Another new lens, the very small Takumar 35mm/3.5. I have a 50mm/1.4 that I use a lot. And I have a 24mm/3.5 that I like. This new lens slots right in between those two. A little wider than the 50mm, but with less distortion and distancing than the 24mm.

With this lens I think I have the all the major bases covered: 24, 35, 50, 105, 135 and a 50 Macro. There are few lenses in the Takumar M42 kit that I would like to have, but I feel like I have the lenses I need for the stuff I like to shoot.

The 35mm doesn’t have the super-short minimum focus that the 24mm has. As evidenced by this this picture of corn. I think with the 24mm at least one more ear in the foreground would have been in focus. I still like this shot, though.

A common use case for 35mm lenses is architecture photography, so I took these shots in the North Loop area of Minneapolis which is full of old brick and stone warehouses. The vignetting you see is due to me using the wrong lens hood. It’s not due to the lens itself.

I like how I can be fairly close to a large subject like these windows and still get everything in the frame.

Or how I can get this shot from an alley with minimal distortion.

Or capture some of the details around a door.

I’m not positive, but I don’t think this shot works with any of my other lenses. With the 50mm I’d compose solely on the lattice at the top of the gate. With the 24mm I think this shot would look weird as hell. But with the 35 I get a nice sense of the line of the fence and the paralleling power lines.

These were shot using a Pentax Spotmatic ii using the 35mm/3.5 lens. I used Ilford Delta 100, developed in Rodinal 1+50 at 20C for 14:00. Scanned with an Epson 750. Adjusted in Affinity Photo.

All photos with the 35mm/3.5 lens

All photos from this roll

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