Recently I am taking more and more photos with the lens wide open. The lens of choice for me at the moment is the Canon 85mm f1.8 USM. A lovely lens that can produce very smooth great back ground blur. So what will happen with a 135mm lens? This is where the Pentax comes in. It was purchased on eBay for a very reasonable sum and since I already has a M42 to EOS adapter, I was good to go.
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| Lens |
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| Hood |
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| Lens and hood |
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| Side by side with Canon 85mm f1.8 |
So what will happen with a 135mm lens? This is where the Pentax comes in. It was purchased on eBay for a very reasonable sum and since I already has a M42 to EOS adapter, I was good to go.
I am not expecting the Pentax 135mm lens to be as sharp as the Canon 85mm. Can the 135mm f3.5 create lovely out of focus blur? Here are a couple of test images using the Pentax 135mm lens against the Canon 85mm f1.8.
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| Canon 85mm f1.8 @ f1.8 |
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| Pentax Super Takumar 135mm f3.5 @ f3.5 |
The Canon 85mm f1.8 can achieve much smoother back ground blur than Pentax135mm f3.5. Also the minimum focus distance is longer with the Pentax. I couldn't get a tighter crop with it.
Here are the 100% crop in the centre for both of them.
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| Canon 85mm f1.8 100% crop |
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| Pentax Super Takumar 135mm f3.5 100% crop |
Sharpness is not bad for an old lens, but back ground blur is clearly not as smooth but very useful. The contrast is higher for the Canon lens as well. For an old lens, the Pentac did really well. I am quite impressed. Of course manual focusing is not for everyone. This is just a quick look. A more detailed comparison will follow later on.
