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Alt lenses, my entry into the realm.

Ben Rubinstein

pro member
I have a project which calls for shallow DOF urban landscapes shot with a normal (perspective) lens on my FF DSLR. I started the project with my 50mm f1.4 lens shot wide open and got an incredible looking image right off the bat. Unfortunately it was very misleading, the image was shot in flat light and in those circumstances the lens performed perfectly. When I went out shooting the next time however it was in the sunlight and I learnt that if there was even a hint of a highlight the bokeh started looking very very nasty when shot wide open. I had known this, for my wedding work I always stop down to f1.8 because of this but this brought it home with a nasty shock. I only ended up with one useable image and I had to do quite a bit of smoothing to the troubled highlight OOF areas to improve the chrunchy rendering of the lens.

I asked on the FM Alt forum which lens to invest in, I knew that the Canon 50L was the solution but it's hugely expensive. The sigma 50mm has an incredibly smooth rendition but I found it rather 2 dimensional, the effect looked like a wildlife shot taken at 600mm. I want smooth but not non existent OOF areas but with the sudden focus fall off of shooting at f1.4. I also wanted a slightly ethereal rendition which the my canon did provide when shot wide open. I had thought of the legendary and increasingly expensive Rokkor 58mm f1.2, I'll admit to still lusting after it, but I didn't have the $600 for a canon converted copy. The advice was to get a Pentax Takumar Super 50mm f1.4, not the SMC version to preserve an older and less modern rendition. I picked one up for just $70 including shipping on ebay and bought a chipped adaptor from Big-IS to go with it as well as a cheap generic metal hood.

I got the lens and this is one of the first frames I took with it.

dad&carmelle.jpg

The lens flares if you look at it the wrong way, is nowhere near as sharp as the canon wide open however it does ethereal in spades and has a georgous rendition. Here is another image I shot of my daughter with the lens. As you can see the bokeh is nice without being boring or flat and highlights are rendered in a very pleasing manner. It seems to be an incredible lens for portraiture usage if you like that kind of look.

carmelli.jpg

But now on to what the lens was bought for. I've detailed the story of these pictures elsewhere on the forum but here are two images which the first outing with the lens produced.


hapisga.jpg


old_lady_s_house.jpg



It has a very nice rendition with the OOF highlights, the 2nd image would have looked very ugly with the canon 50mm in the highlights, instead of nasty circles I've got these very faint little circles with halo's on them that you would think would be annoying but for some reason aren't. It doesn't have quite the amount of sudden focus fall off of the canon @ f1.4 and seems to look more ethereal in portraiture than landscape however I think that is more to do with subject distance. It's significantly less sharp too than the canon (not that the canon is sharp at f1.4!) but I'm not sure if part of that is due to the less clinical/modern rendition and the lack of contrast this lens has shooting in bright sunlight probably wasn't helping eventhough I had a hood on.

Focus. Forget focus with the stock canon screen, it shows f2.8 DOF as default so you can't see what's in focus at all. The chip, eventhough calibrated for focus with this lens and my 5D, gives me sharp focus about one in three times and when I was outdoors it was 1 in 5! The way canon focus works is that it racks through the focus until it finds the general focus and then refocuses to fine tune that focus and confirm (it's why you get two blips of red on the focus point in the viewfinder when using AF, one for each stage). You don't get that 2nd stage with a chipped adaptor and at f1.4 it shows! That is apart from a rather gummed up focusing helicoid on the lens due to age, the knurled ring which I really don't find intuitive to use and a massive 200 degree turn from minimum focus to infinity (try doing that fast with a stiff focus ring!). I started my photography with Canon FD and shot for years with Mamiya 645 so I'm not a stranger to manual focus but I just can't get the focusing of this lens to work subconsciously for me. Taking the lens for a CLA would cost more than the lens itself! :)

I do want to get the focusing fast and smooth though, it looks so good for portraiture but I can't shoot bridal portraits while I slowly and painfully wind through the focusing range and have to constantly focus bracket due to the chips rather tempremental confirmation. I've ordered a Canon EE-S focusing screen, the one which allows far more focusing feedback when using manual lenses and hopefully I won't have to shim the screen to allow a faster and more accurate focusing experience. It's hard work, a lot of hard work, these cameras and lenses were not made for each other, one is a DSLR for use with AF lenses and the other is a manual focus lens from 1962, half a decade old and showing its age. I believe the results however are worth the journey, what do you think?

p.s. If I do get the lens up and running the next stage is a new project that I've had in mind for years but only now is becoming possible. A project to photograph the old men of Jerusalem, to hear and record their stories and present them together as a finished presentation and book. Anyone want to sponser the project? :)
 

Michael Nagel

Well-known member
Ben,

from my experience, old lenses and modern DSLR can match quite well and the result can be more appealing than the sometimes too clinical result from some modern lenses.

