the popupflash unit, but luckily it can be loosened off to be positioned anywhere , so what I have to do is arrange it to the left or bottom of the camera , then install the screwmount lens, and then I tighten up the tripod mount , phew!

 there are 3 knurled rings , the top one is the aperture set for the step down mechanism, the nice middle one is the one to turn to step it down, and the bottom torture device is the one for focussing :(

how it works is, you set the aperture using the top ring, IE F4 , then the lens stays wide open for focussing, then when you are ready to take the shot, you move the middle ring to stop it down , and click, there is your shot

Autumn Sunset with Zeiss Planar T* 85mm at F2.0

I found this on my hard drive as I was backing up some photos, apparently I forgot I took this :)

 using my Rebel XT and the contax yashica adapter  , I was able to shoot into the sun using the 85 planar f1.4, I made sure the sun was either blurred by the tree or didnt look directly into the viewfinder, all that glass + sunlight could be dangerous

 The irony here is that teh planar lenses are  som of the finest and sharpest glass made, and i seem to spend all my time taking abstracts with them, c'est la vie!

Helios 40 85/1.5 wide open portrait

The Helios 40-1 is a strange lens, it feels like something from the 30s ( which I guess it is I guess) but the images that come out of it have a certain *look* that is surreal and yet filmic at the same time.

 When I first got it, I had a lot of trouble in Lightroom getting the colours right, so I converted most of the portraits to B+W , this is one of my youngest daughter

 I find the lens itself overbalances my small Pentax KX and the knurling on the focus ring starts to abrade my fingers after a few minutes  , but when I can retrieve an image like this, its all worthwhile, nothing like suffering for your craft!

 Someone asked for some extra info behind the lenses and cameras , so here you go:

 The reasons I like the Pentax KX over my rebel XT ( in addition to being 7 years newer tech!)

1: very agile and easy to use
2: In body image stabilisation easily adds 2 stops+
3: the High ISO ability is awesome, I have shots at ISO 3200 that are great
4: Nice colour rendering when shooting in JPG mode
5: The official adapter from pentax lets me use every  lens that pentax made, from teh M42 mounts to the modern ones!

 Thanks for the feedback , comments welcome

Carl Zeiss Planar T* 50mm/1,7 : Wide open!

I managed to find a CZ T* Planar 50mm for a really good price , 200 dollars canadian , with caps and a UV filter, it is MINT , but unfortunately for me, it is in the Contax/yashica mount which doesnt work with my preferred Pentax KX.

 So I had to break out my old ( 2003) Canon Rebel XT ( EOS 350) and use that instead, so I pop the lens on  , take a few shots and uploaded them to the PC , this one came out really nice,its shot at f1.7 and is the last vestiges of sunlight streaming through the blinds to my computer room, quite sharp for wide open.

I did some research and on some sites the Planar 50/1,7 is regarded by some as one of the sharpest 50mms ever made, and it definitely has a beautiful build quality , the focus is silky smooth, the only downside is that now I have 2 camera bodies and the only reason for keeping the Rebel is to use the planars :(

Sunrise with 1954 CZ Jena tessar 50mm f2.8

This was the only bright part of the day, the sunrise peeked under the overcast for less than 5 minutes, so I was outside with my KX and the Carl Zeiss Tessar lens I have that cost me 40 dollars off a guy in Greece. I did the post processing while listening to Vangelis' Blade Runner soundtrack, so perhaps thats why I made it in an anamorphic aspect ratio

The lens is single coated and prone to flare, but I like it , and I dont know why,but  it has a great rendering that the more modern lenses dont do, is it more contrast? less definition? I dont know , but it was made when black and white photography was the norm, so when used to take colour, it seems to really generate excellent images

Ray of Gold : Super MC Takumar 50/1.4

Ray of Gold

taken with a Super MC Takumar 50mm f1.4 at f1.4 on my Pentax KX

 On the way back to the car during an evening photo trip  the golden sunset was almost done,but a ray of light shone through the forest and landed on this leaf , so I took a picture of it naturally :)

 I like this lens, even if it is a bit yellowed with age , the thorium coating causes the cement inside to discolour over time!

Bokeh Christmas tree! Takumar 50mm /f1.4

Super Multi Coated Asahi-Pentax Takumar 50mm f1.4 at f1.4 on my Pentax KX

I had the lens wide open to get the circular highlights,  if you stop it down below F2 it turns them into octagons, and by f4 they are perfectly symmetrical . Quite cool!

Frozen Sunset : Helios 44m-6 58mm/f2 on Pentax KX

On the way home from a Xmas eve meal with some workmates I saw a bush that had frozen droplets on it, so I walked back there with my camera and a Helios 44m-6 to see what I could get before dark

This one is a full shot as there werent any cars driving by :)

shot at F2 , I love the swirly bokeh!