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S-M-C Takumar 300mm f/4
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 7:41 pm    Post subject: S-M-C Takumar 300mm f/4 Reply with quote

Super-Multi-Coated Takumar version.
A very lucky find, I got this at an excellent price. I have been looking for a cheap one for years.
This had a bit of fungus, fortunately just on the surface of the front element, and no coating damage. It came with a very nice Pentax 77mm filter though, that has extensive scratching and coating loss, so it seems to have served its purpose as protection.
Otherwise somewhat worn, but in excellent functional condition.







Family picture - the more common automatic Takumars - back row - 135/3.5 (with hood), 200/4, 300/4; front row 28/3.5 (with hood), 35/3.5, 55/2

This is most definitely a Takumar. It is smooth, slick, sophisticated, quality machinery. For a 300/4 it is extremely compact and light, as in the Pentax tradition. This is a smaller and lighter lens than many third party 300/5.6 lenses, or many @200mm zooms of its time and later.

It has a built-in hood thats actually quite good of its kind, though I actually use it with a longer screw in hood.
The tripod mount is removable, fortunately, as it interferes with mounting on DSLR's, and even on my old Pentax SV when the meter is attached. Its the same standard removable mount used on the 200/3.5 and 300/6.3 presets, which is useful.


As for usability, its only drawback is a rather long minimum focus of 6 meters - 18 feet. That seems to have been the design tradeoff to make it compact. Bokeh is also fairly busy. This is not a Sonnar.
Focus throw is very long, typical of its time, which is helpful in getting precise focus, though not so good for quick focusing.

Performance - this is sharp enough in the center at f/4, at closer ranges, to hit the limit of my Pentax K30 sensor. That should be more than good enough for any digital camera for nature photography and make it perfectly usable at f/4 for most purposes. It is not so sharp at infinity wide open though. It gets much better at f/5.6 at infinity. It can show extreme color fringing under the worst circumstances, and a limited degree of CA. All in all, for its day, a very impressive piece.

Samples - all at f/4





















Color Fringing extreme case -



The bird -



Crop -



Last edited by luisalegria on Sat Jan 10, 2015 1:47 am; edited 2 times in total


PostPosted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 7:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wow, looks great!


PostPosted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 8:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Very nice, you are missing some good lenses in that family shot...
50/1.4, 55/1.8, 85/1.8, & 105/2.8


PostPosted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 9:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Missing more than that.

I have a 50/1.4, its on loan to a friend.
Most of the others are fairly expensive.
I have to find a bargain.

I have had most of these since I was a kid actually.


PostPosted: Sat Jan 10, 2015 12:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Very impressive, both the lens and the pictures. Cool


PostPosted: Sat Jan 10, 2015 10:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've tried this lens lately,but excessive CA deterred me.They are so pronounced that after correction sharpness suffers too much.


PostPosted: Sun Jan 11, 2015 5:46 pm    Post subject: Re: S-M-C Takumar 300mm f/4 Reply with quote

I too have a Super Takumar 300mm F4, which is the exact same Luis' lens except for the coating that is single layer. I agree with just about everything Luis said, but I would like to add some additional information.

In virtually every super telephoto lens, including the modern apochromatic ones, the residual chromatic aberration can be visible in certain situations. It is up to the photographer to control it. As we know, there two kinds of chromatic aberrations. The longitudinal chromatic aberration cannot be easily removed by post-processing, but it virtually disappears when the lens is stopped down to F5.6 or F8. The lateral chromatic aberration, on the other hands, remains more or less the same regardless of the aperture, but luckily it is easily eliminated with post-processing.

luisalegria wrote:
Performance - this is sharp enough in the center at f/4, at closer ranges, to hit the limit of my Pentax K30 sensor. That should be more than good enough for any digital camera for nature photography and make it perfectly usable at f/4 for most purposes. It is not so sharp at infinity wide open though. It gets much better at f/5.6 at infinity.

The peak performance occurs for F5.6 to F8, but in my lens, the difference in sharpness between wide open and F8 is small, barely visible, regardless of the focusing distance. It seems to me that Luis' lens is in need of a small adjustment of the infinity focus. This is done by unscrewing the three small screws on the focusing ring.

To give an idea of the difference in sharpness between wide open and F8, please see the 100% crops of photographs taken from a house 1500m away. The images are from camera's JPEG without pp sharpening.

F4 (wide-open) center 100% crop:


F8 center 100% crop:



Comments: The F8 image is certainly sharper than F4, but the difference is slight for my yes.


PostPosted: Tue Jan 13, 2015 2:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I used to own an SMC version of this lens. Got rid of it for its quite excessive CA.