I use quite often older lenses.

The rendering of the M 50/1,4, two generations younger than your Super Takumar, is IMHO also appealing (photo taken with f1.4):


Best regards,
Michael
 

Ben Rubinstein

pro member
Now here is an image from today which the Canon would have ruined outright but the Takumar has handled beautifully. Couldn't work out today why it was so incredibly hard to get accurate focus from the lens. The chip isn't great but the focus was horribly off until I gave up and focus bracketed while shooting (my EE-S screen is arriving on Thursday). Wasn't till I opened the files that I realised that the metadata was showing a focal length of 65535mm. I must have screwed up last time I did the focus adjust and screwed up the focal length. I have fixed it to check that was the problem but if the camera thought a lens like that was attached I can see why the focus confirmation was out! :)

shabtai.jpg

Shabtai
 

Ben Rubinstein

pro member
Here is the picture I shot today with the Takumar, when I get focus the results are exquisite, unfortnately it's rather rare. I bought the canon EE-S screen just to find out that the viewfinder is miscalibrated. Now I need to buy shims to fix it. Sigh..


gaon.jpg

Gaon​
 
I'm not sure what body you are using but does it have live view? A tripod and live view may the answer to your focusing troubles.
 

Ben Rubinstein

pro member
Me with my son last night with the Takumar.

Me&Yoni_small.jpg

Fustrates the heck out of me that my wife can focus that lens accurately and consistently at f1.4 even in light like this (1/30 f1.4 iso 3200) and I can't get it right in broad daylight. Oh well, one day I'll be able to afford the 50L.... :D
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Me with my son last night with the Takumar.

Me&Yoni_small.jpg

Fustrates the heck out of me that my wife can focus that lens accurately and consistently at f1.4 even in light like this (1/30 f1.4 iso 3200) and I can't get it right in broad daylight. Oh well, one day I'll be able to afford the 50L.... :D

The picture is wonderful in so many ways. Do you feel that this ethereal quality is the soft focus effect of this lens and it's particular lens coatings? Are you able to recognize any unique effect to shadows, mid-tones or highlights different from other lenses. IOW, "ma nishtana" :)

Asher
 

Ben Rubinstein

pro member
It is ethereal wide open, I've been basing the series I've been shooting with it on that fact. It's incredible however for portraiture though, especially emotive portraiture where the ethereal look (not soft focus which looks more contrived) can really make a portrait that inspires thought. I just wish I could begin to focus it consistently wide open to make that a reality. That kind of portraiture, not posed, natural, in natural light and just showing heartbreakingly sweet interactions, that is something I'd love to do. Studio type portraiture is horribly contrived I feel in its lack of emotion, lack of captured moment. Even the modern style stuff.

I've been playing with Nex 7 files actually today, finally here is a tiny camera with all the features you might want which has the incredible focus peaking mode through the viewfinder and after some file torture I've come to the conclusion, noise which can match my 5D when downrezzed to a similar resolution or can be cleaned up otherwise and most importantly, tonality which is a match for my full frame 5D. Especially when downrezzed slightly. I've yet to see that in any non FF camera period.

I'd kill for a Nex 7 and a 35mm lens with similar characteristics of this takumar (not found one yet, actually make that an affordable one, the pre-asph Lux would work but I could buy a car for that money!) but we're talking in the realms of a good $2000 which I don't begin to have at present or for the next year + to allow me this luxury of similar or better IQ with viewfinder focus peaking.

Asher, if you make me the money from that gallery show, I'll get one, promise. :)
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I don't think you really need to look elsewhere. This Takamur has a great reputation and it's delivering character in spades. Work with just that!

This is all I used for 5 years, that one lens!

Asher
 

Ben Rubinstein

pro member
I don't think you really need to look elsewhere. This Takamur has a great reputation and it's delivering character in spades. Work with just that!

This is all I used for 5 years, that one lens!

Asher

I wouldn't even think of anything else if I could focus it! :) a mixture of the dim uncalibrated screen in a 5D and my eye problems are the only thing making me even think of the NEX. I'd prefer not to have to bother, believe me! I have a seagull 2.7X magnifier and with it I nail focus perfectly each time but it's a tripod only solution and I'm still trying to avoid that reality as it counts out much of walk around and all people photography.
 
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