An evening walk with Asahi Takumar 2.4/58

[alex ph]

Some city shots made with Asahi Takumar 2.4/58 (Heliar design, M37 thread mount). The last examples showing after crashes here in the forum go back to 2007-2010. The presented are not the most illustrative ones, as long as they are taken in the dim light. But I had a mood to try that.

The camera is NEX-5, ISO 400-800, aperture varies from f2.4 to f4. Contrast and colour tweaks are applied.

#1 Close up through an art shop window


#2 A larger distance, chrome surface and urban lights


#3 A difficult (artificial) light situation, coping with the contrast


#4 Portrait distance, pretty sharp when well focused


#5 A cityscape, visible (and interesting) low contrast without degraded sharpness and a rather low microcontrast


#6 A cityscape converted to BW, typical Heliar transitions


#7 A BW stylization (harder image tweaks)


When tweaking the shots, I recognize Heliar behaviour that lacks the plasticity of Planar having a much wider dynamic range. Heliar's one is narrower letting contrasts more difficult to polarize. The first instinctive move is to push them much further. But then you realize again that this is the lens' specialty. The shots just look more tempered and thus more "solid".

[Oldhand]

Quite beautiful results.
The sharpness is evident and the rendering very pleasing
Tom

[alex ph]

Thank you, Tom!

In the recent months I play from time to time with the NIK processing set you once suggested and that you use for your BWs. It's a real joy of experiment with different options, giving quite plausible results for film imitation and attractively saturated BW.

Here I proceed with a Takumar 2.4/58 shot put through Analog and Silver apps of the NIK set:





For comparison, here is the original shot with simple tweaks of colours and contrast, more recognizable for its low contrast Heliar signature

[alex ph]

Adding now some more "traditional" shots, taken under day light, at f4.

The lens shows itself quite contrasty, and when auto-contrast is applied the colours are vivid and the Heliar "muted" rendition is less apparent. The sharpness is really good from f2.8, while at lower apertures (up to f5.6) the corners might be fuzzy even with an APS-C camera.

The lens' specialty clearly maintained in preserving highlights (the sky is never washed out) and in OOF objects keeping shapes, less dissolved than by many other (Planar) lenses.

#1


#2


#3


#4


#5

[Blazer0ne]

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[sergtum]

nice shots!!!

[sergtum]

[Blazer0ne]

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[visualopsins]

Gerjan van Oosten says in his "The Ultimate ASAHI Pentax Screw Mount Guide" says the preset P-mount retains the "Same optical design as the lens for the Asahiflex models. Lens barrel isxquite different though!". He list the older lens as 230g; newer at 150g.

[sergtum]

[Blazer0ne]

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[visualopsins]

It's confusing.

The lenses being discussed are shown in the first two tables 58/2.4 entries.

[visualopsins]

[alex ph]

Thank you, sergtum!

Samples taken with both versions of the lens, the one with M37 and the one with M42 on pentaxforums, have the same recognizable low contrast / dense bokeh signature. I'd say the information about the same optic formula of both versions is correct.

[Blazer0ne]

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[Blazer0ne]

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[alex ph]

A very nice shot! And estonishingly good contrast for this lens in low light. Did you shoot wide open?

[Blazer0ne]

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[Blazer0ne]

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[Blazer0ne]

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[Blazer0ne]

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[alex ph]

A follow up of our exchange with BlazerOne about this M37 version of the lens (Heliar) and his M42 version (Planar):

The rendering of the M42 lens version is just fine. For me it stands very well in front of high end Planars and has its personal touch. OOF astigmatism that is noted by BlazerOne makes it event more interesting.

Compared to it, the m37 version and Heliars in general have a "heavier" background. I mean that in reality it is not at all always "smooth", as described when one speaks on the Heliar's mertis. To get "smooth" and "airy" transitions form OOF to in-focus, you need quite good or special light conditions. If you look at my examples taken in greysih light or just imperfect light conditions, with this Takumar, with Kodak enlarging Ektar or the clasic German Heliar, you'll easily notice a kind of grey cast which works well on BW but does not really makes a birthday present in colour. From this point of view, I assume that Planars giving much better contrast and brighter OOF are better all-round lenses.

[D1N0]

Both m37 and m42 variant are Heliar 5/3. https://takumarguide.weebly.com/1--24-f58.html Maybe people are getting confused with the 58/2 Sonnar Takumar that was also Launched with the Asahi Pentax system. That is is 6/4. This is by my m37 copy that arrived yesterday.

Rock rider by The lens profile, on Flickr

[Blazer0ne]

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[visualopsins]

From https://takumarguide.weebly.com/1--24-f58.html



https://takumarguide.weebly.com/1--2-f58.html
https://takumarguide.weebly.com/1--22-f55.html

https://takumarguide.weebly.com/takumarology.html