Playing With Lenses: Underdog: SMC Pentax-M 1:1.7 50mm

Cost: 18$ (average market price $40.99)

Ach, the fun to test another Pentax 50mm! The F1.7 was commonly sold as the more expensive option of kit lenses for Pentax cameras in the days, with the F2.0 as the cheaper version. Kit lenses those days were mostly of solid quality and sharp, in contrast with some of the crappy kit lenses a few decades later.

This is a beautiful lens! A small but solid metal body. Much smaller then todays 50mm prime lenses. It just looks right, and oozes a sense of quality to it. Smooth early Pentax-like handling, and the aperture ring clicks in 1/3 of a stop, not often found on cheaper kit lenses. Manual focussing is easy and fast in combination with the Sony a6000 and the Lens Turbo II. Sharpness remains all over the picture although that might be different when using it on a full frame camera, especially if go up to around F5.6.

Image quality is excellent to great... beautiful vibrant colors with lot's of contrast, thanks to the famous Pentax SMC coating, and sharp as a knife. With the maximum aperture being F1.7, it is very suitable for low light photography at a much more affordable price then the Pentax 50mm F1.4 or F1.2 versions.

This is a very versatile lens that can be used for street and portrait photography, providing good saturation and depth rendering. It allows subjects to stand out from the environment very nicely. And a good bokeh on top. What more can you want? Just take a look on Flickr to see what this lens is capable off.

With a lens this good, at such a current steal of a price, it's hard to understand why people are paying more for recent released manual lenses for multiple times the cost. It's hard to do better then this one, and it has find a deserved spot in my favorite lens collection.

To combat partial reflection, Pentax developed chemical coatings for the lens surfaces with minimum light loss. SMC is "a remarkable seven-layer lens coating process that cuts the reflection ratio down to just 0.2% per lens surface. The result is a dramatic improvement in both color fidelity and brightness and the elimination of flare and ghost images."
SMC was patented and first applied in 1971, when Pentax was still making screw mount equipment. The multi-coated lens lines changed from Takumar and Super-Takumar to Super-Multi-Coated Takumar and later on to SMC Takumar. SMC Pentax was used for the newly introduced K-mount lenses. Pentax's SMC is still today considered as one of the best lens coatings on the market.

Lens Specification:

Focal Length: 50mm
Maximum Aperture: F1.7
Minimum Aperture: F22
Image Format: 35mm
Lens Mount: PK
Optics: 6 elements, 5 groups
Blades: 6
Focussing: Manual
Minimum Focus: 45cm
Filter Size: 49mm
Weight: 185g
Length: 31mm
Production: 1977 to 1984
Serial Number: 2636666
Made in: Japan

More information on Pentax

Samples:
Pictures taken with Lens Turbo II Adapter