Vintage Lens

Posted by Mike Cash (Kiryu, Japan) on 19 April 2007 in Miscellaneous.

Although all of the images I post here are shot with a modern digital SLR (Pentax K100D), the vast majority of them are shot through vintage lenses ranging between 30 and 40 years old.

These are the vintage "Super Takumar" prime (i.e. fixed focal length, no zoom) lenses which screw onto the camera body and have no physical or electrical connection with the camera body at all. Everything is manual focus. The greatest appeal of these lenses is that they are generally high quality and, since the screwmount decades ago became obsolete, they are much, much cheaper than modern lenses.

At any rate, I enjoy using them. Most of the photos I share on Aminus3 were shot with either a Super Takumar 135mm or a Super Takumar 200mm. Portraits are done with a 105mm. I have a 55mm which doesn't see much use ordinarily, but I am finding it works well as a macro lens when combined with a set of 40 year old macro extension tubes.

This image is a macro close-up taken with the 55mm and the tubes of the focus scale and the depth of field scale on the Super Takumar 135mm lens. These days, practically no consumer grade lenses even have the depth of field markings on them anymore.

Some portions of the image may look slightly out of focus. That's because at macro ranges the depth of focus is extraordinarily slim. The lens is a curved surface, and portions which are only a millimeter or two farther away from the camera can't be in focus.

VFXY Photos