When I choose to grab any of my 'vintage' lenses, I tend to lower my expectations to below basement jack levels. I recently shot my Canon FL 55mm f1.2 wide open and did a pano with lots of vignetted sky. As you might expect, things did not go well. I loved it.
Well most modern lenses do something like this wide open. Often those that don’t are pricey. Same with vintage actually. Some old lenses are expensive for a reason.
@@Photovintageguy Agreed. However, most (vintage lenses) are expensive because they were made in such limited quantities. There is a brand of primes that I want (end game?) that I have not even seen a few on ebay for months. Patience = expanding prices!
I use three Spotmatic bodies and the following Takumar lenses: 300mm f/6.3 200mm f/5.6 135mm f/3.5 105mm f/2.8 50mm f/1.4 (8-element) 35mm f/3.5 28mm f/3.5 The 50mm and the 105mm are my personal favorites.
Thank you! But, you know, it's quite niche content and not having access to the latest and newest products, growth is slow. After seven years on the platform, some days it does a bit frustrating 😅
The Pentax M 1.7/50 was one of my very first lenses. It practically lived on my camera for a full year, if not more. A great lens which I regret selling to this day.
Agreed again. I left a comment on the Takumar 135mm f2.5, that my experience is that the 135 is sharper when zoomed in to the same field of view. I am still working my way through your videos. Have you tried the Nikon 200mm F4? I have a pre-AI version that produces sharp beautiful pictures. They are still available for about $25 U.S. dollars.
I think you were fair. I had this and sold it a few weeks later. I couldn't live with the aberrations. But it did take some nice images. In the end though, I agree it's not up to the quality of the others in the range.
I agree, this lens was a disappointment to me. My 135mm f3.5 is such a sharp lens with that Pentax SMC color. How could Pentax mess this lens up when their SMC-A 70-210mmf4 zoom lens is so awesome. Maybe it was intended to be a portrait lens that is more forgiving of skin imperfections? The 200mmf4 is not a wildlife or landscape lens.
Asahi Optical was the name of the brand and Pentax was the name of the cameras and lenses. I believe all the Pentax-M lenses also have the Asahi Opt name on them, while the later A and F lines only use the Pentax name, but I might be wrong. So, as long as they are Pentax-M, they should be the same.
Seems to me this just has somewhat muted dull colors compared to the others. But the sharpness seems good enough. I think it misses character of the the others, more just kinda neutral, kinda boring. Probably ok for video if you boost the vivid settings. Still Pictures would probably be kinda too flat.
@@MarcoAries yea i see some aberrations in the bokeh. But I can't see much if anything on the items in focus, purple Fringing. So yea wide open you will get some weird glow and strange rings on high lights. I guess i have to pay more attention to say the 50mm 1.7 and look to see if the blur is cleaner. In video it didn't look too bad. But if you cropped in for some reason, it would probably become way more obvious. Although i see tones of video editing tutorials on how to add these distortions back in for reason. vintage feel? There is a saying in English "the grass is always greener." If you know what that means.
@@MarcoAries ok looking at the white bike helmet of the guy in blue shorts, that is pretty nasty. On a big screen I'm sure that would be kinda ugly. He's in the foreground blur.
Yes, I have been contacted to promote a video plug-in to give a vintage look and it's a similar thing with diffusion filters: some people find that kind of look desirable. Absolutely nothing wrong with that! I mean, I've seen multi million dollars tv shows and movies with chromatic aberration and blooming. As always, it all come down to what you like and what look you want 😉
@@MarcoAries these young kids like low contrast in post. I buy lens hoods from all my lenses to specifically avoid that look. A washed out image is just bad, everything else could be artistic. They do the entire talking part so low, I can barely see the person. It just looks like bad equipment, but the camera is probably more than a $3k. The low contrast look started because people didn't know how to grade log when it came out. It's probably only acceptable in horror movies were you are deliberately try to obscure things, so people can imagine scary things in the shadows.
Compared with the M 50mm f1.7 this lens has no chance, and it shouldn’t. Even the M 100mm f4 macro kinda blows it away. But… a little C/A, lack of sharpness and flatter colors aside, at f8-16 I don’t think you’ll find a better(vintage) 200mm+ for 4 times the price… certainly not in a k mount. Otherwise I enjoyed the review and am glad I found ya.
Thanks! Somewhat surprisingly, in terms of image quality I've found the Jupiter 21m to be better than the Pentax, but that lens is just too heavy and unwieldy for me.
Not the best lens from the K/M collection. Love the fact that K series and M series have such a close look to them, and there are many gems in them, but unfortunately this 200mm is not one of them. Oh and they are still very affordable (relatively).
