Pentax Super-Takumar 85mm f/1.9 (M42)

Put this next to the Nikkor 85mm f/1.8 of the same decade and the choice comes down to what you want from a portrait. The Nikkor is the snappier, higher-contrast of the two, more clinical wide open. The Super-Takumar 85mm f/1.9 trades a sliver of that bite for a gentler, more forgiving rendering that sits beautifully on skin. Shoot a face at f/1.9 and you get a soft halo of glow around the in-focus plane that resolves into real sharpness by f/2.8. Stop it to f/4 or f/5.6 and contrast firms up and the resolution climbs, holding edge-to-edge detail that surprises people who think of old M42 glass as merely soft.

The bokeh is the draw. Backgrounds dissolve into smooth, rounded discs with no hard outlines and no onion-ring texture, which follows from the simple all-spherical design (onion rings come from molded aspherics, and there are none here). Specular highlights stay circular near center and lemon toward the edges, normal for a fast tele wide open. Out-of-focus transitions are unhurried; there is no nervous double-edging in the falloff. Color through these older single-coated Takumars runs slightly warm with restrained saturation, which flatters portraits and reads as filmic rather than digital-clean.

Flare is the honest weakness. This is single-coated glass from the early-to-mid 1960s, and a bright source in or near the frame will veil shadows and drop contrast fast. Shoot it into the sun and you get glow, ghosting, and a milky lift in the blacks. A deep hood matters here, not as a nicety but to keep the contrast you paid for. The later Super-Multi-Coated and SMC versions of Pentax's 85mm tame this considerably, so if backlight is your thing, those are worth the premium. (If you go reading about radioactive Takumars, note that the thoriated reputation belongs to the SMC 85mm f/1.8 and the 50mm f/1.4, not to this f/1.9.) For controlled or front-lit light, the older lens gives you most of the character at a fraction of the cost.

Who reaches for it: portrait and available-light shooters who adapt M42 onto mirrorless bodies, where the 85mm becomes a near-perfect short tele for headshots and tight environmental frames. The fast f/1.9 maximum is the point, separating a subject from clutter at full-length distances and gathering enough light for window-lit indoor work. Build is what you expect from this line: all metal, a long smooth focus throw, and firm positive aperture detents. Min aperture runs to f/22 for landscape duty stopped down.

On price it remains a value play against the equivalent Nikkor and the Canon FL/FD 85s, cheaper than its own multi-coated siblings, and far below the Leica and Zeiss fast 85s it loosely competes with on look. One metering note: at f/1.9 in dim interiors you are at the edge of handholdability, so meter the shadow you actually care about and let Zone Light Meter place it, rather than trusting an averaged reading that the bright window will pull down. Filter thread is 58mm, common enough that hoods, NDs, and polarizers are easy to source.