Hello viewers, it has been a long time since my last video. It feels like I say that way
too often. We moved to a new apartment and I've been trying to do something a little
bit different with my home studio setup, but because a lot of stuff is in such short supply,
it's not quite ready for prime time. We're going to take a look at a lens today,
the first zoom made by Pentax, and it's a bit of a beast.
Manufactured from 1964-71, the super-takumar-zoom 70-150mm f/4.5 looks more like a 300mm lens,
it even has a mounting collar. It features a one-touch / push-pull type mechanism. The
aperture goes from f/4.5 to f/22, and has a six blade iris. Minimum focus distance is 3.5m or 11
1/2'. Not exactly in macro territory. Oh, and it has an m42 screw mount. The front element
does turn when focusing so that's something to keep in mind if you're using a variable ND
or polarizer. Now, I came across my copy at a second hand store,
and one of the things I found fascinating about it was the concave front element. I felt that,
and the fair price, justified picking it up. Even if I didn't like it, I could still make
a video about it. This video! Anywho, here's the quick walk around I did with this imposing lens.
Now, I'm not totally set up to run this lens through a
battery of tests at the moment, so I'm going to be a little more brief with my review.
It isn't very sharp. The centre is alright, but the edges are pretty soft,
and I found that this didn't really improve when stopping down either.
Pin-cushion when zoomed in... and barrel when zoomed out.
The corners are almost never good and often pretty messy looking.
In terms of colour and contrast, it's fine. I feel that the images it produces
have a certain moodiness to them but that could just be me. For better or worse,
this lens has some character -but for me personally - I'm just kind of meh about it.
I would not want to take this thing to the side of the head.
I had first tested it out on my Sony a6300,
but that body is so small in comparison to this lens that I found it almost
impossible to use. On a bigger body like my Canon 5D, I found things improved. The single
touch mechanism can't hold its own weight, so when you tilt it forward, it slides out.
I don't think these really go for much these days and they probably shouldn't.
With its substantial and interesting optics i was kind of hoping for a diamond in the rough,
but being such an early zoom it suffers from the issues that
well early zooms do. Although I think it has its moments of brilliance,
the girth makes it too unwieldy to use out on the street, and the minimum focus
distance is quite limiting in more controlled environments. Overall, the super-takumar-zoom
70-150mm f/4.5 just has too many issues and is way too huge and clumsy for me to recommend.
Thank you so much for watching, if you have experience with this lens I'd like to hear
from you, and you can do that by leaving a comment below. To those of you out there who
are not subscribed, I would like you to do that, and make sure to ring the bell to get notified
when I release a new video which... happens once in a while. Anyway, I'll see you then.