Right After I bought the Super Takumar F1.4 50mm I started to look for a vintage lens that I can use to shoot the moon with. As I wanted a M42 mount Takumar on a budget I ended up buying this one. As it turns out it is way harder to work with this lends compared to the first one that I bought. As with the previous one I will also mention the price, history and my experience in the same faction.

The Price

After some time searching I found mine for 500 Lei or 103 Euros as of 09.07.2020. As not many of these are found in my city, I decided to buy this one really fast.

The Package

The carrying case of this one is a little more warn out but the exterior is almost new and the glass is not scratched at all and the aperture blades are clean.

The History

I used the same page as for the F1.4 50mm and this website in order to find out more about the history of the lens.

Using the pages mentioned above and the 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 43542)

• The 7 digit number that is located on the front of the lens. (mine is 4556868)

With a simple CTRL + F I was able to find multiple information including the production years. My lens was fabricated between 1971 and 1980

Image Samples

As the field of view narrows to the 202mm full frame lens equivalent, this lens is a bit harder to use for street photography. Since I bought it to photograph the moon and some wildlife this was ok with me, however, as I learned it was way harder than I thought.

Handheld shooting is pretty difficult as the shake is really annoying since the camera doesn’t have IBIS and the lens does not have OIS. Below I will show some photos of wildlife shooting, street photography of buildings that are far away. No shots of the moon will be added because I could really get some nice ones.

Sharpness

All the images presented in the section above have been shot before I did the sharpness test. Most of them have been shot at F3.5 but this didn’t effect the quality of the images.

Below I will display the same image shot with different settings in order to determine how can you get the sharpest image:

Compared to my the lens that I tested previously (Super Takumar F1.4 50mm), this one starts at F3.5 and the sharpness is not that much effected as you stop down. The image is pretty sharp from the wide open aperture.

However I will crop the F3.5 and the F6.8 image as an example below:

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)

Unlike he sharpness, the chromatic aberration is significantly improved as you stop down and by F11 is barely noticeble .

The Bokeh

The images below have all been shot whit the camera at about 2 meters from the lights.

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)

PROS

✔️ Cheap

✔️ Good Image quality

✔️ Great build

Challenges

❌ Manual focusing on wildlife is really challenging

❌ Hard to stabilize

❌ Hard to get a sharp image

Final Thoughts

It is hard to recommend this lens since it’s use scenarios are a lot more limited.

Initially, I bought it in order to shot the moon and some wild life, and I managed to get some good images of animals but it’s hard to get sharp images when the camera shake is so harsh. No IBIS and No OIS and the 200mm are not the best combination. You will need to shot at shutter speeds that exceed 1/400 and this limits the time at which you can shoot with it because it can open only to F3.5. A lot of times 1/400ss will not be enough as I often discovered in LightRoom that the sharpness of the images is off. I am able to get good images from it but it just takes a lot more shots to get a few good.

I would recommend this lens only if you find it below 80 euros. Even if I did not pay a lot more I still struggle with the lens and it’s not justifiable for me. I will still try to use it and maybe I will find the perfect use scenario for it but who knows.

As mentioned previously, 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.