Recently I started to look for some good vintage lenses that would let me try different focal lengths without spending too much. After some reviews on youtube I decided to buy the Super Takumar F1.4 50mm. I began searching the Romanian ebay and found one that looked good and wasn’t that expensive. Below I will tell you about my experiences with this particular lens after a few weeks of use. Also, I will tell you about the history, price and what the package contains.

The Price

After some time searching I found mine for 550 Lei or 113 Euros as of 22.06.2020. I decided to buy it straight away since in Romania I wasn’t able to find many and at that time this was the only one for sale in my city.

The Package

The lens still had the carrying case, both caps and was in very good condition with no scratch marks on the glass and no oil on the aperture blades. Also, the carrying case looks almost new and the lens itself has very few scratches on the outside.

The History

After using it for a couple of days I started to become very interested in the history of the lens, so I begun to search online. After some time I discovered this page.

Using the site mentioned above and two identification numbers from the lens you will be able to easily identify yours:

• The number located on the back of the Manual-Auto switch. (mine is 37800)

• The 7 digit number that is located on the front of the lens. (mine is 2014488)

With a simple CTRL + F I was able to find multiple information including the production years. My lens is the early model 2 fabricated between 1965 and 1971

From the youtube reviews that I have watched I knew that this lens had a Thorium Coating and on the same website I confirmed that my model does feature the slightly radioactive Thorium coating which ages yellow, effect that I have experience myself. Luckily this yellow tint is easily fixable by exposing your lens glass to the sun. The image below uses the Standard Color Profile of the XT3 and the yellow tint can be seen:

Image Samples

The minima focal distance is great for detail shots especially when the field of view of the image narrows when attached to a crop sensor. (A note here that I am using a K&F Concept adapter)

One thing that might cause issues is the fact that the camera doesn’t have IBIS and the lens doesn’t have OIS . This will force you to to stop for a second in order to have a steady hand or use a higher shutter speed to reduce the sake as much as possible.

However, once you get the feel of the lens the resulting images are awesome:

Sharpness

All images added here are unedited, shot using a tripod, a 2 sec timer and with the Electronic Shutter in order to reduce the shake as much as possible:

As you stop down the image becomes sharper edge to edge. Below I compared the sharpness of the F1.4 image with the F5.6 image as this seems to be the sharpest image:

Chromatic Aberration

When the lens is wide open the chromatic aberration is evident in high contrast areas. (Images below are cropped to almost 1:1 in Lightroom)

As the sharpness improves, the chromatic aberration is reduced significantly as you stop down:

The Bokeh

The images below have all been shot whit the camera at about 1.5 meters from the lights. The bokeh shape changes from oval to hexagon as you stop down:

This is how it looks in a real life scenario, where the lens is wide open and the background is around 6m away:

The Video Quality

The video presented below is shot using a tripod and the Classic Chrome color profiles from the XT3 not being edited. Uploaded to youtube straight from the camera (more info about the settings in the video description)

This displays only one scenario but the video suffers from the same defects as the images. Same principle: Stop down and get better quality.

PROS

✔️ Fun to use

✔️ Cheap

✔️ Light

✔️ Awesome image quality

✔️ Awesome Bokeh

✔️ Fast

✔️ Great minimum focus distance

✔️ Good for portraits and street photography

CONS

❌ I really don’t have any. It is just a great lens for cheap.

Final Thoughts

I fell in love with this lens the day I started using it. Even if it doesn’t like high contrast areas I still think it can easily create amazing shots. It’s an awesome pair with the XT3 especially if you enjoy shooting on manual mode. All the manual dials of the XT3 make the perfect partner for the manual focus and aperture of the Tukumar. Changing the kit lens that forces you to stay at F4.0 when you are fully zoomed to the Takumar that offers almost the same zoom but at F1.4. is an great change.

I highly recommend picking up this lens especially if you have the time and patience to search for a good price. Even if I paid a bit more from what I could find on ebay or amazon, I still feel like this lens was a steal.

If I missed anything or got something wrong, please let me know as I try to write this type of reviews from now on and I want to make them better.