Carl Zeiss Planar 50/1.7 vs Asahi SMC Takumar 50/1.4

[Yahvel]

I was playing around with these two earlier. Both images were shot on a 5D MIII with same settings for both. Which one do you think looks better ?

[memetph]

The Takumar is probably yellowish . It is its usual disease. If you don't fix that in PP, it cannot be good.

[Yahvel]

Mine does not suffer from that. The wall is actually painted yellow.

[Gardener]

[Gardener]

To me sharpness, is about the same, bokeh looks ever so slightly smoother on Tak. I think I prefer cooler tones of Planar, on the other hand Takumar does much better job painting the edges of blown highlights in the top right corner.

[tb_a]

Aside from the slightly different colors (caused by AWB of camera or coating of lens) it is nearly impossible to judge about those lenses in the presented size with the chosen motive. So I would finally say that for this photo both lenses are more or less equal.

[scsambrook]

Well . . . whatever the respective technical merits of the two, I much prefer the "look" of the shot from the Pentax lens.

[ManualFocus-G]

The Planar shines at infinity

[newst]

[tb_a]

[memetph]

[Yahvel]

[memetph]

[radissimo77]

at @2.8 you expect them yo be good, both, and they are great

wide opened it might be different story
p.s. MFD of 0.6m bugs me a lot on Planar

[WNG555]

Agreed, given the size of the pics, they both look great to me. One's cool, one's warm.
The Tak (and the Yashinons mentioned above, as well) could be yellowed a bit by the Thorium, although you stated the SMC Tak isn't excessively yellowed.

For comparisions sake, I switch to Daylight and not AWB.

[y]

I'd like to see some contrasty scenes... All Planars (Contax G, QBM, etc.) tend to be plagued with loads of really unpleasant purple CA. The Takumar features CA to some degree too, although it's much more cultivated (somehow pleasant greenish tones).

[europanorama]

http://camerapedia.wikia.com/wiki/Radioactive_lenses
its listed here
Lenses with elements made of contaminated glassEdit

Some lenses of the 1960s have elements made of glass sorts which include small traces of radioactive rare-earth elements. Sometimes this accidental radioactivity causes a significant yellowing of these lens elements. Some users of such lenses reported in camera blogs that they healed the yellowing by exposing these lenses to the ultraviolet light of the sun. The procedure needs several days of sunny weather to have a positive effect. Lens elements with such yellowing radioactive impurity are in the following lenses:

Minolta MC W. Rokkor-SI 1:2.5 28mm (early variant, before radioactive glass impurity could be banned)
Minolta MC Rokkor-PG 1:1.2 58mm (early variant, before radioactive glass impurity could be banned)

The healing of yellowing by sunlight is also reported for some lenses with thorium glass elements, for example for the Nikkor 35mm f/1.4 lens and the Super Takumar 50mm f/1.4 lens.

[europanorama]

I have both plus 50/1.4 zeiss. will test all against eachother testing center and edge at 40m when i have new highprecision adapter by optixpcb.com with chip(bad adapter dont buy see other thread). i have three versions of crap adapters or not sharp at infinity(2). a) peleng8 with dandelion(CORRECTION: SHARP AT INFINITY but lens-locker which had to be bent inwards almost at every lens-change is finally broken) b) dslrexchange with screw, made especially for eos 5D and 5D MKII with larger mirrors. cannot be focussed to infinity... is quite good anyway-several 100m on certain lenses.
third one IS sharp at infinity but has crap lens-locker.....
btw: sigma 28/1.8 aspherical High Speed Wide is terribly sharp also in the corners wide open-tested on eos 1000D and compared to 28/2.8.
almost no CA. but i must retest, infinity is at 40m already with two adapters.....lens was showing 1.8m but in reality its 1.5m. peleng8-adapter is crap! see above.
i have found the right adapter-its focussing beyond infinity: K+F CONCEPT, . very thick lens-locker. perfekt fit.
see other thread