My Favorite Lens

A Weekly Column By
Mike Johnston
© Mike Johnston 2002
Well, ever since I wrote my column called "The 50mm Lens and Metaphysical Doubt" — the point of which is that lens choice isn't as crucial to pictures as some photographers might wish to believe — I've been hearing from a bunch of enthusiastic photographers who want to know about my own professed "favorite" 50mm lens, the Pentax Super-Multi-Coated Takumar.
Takumars are M42 screwmount lenses. They will fit on Spotmatics — SP, SPII, SPF, ES, and ESII primarily. The early 52mm-filter-thread 50/1.4, called the "K" lens, was a different but very similar design in a bayonet mount. The SMCP-M lens is similar but the design was changed somewhat.
If you're interested in finding out more about the arcana of different Pentax lenses, the best place to ask further questions is on the PDML, the Pentax-Discuss Mailing List, which is found at www.pdml.net.
Basically, there's not a whole lot to choose between the lineage of Pentax fast 50s. I think...