The wild sample variation definitely brings the average sharpness down but don't expect razors even from the best copy.

You can always go by the serial number, with the first two numbers delineating the year that the lens was made… except that some plants only specified the decade, and some models didn’t put the year in the serial number at all. Achieving a full on case of the infamous ‘swirly’ bokeh can be pretty difficult, as it requires some specific combination of background, distance, highlights, and focus. We'll take a look behind the scenes on some of my creative projects, completely unscientific and subjective camera, lens and film reviews and most importantly photographs! Color rendition on the Helios does follow the Soviet standard in that it offers a cooler, muted color palette. I personally own the 44M, 44-2, and 44-4, all built with the goal of emulating the Zeiss Biotar lens.When you shoot wide open at f/,2 close up to the subject, the background is a beautiful, buttery, soft bokeh.

A little bit more expensive than the Helios ones but from Zeiss and with other aperture blades and designs as the Kiew products. On the other hand, the EF to FX adaptor I was using for Fujifilm is a budget, manual only adaptor that doesn’t have a design that reduces internal reflections as much. If you wish to shoot one of these lenses on a digital camera, you will will need to use an adaptor which has an additional ‘ledge’ to depress this pin on the rear of the lens – otherwise the lens will remain fixed at the widest aperture. The soft edges in images captured with the Helios 44-2 are not necessarily due to the lens’s inability to produce sharp details in the corners and edges.if you want to know how reviews are done and written, check out this site—run by germans, of course: https://www. If you like the creative impact of a “swirling bokeh” lens, but shoot with a micro 4/3 camera, then your comment that the helios 44 is “too long” gets a supporting vote from me. So I attached the 44-2 lens to my Zenit 11 and went for a trundle to Monk Bretton Priory to make myself feel better…it was closed, it really wasn’t my day. Optical formula, aperture blade count and other functionality is variable between the different versions but the differences won't significantly impact the performance or ease of use.

This was taken around f8 and you can see that the corners and sides are nowhere near the sharpness of center. At f2, even several feet from the wall, the lens is hardly usable unless you’re looking to sacrifice sharpness for big bubble bokeh and shallow depth. The aperture blades then close and open as you adjust the aperture ring, just as with the A/M switch lenses when they’re switched to M. The two you referenced were written by the same person, and it’s possible that his writing style doesn’t work for you. The best way to adapt the old Helioses in Zenit M39 mount is to (easily) unscrew the front optical group, remove the washer/spacer that sits at the bottom, and sand it with circular movements over a sanding paper.I just depressed the pin all the way down with a needle, put a blob of superglue on it, let it dry and then it acts like a manual switch, keeping the lens pin permanently depressed.