200mm F4 SUPER TAKUMAR (58) MANUAL FOCUS TELEPHOTO LENS (LN)

Specifications

Pentax Super-Takumar 200mm f/4.0 SM

The 200mm lens is considered to be a medium telephoto lens.  This is good for wildlife, sports and news action photography.  It is light enough for hand-held telephoto shots.   The lens is compact and lightweight and uses the same sized filter and caps as the 24mm f/3.5.

Features.  This powerful telephoto lens has been designed with hand-held photography in mind. Length and weight has therefore been kept to a minimum, and special emphasis has been given to camera balance.  The low distortion makes for a clear-cut image in the viewfinder and excellent color photography characteristics.  All in all this lens is the perfect answer for powerful telephoto enthusiasts who wish to avoid the tripod.

Main uses.  The powerful telephoto effect of 200mm lenses brings distant objects to close-up range and effectively brings out those dwarfed backgrounds.  This lens is thus ideally suited to scenics and fast-action sports, and is at home in all telephoto fields.

Above information obtained from here.

Asahi Optical began manufacturing specialized lenses in 1919, and has been producing lenses for general photography since 1932, twenty years before the Pentax, the first SLR camera from Japan - was manufactured. Painstaking hand craftsmanship, the highest quality raw materials and the most advanced technological know-how are combined in the manufacture of each Super-Takumar.

In the beginning, lens design required logarithmic tables, slide rules- and great patience. It often took three competent designers several years of steady work to complete the computation of a single 4-element lens. Today, Asahi utilizes the most modern electronic computer equipment which performs extremely complicated calculations very rapidly and with great accuracy.

Fine optics alone cannot make a superior lens; the mechanical components are equally important. Lens barrels of Super-Takumar lenses are precision machined for accurate positioning of all elements. Tolerances are so tight you have to break a vacuum to disassemble some elements. Each Super Takumar has dust and moisture-proof seals and a special diaphragm damper that cuts down on wear, vibration and bounce so you get consistent aperture openings.

All mechanical components are precision machined to microscopic tolerances. Specially lubricated, wear-resistant metals assure consistently accurate apertures year after year. Screw mounts are the most precise method of holding a lens firmly in place. Perfectly matched threaded mountings on Super- Takumar make changing lenses quick and easy - even in the dark.

Reviews from forums here:

"My copy is the Super Takumar version, and I use it on my K20d. I am very much surprised by the optical quality of this lens. I find it sharp even wide open, and the colours are rich and natural. As expected from a long lens, DOF is very little, and this might cause the report of 'soft' wide open shots. However, the long focus throw makes exact focussing easy.

The built quality of this lens is old fashioned: built like a tank, all metal - and thus not very light -, and a pleasure to use (although I have no experience with tanks in this last respect...). Probably the max aperture of f/4.0 is a little slow, but SR of my K20 will quarantee tack sharp shots, even with slower shutter speeds.

All in all, I would highly recommend this lens. Optically it can't be beaten very easilly, and it's worth a multitude of it's money if you'd ask me. Buy it if you find one, and if you don't bother MF! "

" This was my everyday tele when I used the Spotmatic Excellent quality of construction, and great rendition of tones. If you are brave I recommend you try portraits with this one, mostly wide open outdoors. When used with a 1.7x converter the shaprness is gone Blades can become oily after a while, and need a technician to cure them"

"This Lens was awesome, It took beautiful shots. I only hand fringing on one The bellagio pic. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomshue first 2 pages or so are for all with the lens on a OLY e-620 (sorry pentax people) I love 4thirds. I like this lens so much I have 2 more on the the, the 85-210 a 28mm and 55mm"

"This is the best lens I have ever used. I own the Super-Takumar version, and I use the lens with the Takumar screw-in metal hood. I find no faults with my photographs taken with this lens. I have owned and used lenses from all of the major Japanese manufacturers--Nikon, Canon, Minolta, Olympus, and Pentax. The S-T 200/4 is my favorite."

A very nice piece of Asahi Optics 200mm tele lens in M42 mount, i can assure you this baby is more than merely a piece of history of good old japan optics in the yesteryears of film photography. Although of course, a piece of this lens, which has been long discontinued, and still kept in such unbelievably mint condition.. definitely rare and worth a good amount of cash.

The crazy advantage of being in an M42 mount, means it can be adapted to a large variety of different bodies, nikon, canon, sony, 4/3, micro 4/3, pentax etc etc.. The F4 aperture is 1 stop away from an F2.8, but weight and price of this lens is way less than buying a nikon or canon 70-200F2.8.. At wide open it gives not merely decent image quality, but some extremely sharp, high resolution, contrasty images with plenty of details with the digital image zoomed in.

Surprisingly as well for a lens from that generation, the 200mm with hood on, is fabulously free from flares, something that has to be corrected with much "special" glasses now, from aspherical designs, to ED, UD, Nano coatings etc.. Ultimately for a prime, a good design alone is more than enough, simply because less glass elements are used, less abberations will surface and hence less correction needed. This lens testify to it.

This lens is definitely good value for money if one doesnt mind manual focusing.

Image taken with lens by LENS.sg staff: