takumar disappointment

[alacant]

Hi everyone. Having such good results from my 135 and 200 takumar examples, I had high hopes for this old takumar 300; poor. Soft and the sort of aberration where the red -rather than the blue of the achromats- is out. Even my st80 is sharper and doesn't distort as much at the edges. Dunno, maybe I just got a bad example or am expecting too much of old glass. Does anyone have one?

 

[Tim]

Hmm, it does look a bit ropey. What camera are you using it with?

[alacant]

Hi. Canon 700d which is capable of this.

[Knight of Clear Skies]

I've heard elsewhere that the 300mm isn't great for AP I'm afraid. In general old lenses struggle to control chromatic aberration at long focal lengths, I had a look at a Carl-Zeiss 300mm f4 once which was pretty bad. It might still be good for narrow-band work if that's an option for you, if not then selling it on might be the best thing to do.

[Gina]

I have a 300mm Takumar lens but haven't got round to trying it for imaging.  If or when I do it would be for NB imaging - for most galaxies I shall be using my Esprit 80ED APO with field flattener.

[Tim]

I experimented with some old lenses on my CCDs once. Can't recall anything decent from a 300mm one, which probably means it was rubbish  Would have to go back and find the data though, it was a while ago.

[alacant]

1 hour ago, Knight of Clear Skies said:

if not then selling it

Hi. Thanks everyone for your replies. Yeah, I don't think it's worth wasting any more time with. I'll spare everyone the injustice of classifying it here and stick it on eBay from whence it came, so beware: 3160921