Helios 44-2 Questions

Hi fellas,

I’m looking to buy a Helios 44-2 for my Pocket 4k. There appears to be different versions and im I’m getting confused. I have the Canon EF to BMPCC4K T Speed Booster ULTRA 0.71x. My questions are:

1) Will the Helios work with this specific Speedbooster?
2) If so, do I need additional adapter and what kind exactly?
3) Most importantly, which version of Helios to go for? I see de-clicked aperture and all other kinds of mods. Various mounts. Various filter sizes ie 49mm or 52mm. Which to go for?

Thanks.

Hi fellas,

I’m looking to buy a Helios 44-2 for my Pocket 4k. There appears to be different versions and im I’m getting confused. I have the Canon EF to BMPCC4K T Speed Booster ULTRA 0.71x. My questions are:

1) Will the Helios work with this specific Speedbooster?
2) If so, do I need additional adapter and what kind exactly?
3) Most importantly, which version of Helios to go for? I see de-clicked aperture and all other kinds of mods. Various mounts. Various filter sizes ie 49mm or 52mm. Which to go for?

Thanks.

Get the "helios 44-2 58mm f/2" its a brilliant lens
For filter size get 49mm
then get the Adapter for M42 Lens to Canon EOS Camera
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01HPMY8YE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I just got the helios 44-2 58mm f/2 lens and really love it, i added a diy filter in the lens to give me an almost anamorphic look

Heres mine with the diy filter in it

I just got the helios 44-2 58mm f/2 lens and really love it, i added a diy filter in the lens to give me an almost anamorphic look

Awesome, thanks Akpe! Is it worth it to get the modded versions that are tailored to video and have declicked apertures and such, like this one for example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/224055088013? Or just go for the regular ones?

I just got the helios 44-2 58mm f/2 lens and really love it, i added a diy filter in the lens to give me an almost anamorphic look

Awesome, thanks Akpe! Is it worth it to get the modded versions that are tailored to video and have declicked apertures and such, like this one for example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/224055088013? Or just go for the regular ones?

The lens already comes declicked.
The link you have there is charging you so much because of the canon adaptor, lens hood and focus gears.
If you have that sort of cash then you can buy it

I just got the helios 44-2 58mm f/2 lens and really love it, i added a diy filter in the lens to give me an almost anamorphic look

Awesome, thanks Akpe! Is it worth it to get the modded versions that are tailored to video and have declicked apertures and such, like this one for example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/224055088013? Or just go for the regular ones?

The lens already comes declicked.
The link you have there is charging you so much because of the canon adaptor, lens hood and focus gears.
If you have that sort of cash then you can buy it

Gotcha, thanks again!

The lens doesn't come de-clicked by default since it was stills camera lens. I think it's worth it to buy one already modded and put in Canon EF mount especially since you're planning to use it with a Metabones. I think a converted mount is better than adapter to adapter like that. You could buy a stills lens and send it to Duclos:

https://www.ducloslenses.com/pages/cine-mod

Or there's the guy on ebay and there's people like Iron Glass Adapters that sell 'em cine-modded and offer anamorphic what you:

https://ironglassadapters.com/product/58-2-helios-44-2-designer/

Realize that using a lens like this on a smaller sensor is going to limit the swirly bokeh area if that's what you're after. I think the Metabones will help with that somewhat, but the full effect would be more obvious on a larger sensor.

The lens doesn't come de-clicked by default since it was stills camera lens. I think it's worth it to buy one already modded and put in Canon EF mount especially since you're planning to use it with a Metabones. I think a converted mount is better than adapter to adapter like that. You could buy a stills lens and send it to Duclos:

https://www.ducloslenses.com/pages/cine-mod

Or there's the guy on ebay and there's people like Iron Glass Adapters that sell 'em cine-modded and offer anamorphic what you:

https://ironglassadapters.com/product/58-2-helios-44-2-designer/

Realize that using a lens like this on a smaller sensor is going to limit the swirly bokeh area if that's what you're after. I think the Metabones will help with that somewhat, but the full effect would be more obvious on a larger sensor.

