Pentax Super Takumar 50mm f1.4: Breana Teneil shoot

Written By Campbell Mattinson

Digital image of Breana Teneil taken with a 50-year-old Pentax Super Takumar 50mm f1.4 lens. It’s not in exact focus but even so, this lens has a distinct softness. Indeed it makes this digital image look film-like.

Every now and then I buy an old, vintage, manual lens, and adapt it to a modern camera body. I then wrestle with this old lens for a few minutes in the middle of a 'normal' shoot – in this case, ironically, a shoot run by Sony – before condemning the lens as too hard. These shots of Melbourne model Breana Teneil were taken on a Pentax Super Takumar 50mm 1.4 at 1.4, on a Fujifilm XH2. The Super Takumar lens is famous for its orange radioactive glow. It's super soft, super characterful, and darn difficult to focus when you're shooting through glass, into the dying sun. I love the orange flares though (see bottom image). And the bokeh around the sideview mirror. It’s hard to know exactly but this lens was probably made in the early 1970s. So we’ve got a 50+ year old lens, on an 18-month-old camera, and it’s the old lens that’s providing the character. This particular shot, if it’s not obvious, is taken through a part-open car door.

If you’re looking to give your digital images a “film look” the Pentax Super Takamur 50mm f1.4 lens does its best to give that kind of rendering.

Melbourne model Breana Teneil captured with a Pentax Super Takamur 50mm f1.4 lens in 2024. Again the (manual) focus isn’t spot on but the character of the highlights is key here.

This colour image does its best to provide a pure example of the Pentax Super Takamur 50mm’s signature radioactive look.

I’ll do a second post on this lens – in conditions where it’s easier to nail focus – shortly

Campbell Mattinson

This article was written by Campbell Mattinson, founder of The Winefront and mattinson, and former chief editor of Halliday.

When you pick up a wine book and see thousands of top-scoring wines, it’s hard to know which wine to choose. Mattinson guides you through this maze, giving you an honest view of the best Australian wines, the best wine stories, the best wine producers, the best value wines and simply, the best tasting wines. Importantly, Mattinson will tell you about the top-rated wines and also about the underrated wines. In short, Mattinson knows Australian wines inside and out.

Mattinson has been a photo-journalist since 1987. For the past 25 years he’s been a voice that you can trust when you’re looking for the best wines. He’s the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He’s a past winner of a Louis Roederer International Wine Media Award, and is the author of the award-winning book The Wine Hunter. He’s not afraid to put a score beside a wine. But what he’d rather do, is tell you the wine’s story.

https://www.campbellmattinson.com
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