MEET THE TAKUMARS
ADOPTING A VINTAGE FAMILY
Well this muse is for the nostalgic or curious photographer whose interest into vintage lenses has been piqued.
A GOOD START
The vintage lens world can be quite daunting. There is a plethora of different lens types and flavours to choose from. Choosing an old lens is a potential minefield if you are uninformed. Initially, as a long term Canon DSLR user, I was drawn to the 1980’s Canon manual FD lenses as they were the forerunner to my old Canon EF lenses. The FD 24mm f/2.8 prime was a good starting place and it proved to be a keeper.
MOVING ON
YouTube is an education in itself, with reviews on just about every lens ever produced. Initially I made a few decisions and purchases that I later reversed, buying and trialling a small number (4) of vintage lenses which included names like Pentacon, Minolta and Olympus. None were bad, but after acquiring my first Takumar lens, well let’s just say my head was well and truly turned.
A CHANGE OF TAK
The ‘Takumar name kept cropping up, they seemed to be popular. So after a lot of research I purchased a couple of the Asahi Takumar lenses: the 135mm f/3.5 and the 35mm f/3.5. Both were excellent. The build quality was superb, the feel of both lenses was second to none and the image quality stood up well.
Takumar fever took hold and as time went by more lenses were added, including the very sought-after star of the group the 50mm f/1.4 (with 8 elements no less).
Super - Takumar 20mm f/4.5
Super - Takumar 24mm f/3.5
Super - Takumar 28mm f/3.5
Super-Multi-Coated Takumar 35mm f/3.5
Super - Takumar 50mm f/1.4
Super-Multi-Coated Takumar 55mm f/1.8
Super - Takumar 55mm f/2
Super - Takumar 105mm f/2.8
Super - Takumar 135mm f/3.5
Super-Multi-Coated Takumar 200mm f/4
None have disappointed me. In fact I love using all of them - I feel like I have adopted them and taken on the guardianship for this chapter of their history.
WHAT’S IN THE NAME
For anyone new to using vintage lenses the name Takumar may well be a brand of lens they have never heard of. The modern digital era has produced millions of photographers worldwide who are today most probably more familiar with names like Canon, Sony, Fujifilm, Nikon and possibly Olympus too. But venture back 50+ years in time and you will most definitely be aware of the popularity and prevalence of Takumar lenses.
HISTORY
The Asahi Optical Co Ltd company was founded as Asahi Kogaku Goshi Kaisha in November 1919 by Kumao Kajiwara, at a shop in Tokyo. Originally it produced spectacle lenses, and still does apparently. In 1938 it changed its name to Asahi Optical Co Ltd. In the post war years the company was allowed to reform and Asahi Optical introduced its first camera in 1952: the Asahiflex. The Pentax name was originally a registered trademark of the East German VEB Zeiss Ikon. The Asahi Optical company purchased the Pentax trademark in 1957. So where did the Takumar name for the lenses come from? The founder of the Asahi Optical Co Ltd named the Pentax lens brand after his brother Takuma Kajiwara, his brother being a renowned Japanese-American-based portrait painter and photographer.
RICH IN PEDIGREE
So the Takumar lenses have a rich pedigree, being produced under the Pentax umbrella for their cameras in the late 1950’s through to the 1970’s, and were very much a household name throughout that era. In those days of course film was the medium and in particular the Single Lens Reflex (SLR) camera was very popular. Pentax were very savvy and produced camera equipment that was within the financial reach of the general public. I find that there is a striking similarity between the Pentax brand of the 1960’s and the modern day Fujifilm brand of today.
SO WHY CHOOSE LENSES FROM THE 1960s TODAY?
Well, firstly, cost is a major factor. Most people venturing into the vintage lens world will be looking at the price differential between older lenses and the current crop of digital lenses on offer. It is not unusual to be able to pick up a vintage Takumar lens for between £35 and £100. Conversely, medium-format camera lenses are the opposite end of the scale, as are proprietary brand full frame lenses.
OKAY, SO …
… we have established that a vintage lens can be much cheaper than a modern lens. The picture above shows some of my current ten Takumar lenses - all of them fit my Fujifilm X-T and full frame mirrorless cameras (with adaptors). The price tag for all ten put together was just £765.00. Barely the cost of a single modern Fujifilm XF lens!
USING THE SUPER
TAKUMAR 50mm f/1.4 LENS
FUJIFILM X-T3 X SERIES DIGITAL CAMERA
ADAPTING
In the banner photograph above you’ll notice that the Takumars I use all have the M42 threaded mount, so to make the lenses fit on my Fujifilm cameras I have used an M42 to FX adaptor. The Takumar lenses were mostly designed for 35mm film cameras. The good news is that we can adapt the M42 lenses to virtually any current camera mount, sometimes for as little as £5. With the adaptors they will perform well on modern crop sensor APS-C cameras like the Fujifilm X series. You just need to allow for the crop factor of 1.5x, an example being a 28mm lens performing like a 40mm lens in full frame terms. I can even use any of the above Takumar lenses on my GFX medium format system too - the difference being I can switch the camera to 35mm mode and the lenses adapt to exactly the focal length they were designed for. This makes them very adaptable and versatile.
Non branded approx £5.00. K&F Concept approx £24.00
FX to M42 ADAPTORS
My experience using adaptors has been nothing but good, whether using the cheaper non branded versions or the relatively more expensive ones. There is little between them in terms of build quality as they do nothing except provide a spacer between the lens and camera. I plumped for the cheaper option and managed to get multiple-buying reductions. This meant I could inexpensively keep an adaptor on each lens permanently, so no faffing around with adaptors when changing lenses.
THE QUESTION IS…
Apart from cost and the flexibility of being able to adapt them to most camera brands, why am I advocating using 50-60 year old glass on my state-of-the-art modern digital cameras?
SUPER TAKUMAR
50mm f/1.4
ON THE FUJIFILM X-T1 X SERIES DIGITAL CAMERA
Well, I could mention the filmic look the lenses seem to produce in the final image or then there is the superb build quality of the all metal/glass construction. It could be that the focusing has no electronics and is purely mechanical and totally reliant on me as the photographer. Or maybe it’s the simplicity of the uncoated glass that many of the early lenses had. Perhaps it’s the nostalgic feel to using the lenses, the embracement of using a traditional piece of photographic glass which is not as clinically sharp as its modern day counterparts.
THE LAST WORD
It could be all these reasons and probably many more, but my main reason is that I just enjoy the process of attaching a historical masterpiece of a lens to my camera and crafting an image that actually renders differently to those clinical lenses of today.
It is as simple as that. I also find it heart warming knowing that the lenses each have a rich history and were being used and cherished by photographers in the 1960’s.
How good is that!
AB
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