The Super-Takumar 1:1.4/50mm

How I came to own the 50+ year old Super-Takumar 50mm f/1.4 lens. Some pictures, and some thoughts.
photography
life
Author

Enyan Zhang

Published

July 1, 2025

I was at Fujiya’s film section in Nakano. The camera selection wasn’t very exciting. Someone told me that Kitamura might have what I’m looking for. After a few turns and a narrow staircase up, I found myself looking at an entire shelf of old cameras and lenses marked as junk.

A whole row of 50 and 55mm Takumars was lying there. Most were in pretty bad condition. But one stood out: the aperture blades had oil stains, and there was a lot of yellowing1. But apart from that it was so clean I could barely see any dust. It was just 4400 yen. How could I say no?

1 Happens a lot to the radioactive Takumars, and supposedly reversible.

With a X-T30 II in hand, I asked if they had any M42 to Fujifilm X adapters. You might try your luck at Fujiya’s junk section, the clerk assisting me said. I ran back to Fujiya. Amazingly, it was the only adapter they had in the shop. I ran to Kitamura again, put the adapter on, and tried the lens. It worked amazingly well: yellowing is nothing but a white balance issue for digital cameras. I boarded the train east with the fastest lens I owned thus far: the Super-Takumar 50mm f1.4.


The Lens

The lens is certainly one of the more famous Takumars, and you’ll find a lot of reviews online. It’s amazingly built, yet not too heavy at 230g. With an additional adapter (mine is 130g) it becomes heavy for an APS-C lens, but still the balance with my X-T30 doesn’t feel off. With focus assist on modern mirrorless, manual focusing was surprisingly easy: by the second day I was ambitious enough to start tracking moving objects.

For most models, you can see a number on the back of the manual/auto switch, which controls the automatic stop-down pin for aperture. Mine says 38701, and is a 7-element version of the Super-Takumar. It is said to be a simplification of the earlier, much more rare 8-element verion. The later multi-coated version supposedly has better flare control, as well as an additional protruding at the mount that communicated with the camera (like the SP F) for open-aperture metering. You can find more info here.

Shooting

Aerial night view of Tokyo’s Shibuya Crossing from above, showing mostly cleared crosswalks with a few groups of people waiting. The scene is dominated by vivid illuminated signage on tall buildings, colorful advertisements, and the glow of city lights reflecting off the streets.

Look at how much it blooms! It makes for very unique shots in night scenes

I enjoyed bokeh and the amount of light it lets in at F1.4. But wide open it also softens a lot: your pictures will be fine if there’s not much contrast. With any light source or bright reflections, however, there’ll be a big glowing, dreamy bloom around any bright area.

A wide nighttime cityscape view of Shinjuku, Tokyo, featuring a dense cluster of brightly lit billboards and tall buildings. A yellow-green train crosses an elevated track in the lower part of the image, while cars and crowds are visible on the streets below, creating a lively, layered urban scene.

Shinjuku at night. This one is shot at F/2

Stopping down to F2 makes that blooming a lot more controlled. You also start seeing hexagon-shaped bokehs and six-pointed sunstars — the lens has 6 (non-rounded) aperture blades. I liked it a lot!

All of the following pictures are shot at F2.

A crowded platform at Shinjuku train station at night, with passengers lined up along the edge waiting for an arriving E-235 Yamanote Line train. Overhead signs indicate track numbers, and fluorescent lighting reflects off the wet platform floor.

A brightly lit yellow and green automated parking payment machine in Japan, captured at night under a light rain. The machine stands on a wet, reflective asphalt surface near a quiet urban street, with Japanese instructions and payment slots clearly visible.

A detailed nighttime close-up of a white and green automatic platform safety gate at Takadanobaba train station in Tokyo. The gate label indicates 'Yamanote Line, Car 2, Door 1;' in Japanese, and beyond it, colorful city lights and signage appear out of focus, producing a vibrant hexagonal bokeh effect that contrasts with the sharp foreground.

A close-up of a handmade ceramic pitcher with a glossy, multicolored abstract glaze in red, yellow, blue, and white on a black base. The pitcher is displayed on a table at a pottery market, with additional ceramic pieces and softly blurred visitors in the background.

At even smaller apertures, the lens seems to be perfectly capable of resolving 24MP2: nail the focus, and you’ll get sharp images down to the last pixel. Having shot quite a bit with the XC15-45mm kit lens, this was quite shocking. It’s also a good street photography lens: at F11 and F16 the depth of field is so large that the hyperfocal distance3 is just a few meters, so it barely needs any focusing for most scenes. If you choose to open up, though, you still get a lot of light for the night and beautiful bokehs.

2 Well, my Fujifilm has a 24MP sensor, so I can’t tell you much beyond that

3 Something I probably will never learn if I didn’t start playing with manual lenses

A middle-aged woman sits alone on a blue bench at an empty Japanese train station platform, holding a black bag on her lap. Overhead, a digital sign reads 'Train Approach Information' in English and Japanese, while platform safety doors line the edge, and a quiet urban background with tracks extends into the distance.

An upward perspective view framed between two elevated structural beams or overpasses, revealing a pale blue sky with scattered white clouds. The geometric lines and muted tones emphasize architectural detail and the interplay of light and shadow.

The lens certainly has a lot of the vintage lens “character”: I’m still not sure I love the blooming, which is probably what a lot of people describe as “dreamy”. And there are certainly subtle style differences from modern lenses. But the other great thing about having “character” is how you interact with it: after using this lens, I learn its quirks, which then become additional dimensions you can tweak about your photography. In terms of how fun it is to shoot, it certainly tops any “modern” lens.

A low-angle view down a long, warmly lit indoor hallway with polished floors and wooden benches lining the walls. Framed artwork and colorful fabric hangings decorate the walls, and a glass door at the far end reveals a softly focused exit sign and window light.

A close-up of a smiling Hotei (Laughing Buddha) statue adorned with a wooden bead necklace, positioned in front of an ornate wooden clock with Roman numerals. The scene is softly lit, emphasizing the serene expression and aged texture of the statue.

A small indoor Zen sand garden featuring a carefully balanced stack of smooth dark stones in the foreground. The background shows a softly blurred window view with green plants and diffused natural light, creating a tranquil, contemplative atmosphere.

And, did I mention this? $30 for beautifully built 50mm F1.4 lens with so much history. Having used this lens for a bit now, I’m perfectly happy paying multiples of this amount. Turning the focus and aperture rings feels so nice I’d buy it even just as a fidget toy.

Afterwords: Yellowing

When I initially got the lens, its yellowing made it 1300K warmer compared to a modern lens. After laying it in direct sunlight4 for a few days, and after finding an UV light in the basement, leaving it with the UV light, now the yellowing has reduced a lot — I’d say it’s a few hundred K at most. Now it’s completely usable without adjusting white balance. Kitamura definitely jumped the gun marking this as junk. Their loss, my gain.

4 A lesson learned: remove plastic lens caps, as they will melt when getting focused on by the lens under direct sunlight.