John Sheldon's photos with the keyword: Takumar lens

Takumar-A 28mm f2.8 lens. Mormo maura - A large-winged, sombre-coloured moth, which is distributed locally throughout much of Britain, and common in places. It hides by day in old buildings and sheds, and frequents damp localities as well as waste ground and gardens.

In 2015 I built a computer for photo processing. It is still in use (for PC games) 8 years later. Over the years, it has had a new graphics card, an internet adapter, upgraded memory and an extra fan; also it needed a replacement PSU (power supply unit); and now in order to replace Windows 8.1 with Windows 11 it has had a new motherboard (main board), a new CPU (central processing unit) and the SSD (solid state drive) has been replaced with a bigger PCIe style SSD; oh, and the memory has been doubled again. However, it is good to know that the computer is still in use after all this time. (I have in mind here the Wikipedia article called ‘Ship of Thesius’. The concept is also known popularly in the UK as ‘Trigger’s broom’). Takumar-A 28mm f2.8 vintage lens.

Takumar-A 28mm f2.8 vintage lens. A typical but old fashioned British gas meter. The authorities and power companies are pressurising people to have these replaced by 'Smart meters' which enable them to read you meter (and unilaterally change you tariff I believe) remotely.

A souvenir from Sorrento in the Bay of Naples, Italy. The red Cornicello is a very old symbol of good luck, believed to have the ability to ward off the 'evil eye'. There seem to be variant acceptable spellings of 'Cornicello'. The map is of the excavations at Pompeii. Vintage prime lens: Takumar-A 28mm f2.8.

Fourth experiment using an Expodisc 2 as a white balance guide. Incident light reading taken using Gossen Sixtomat meter and underexposed by 1 stop. Takumar-A 28mm f2.8 prime lens. Production of this lens ceased in 1988. The binoculars have been in our family since the early/mid 1950s. They were made in Hannover, Germany. They are fine binoculars.

Takumar-A 28mm F2.8 prime lens. Horses and their riders at Higher Poynton rail station, now a public picnic site on the Middlewood Way (a disused railway route).

Takumar-A 28mm F2.8 prime lens. This picture comprises about 27% of the frame. Even on an APS-C sensor a 28mm lens is not the obvious choice for this kind of sports picture! I had no time to adjust anything and the 1/500 shutter speed left from a previous picture had to do. Come to think of it, 1/500 was the fastest the old medium format leaf shutters could manage and sports photographers took some fabulous pictures in those days.

Takumar-A 28mm F2.8 prime lens.

Takumar-A 28mm F2.8 prime lens. The strange light in this scene has only been marginally adjusted in the DNG processing - the rendering is pretty much 'as it was'.

Takumar-A 28mm F2.8 prime lens.

In a 'sought after' road in Poynton, Cheshire, England. Vintage 28mm prime lens on a DSLR.

In a 'sought after' road in Poynton, Cheshire, England. Vintage 28mm prime lens on a DSLR.

This is what happens when you can't go outdoors much. Pentax K3 ii with Takumar-A f2.8 28mm vintage prime lens.

Wallace: “A Takumar lens with a Pentax K mount! Well, what do you think about that, Shawn lad?” Shawn: “........…?” Wallace asks me to explain it to Shawn using information found on the Internet: Me: "Takumar lenses with the 42mm screw thread are members of the Royal Blood Line in Pentax lore. The Takumar lenses with the K or bayonet mount are apparently of the lesser nobility. They were produced after the screw mount had been discontinued and as a cheaper alternative to the Pentax branded bayonet lenses which typically had SMC (Super Multi Coated) stamped on them. This particular Takumar A lens clearly has some kind of coating on its elements but it does not boast about it on the lens barrel. Some Takumar lenses were issued with the brand name Cosmlcar and were marked MC for just plain Multi Coating. On the lens barrel, the markings for f8 on the aperture ring and 10 feet (3 metres) on the distance scale are differentiated by orange ink. The logic seems to be that if you set the aperture to f8 and set the distance scale to 10feet (3 metres) everything from 5 feet (1.5 metres) to infinity will be in focus. All dependent on the film speed/shutter speed and light level of course; but it makes everything sound easy. A 28mm focal length lens designed for full format/35mm film format cameras converts to 'effective' 42mm on my DSLR (APS-C) camera. The lens lacks autofocus of course, but if I find that I really like this 28mm focal length, I can always buy a Pentax-FA HD 31mm f1.8 Lens for only £1,049 (USD $1452/€1218) more than I paid for the Takumar." Shawn: “........…?”

Pentax K3ii with Takumar-A 28mm f2.8 prime lens. Yes, the focus plane seems to be ok without fine adjustment.

Poynton Park, Cheshire, England. A small woodland area where nature is pretty much left to do its own thing with minimal interference from sheep and humans. Pentax K3ii with Takumar-A 28mm f2.8 prime lens. There is some green/purple aberration in the topmost branches next to the white sky, but you have to magnify the picture a lot to see it. In this respect, this lens seems to equal or even out-class my 18-55mm 'kit' standard zoom.

1970s 35mm SLR photographic equipment, photograph taken about 1978. The camera is a Pentax S1A and it is fitted with a Jupiter-9 85mm f2 portrait lens (made in the USSR). Far right is the Super Takumar 55mm f2 standard lens, and to the left is a Peak 135mm f2.8 telephoto lens. Right foreground is a Pentacon 30mm f3.5 wideangle lens (made in East Germany). The Weston Master 5 light meter (which I still have) is in the left foreground. Ilford FP4 black and white film. Scanned to create a 24 bit colour tif file and processed to sepia using Silkypix software.