> By your statement "...I assume that the Takumar doesn't employ SMC > coatings," you made me wonder why you would assume such a thing. > So I checked all my M-42 Takumar lenses, and some do indeed > include the SMC coating, so just because it's a Takumar is not > necessarily associated with SMC coating or not.
The confusion here, I think, is due to the two different uses for the name "Takumar" by Pentax (the latter use, I would say, being rather unfortunate). Back in the M42 days, the name of Takumar was associated with all of the quality lenses (many of which later got the SMC coating treatment) put out by Pentax. M42 Takumar = High Quality. However, in the K-mount era, when the "regular" Pentax lenses were being released with SMC Pentax designations, Pentax did eventually resurrect the Takumar name in order to apply it to some "budget" lenses that (at least generally) did not receive the full SMC treatment. K-mount Takumar = Lesser Quality. Fred
