Vintage Lens Review | Super Takumar 50mm F1.4
A concise review after use with mirrorless cameras (sample images provided)
READ ME: Discover why I highly recommend these vintage lenses for your collection! This review series focuses not on technical specs, but on the lens’ unique character, quirks, and my personal experiences with each.
Impressions: This might be my favorite vintage lens, nay, my favorite lens. It’s rivaled closely by my Jupiter 21M 200mm F4 lens, but the 50mm focal length and close-ish focusing distance makes the Takumar 50mm much more versitle. The gold glow is addictive too.
Size/Weight: Quite small, the M42-Sony and M42-Canon adapters I’ve used as all almost as large as the lens itself. Even so, it’s smaller than a modern Canon “nifty fifty”. A little heavy for it’s small size though, but the weight makes it feel solid and “real”, unike some of the modern plastic lenses that feel like all they have is magic and air on their insides.
Favorite Usage: My favorite “walkaround” lens. Great for portraits and flowers too. I have yet to really get any street photography shots with the lens that I loved though. Will keep trying.
Issues: My particular lens has an issue where the front element filter ring cap (idk the proper name, it’s not the lens cap) comes loose and needs to be rotated back into place. This seems to happen randomly and sometimes I also can’t get it back into place. There is no shooting effect on the lens itself, but it means that adding filters to the front of the lens is impossible as they flop arround.
Notable Features: [EDIT: The always polite and helpful folks at “Vintage Lenses on Modern Cameras, a FB group, have corrected me that this version is not actaully the radioatvie one I thought I had. The yellow glow though is still present for other reasons I do not otherwise understand, cheers]
The famous golden glow from the radioactive glass element. Turns alot of light, especially natural sunlight, into a warm halo golden halo effect. It’s truly stunning at times.
Usable Aperture Range: Sharp even at F1.4, best range is F2-F4
Bodies Used On: Sony A6000, Sony A7iii, Canon R6, Canon R5
Source: Gifted
My Price: Free
Average Price: $100 , edit: these prices have started going up, get one (and probably a backup too) while they’re still affrodable.
A brief video review can be found on my Youtube channel here.
Sample Images
Technical Note: All images of the lens are shot with a Canon R6 on the Canon RF 24–105mm F4 L series lens (at 50mm + 105mm) with a Tiffen Black Pro Mist 1/8th screw on filter. Camera body in images is a Canon R5 with Smallrig utility cage. When possible, lenses were shot with their aperture set to F5.6 for commonality.
Gallery Images
Check out the previous review of my Vintage Super Takumar 135mm
Do you have additional tips or experiences to share? Feel free to comment below!
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