![]() One was the ability to use legacy lenses easily, second was the colors which reminded me of the good old film days (although 31, I am old enough to remember those days). I love the colors that this lens produces. This is an amazing and very important asset which is rather rare - at least in this price range. When you view a photo, it feels like the screen is just a piece of glass, and you can actually touch the subject you photographed. The photos look real, not unreal/surreal like many other lenses. On crop sensor it is limited only to the edges of the frame but still is great to have and produces very nice images. Get close to your subject, and fill background with some nice colors, and let her do the job. Officially she is the worst copy of all of her sisters (44-2, 44m-6, etc.) yet the images she produces are either fantastic, or takes a minute of PP to become fantastic. But I still can argue that this lens, not only for her (yeah, mine is a she and I love her) price but for the results she produces, is an amazing piece of a glass. I cannot say that I have used many primes. Sharpness: 9 Aberrations: 10 Bokeh: 10 Handling: 10 Value: 10 Camera Used: K-50 Not useful for other than portraits at f/2 (such a great problem, eh?). The full album for this test is here: Date: July 19, 2017Īmazing micro contrast, wonderful colors, great bokeh, swirl, build. I took test photos in Kensington Gardens, a London park that has some nice statues etc., with the lens on a Canon Eos 400D with an M42 adapter with AF confirmation chip. If I had to value the lens alone I'd say it was about half the value of the lot to me. The lens I tested here was part of a job lot with a telephoto, a Zent body, a 200mm manual lens, and a teleconverter which I got for £25, about $30. The 44-M probably isn't the best of them, but they're usually good all-round performers with no horrible flaws or problems, and I've only ever seen a couple with stopdown faults, the big weakness of many M42 lenses by comparison, I see more faulty Domiplan lenses than working. I buy and sell a lot of old lenses, and generally see several Helios lenses a month. Sharpness: 9 Aberrations: 9 Bokeh: 8 Handling: 8 Value: 9 Camera Used: Canon Eos 400D It seems that you need some decent distance from your subject, and you need some background that can fall into swirly bokeh in the distance.Not as sharp as some of the other lenses of this marque ![]() I took another shot with a subject at mid range, perhaps 4-5 feet away while still shooting wide open at f/2.Ĭan you start to see the swirl shape in the background? This photo showed me I’m getting closer. It isn’t swirly bokeh yet, but it definitely has more shape to it. I aimed up at a leaf that was a little further away, still shooting wide open at f/2. This image was shot up close which caused the background to blur too much for the swirl I was looking for. When you shoot wide open at f/,2 close up to the subject, the background is a beautiful, buttery, soft bokeh. I took the lens into my in-laws yard to find out how best to find the swirly spot. It arrived the day before we left so it was ready to go right away. After a quick test shoot I decided I was going to shoot this Helios 58mm 44-2 exclusively for the entire trip. I bought the lens right before a two-week trip to St. This unfocused image shows the popular swirly bokeh effect Well, this “defect” looked really cool to me and I wanted to incorporate it into my lens collection. I did some quick digging and found out this was called “swirly bokeh” and certain vintage lenses created this effect through a manufacturing defect. It was awesome and unlike anything I had ever seen! I was looking through photos on Flickr and noticed a few images in which the bokeh appeared to be swirling in a circular pattern. I really enjoy having big apertures available for low light so I started looking for another prime lens. It’s a great lens but after taking it out a few times, I concluded it wasn’t for me. The 24-70mm and adapter are super heavy and ridiculously front-heavy. The 55mm shoots like a dream and is insanely light-weight. I started off with a Sony 55mm f/1.8 and a 24-70mm f/2.8 lens that requires a Sony adapter. You can see how I used it in my last article: when to trick your camera for the perfect exposure. A friend convinced me that having small-form, full frame camera would be an entire different way of shooting. I recently bought a Sony A7 to compliment my Canon 6D DSLR.
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