An evening love affair looking through the lens of the USSR

Famous for it's swirly Bokeh, the Helios 44-2 is a vintage legend

Two things I find fascinating are photography and the cold war; so a lens that is an artefact of the cold war is right up my alley, enter the Helios 44-2. This is a well known lens in the vintage photography community as it is highly accessible while still having some very interesting features. It even continues to be relevant beyond novelty, being used in some scenes of the most recent Batman film.

My copy of the lens is pictured below. I am a sucker for such things but I love the ‘Made in USSR’ engraving, it really does highlight the history of this item.

This lens is based on another from East Germany made by the DDR. I was not aware of this ahead of time but it was made in multiple factories, mine was made by Valdai and is considered the inferior version. Quality control was lacking there apparently and some people have experienced defects such as oil on the aperture blades. Fortunately, I experienced no issues with mine.

As mentioned this is a very accessible lens, I got mine for £45 on ebay with a £5 adapter to fit my Sony a6000. Both are metal which gives a noticeable feel of quality, in fairness to work well at least 40 years later I suppose it must have a certain amount of toughness to it.

All the photos (bar those of the lens it’s self) are taken by the Helios lens. I loved the dreamy feel it imparts on photos taken with it.

What the Helios is really famous for, is it’s swirly Bokeh.

Bokeh is the blur on out of focused items in photos.

Most modern lenses will result in the background just being a blur the but the charm of the Helios is it will swirl the bokeh. Below is a photo of tree, on the left it is in focus, while the right is out of focus. When out of focus you can see it creates a spiral effect with small swirls in.

When zoomed in this becomes far more apparent.

Capturing these swirls is somewhat of an art form. Too out of focus and they blur into ambiguity, too in focus and the are gone entirely.

What seemed to help was to have a highly textured background, such as trees, ideally backlit. A focused subject in the foreground also helps to highlight them due to the contrast in sharpness.

I’m early in my photography so I’ve only used standard kit lenses beyond this one, they’re great but compared to some of the results here they do feel almost clinical. There is a charm to this lens that perhaps more ‘true to life’ lenses lack.

Something that surprised me is how sharp the lens is. It’s not going to compare to a modern prime lens but for £40 it is still exceptional value. I took some photos of seaweed to test this out.

Considering I bought this more as a curiosity I’m really happy with the photos it produces and will likely use it for it’s ability alone going forward, never-mind it’s novelty.

An issue I did get was some quite significant lens flair when the aperture was fully open at f/2 but closing it just a bit to around f/2.4ish or re-angling resolved this.

When the light hit right though, the outcome was gorgeous. The wispy bokeh allows for some very ethereal shots. Even when the swirls aren’t being taken advantage of the outcome has some serious character.

I really enjoyed this lens and intend to continue using it. I expect I’ll get a lot out of it going forward. Knowing the history of the lens certainly added to the experience, there is an appeal to using something from such a fascinating point in time.

Beyond that I didn’t realise how good vintage lenses could be, I assumed there would be a noticeable quality tradeoff but that really hasn’t been the case.

This could be start of a rather expensive hobby…