Old Lenses Pt 1 – Helios 44/2

I think that buying a new camera has reawakened a little bit of photography excitement in me again, as I’ve been feeling quite creative in that area the last few days.

For no other reason than it suddenly came to me, I decided to buy an adapter to mount my old M42 lenses (of which I have quite a few) on to my Canon SLRs. I’m not really sure whu I have not done this before, other than that I was busy using them on Prakitca film cameras and I think a lingering worry that it would mess up my Canons. Having a new camera I thought I would take the risk, on my 1000D at least.

I bought the adapter on Amazon, made by K&F Concept, who seem to have a good reputation for adapters, and have been having a lot of fun playing with the old lenses. So here is the first in a few posts on the project.

The Helios 44/2 is a 58mm lens, with an aperture range from f/2 to f/16, which was manufactured in the Soviet Union as the kit lens for various Zenit SLRs. It’s quite renowned for it’s gorgeous swirly bokeh when out of focus, and if you embrace this and the soft focus it really is an amazing lens. This is not to say it can’t be sharp with a smaller aperture, but where it excels is wide open.

For a standard to mid focal length of 55mm it can get pretty close, with a minimum focus distance of about 50cm (I reckon a little closer to be fair) which means that lovelyswirly effect can be used with great effect for flowers.

Taking it right our of focus creates and almost lensbaby like effect.

Of course it can just be used normally, though one thing I have found, is that even when exposing carefully through the lens, I often found pictures to be a little over exposed, and I am not 100% sure why – I will experiment with more spot metering as I go on.

All in all, this is a great way to breathe new life into old gear. I’ve edited these in Lightroom, with basic exposure and a slight saturation boost, but have not applied any corrections for sharpening, to allow the character of the lens to shine.