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- Feb 9, 2010
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The 17mm f/4 SMCT is a lot less expensive. When I was looking for a fisheye, I found one for $220
The SMC Takumar 15mm f/3.5 lens is rare, expensive, and very good considering it's 1970s design
The 17mm f/4 SMCT is a lot less expensive. When I was looking for a fisheye, I found one for $220
Admittedly my "lazy man" pursuit of sharpness delivers success but perhaps without the gratifying triumph of doing it on small film.
I'm just entertained by how many here have no problem responding to a request to "Old timers".
The "sharpness" you see in the examples you posted has more to do with technique and, in particular lighting and the nature of the subject - than it does with the lenses used. This is assuming that you are looking at the many contemporary lenses were of reasonable quality - easily found amongst the many offerings - and that the lenses themselves are in good condition.
I absolutely admire and respect you people who doggedly chase sharpness while shooting 35mm format. Years ago I tried it too; copy film, critical exposures, fancy developers, legendary lenses, small camera on giant tripod, and so on.
Then I moved to roll film and large format to find that what is technically difficult and exacting in 35mm becomes easy and routine on bigger film. Admittedly my "lazy man" pursuit of sharpness delivers success but perhaps without the gratifying triumph of doing it on small film.
Paul, you're thinking of a later Mamiya mount like ZE. Mamiya SX lenses are just M42 lenses with an extra little pin to allow open aperture metering, but only on a SX camera. Fujica had a similar-but-different extension to the M42 mount. Mounting these M42-plus lenses to other M42 are all in the category of "it will mount, unless in the rare case that it fouls something."
Most name brand fixed-focal length lenses are pretty good. You can spend a lot of time questing for the magical lens, or just get some Mamiya, Fujis, or Takumars and spend more time taking photos. Also, for all of these modern (postwar) SLR lenses from the 40s to the 70s, you get at least single-layer AR coating. This is needed in a modern lens with several groups to minimize reflections. Perhaps what the OP thinks they don't care about is multicoating, which arrives in the 70s to 80s and is more necessary for complex lenses like zooms.
Not sure if that's a joke or just confusion.
OP is talking about M42 screw-mount camera, not Leica M4-2.
I've read all this and thought it would be funny to talk about an experiment I did years ago. I wanted to know if an old SMC Takumar 35mm could be as sharp as a Nikon DSLR kit lens. So, I put them to the test. The Takumar got mounted on the Nikon using a very cheap lensed adapter. Big surprise, the Takumar was actually as sharp if not sharper than the kit lens.
So that says a lot about this piece of glass.
I decided to go m42…there is a romance, an aura to these photos that is out of this world…
How do these two things go together? Eigher you're looking for sharpness above all else OR for romance and aura, I think. And if you're looking for sharpness above all else, something more modern than m42 might be better, especially wides that you seem interested in have improved in sharpness since the m42 era. If you're in fact not looking for sharpness above all else, or your standard for that is low enough that small digital pictures from the internet and thus most lenses fulfill it, and the aura or romance plays a role, perhaps we should investigate what that is and what lens selection can contribute? Can you describe that part of your goal a bit more? I think you might be chasing a illusion if you think all m42 lenses share some characteristic like that.My ABSOLUTE priority is sharpness, even at the expense of all other parameters,
How do these two things go together? Eigher you're looking for sharpness above all else OR for romance and aura, I think. And if you're looking for sharpness above all else, something more modern than m42 might be better, especially wides that you seem interested in have improved in sharpness since the m42 era. If you're in fact not looking for sharpness above all else, or your standard for that is low enough that small digital pictures from the internet and thus most lenses fulfill it, and the aura or romance plays a role, perhaps we should investigate what that is and what lens selection can contribute? Can you describe that part of your goal a bit more? I think you might be chasing a illusion if you think all m42 lenses share some characteristic like that.
Many of the older manual focus primes are as sharp as any of the AF kit zooms, what a newer zooms offer are improved coating.
Definitely. But for such an old lens to hold-up so well when compared to something modern even when using an adapter that is known to degrade the image really drives the point that these old Takumars aren't anything to sneeze at even today.
I know I was really surprised by this result as I was expecting it to be a bit inferior, but it definitely wasn't the case.
And mechanically it is tons nicer to use than than a plastic zoom.
That's exactly what I was using... Lets say that a 14$ eBay adapter is not what I would consider precision optics. But it works...Nikon with a correction lens that acts as a teleconverter will degrade an image.
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