Thanks Chris! I agree the modded one with EF mount would be way more convenient. I’m wondering if you know of any other lenses besides the Helios that will offer me a more soft, organic and artful feeling on the pocket 4K?

I own the Sigma 18-35 which has that sharp clinical look, so now I want something opposite to that. So many things look over digital these days, so that’s why I was drawn to the Helios but I realize it’s one of many lenses with character.

Any leads appreciated.

Like many of those Russian lenses, it is declicked in a certain way from the start.
They didn't have a lever to stop down after focusing like in the West. Instead, there were two rings, on with click stops to set your final aperture and another one, usually at the front, to open it up. If you set the one with clicks to the smallest aperture you may intend to use, there you have it: the other ring is your declicked aperture.

Like many of those Russian lenses, it is declicked in a certain way from the start.
They didn't have a lever to stop down after focusing like in the West. Instead, there were two rings, on with click stops to set your final aperture and another one, usually at the front, to open it up. If you set the one with clicks to the smallest aperture you may intend to use, there you have it: the other ring is your declicked aperture.

I wonder if there were different versions of this lens? I have one (Helios 44-M-4, 58/2) and it has only two rings: one for aperture and one for focus.

I own the Sigma 18-35 which has that sharp clinical look, so now I want something opposite to that. So many things look over digital these days, so that’s why I was drawn to the Helios but I realize it’s one of many lenses with character.

Yes, there are loads of options. The two I'd look into are the Minolta Rokkors (Uli has written a brilliant guide to them at https://www.reduser.net/forum/showthrea ... ival-Guide) and the Contax Zeiss lenses. These can be adapted to Pocket 4K but again you'd need a speedbooster otherwise they will all be portrait-to-telephoto length. Metabones sells an ultra speedbooster for the Minolta SR mount to MFT; it's expensive but probably the best option. I have a set of these Rokkors now, thanks in large part to Uli's guide as well as the reviews at philipreeve.net, and they are gorgeous. Lots of character wide open and most of them become very sharp stopped down. The colors and rendering are sublime, and are consistent across different primes; Minolta made their own glass and were very focused on lens-to-lens consistency. I'm using them only for stills photography at the moment but will eventually use them for video as well.

Some modern lenses have this two-character look as well, such as the Voigtländer Noktons for MFT. You can get cine-modded versions of those from Duclos. And of course there's the Zeiss C-Sonnar T* 50mm F1.5 ZM, which like the Helios has its own unique look; I'm not sure how best to adapt that to MFT, though. There are M-mount to MFT adapters, but this would be equivalent to a 100mm lens on MFT so you'd need a speedbooster in the equation somewhere.

What I described is true for the Helios 44-2 (and quite a few Russian lenses from that era). It's also true for the Primoplan 58mm f1.9, another interesting lens from the East, by Meyer Görlitz in GDR. It has 14 blades and a very specific bokeh (I don't care for the modern remake).

Later Helios' might be different, they were made over decades and even by more than one factory.

Oh, and thanks for the nice words, Brad!

There were over 16 million of these Helios 44 series lenses made in 4 factories. Ones made in the KMZ factory are preferred. Unless you buy a carefully selected modified lens then I suggest that you find a reputable vendor with many to sell, and pick his most expensive one since the QC was poor. Since these heavily state subsidized lenses originally sold for about $85.00 USD in today's dollars, they will still be cheap. Having cheap, quality cameras and lenses in the hands of the proletariat shooting other happy workers must have been a public relations advantage for the state. They also benefited from post WWII seizure of German patents (the early Helios 44-2 is a carbon copy of the Zeiss Biotar) as war reparations.

Here are some comparisons of the more expensive West German Zeiss Biotar against the Helios 44-3 MC lens:
http://forum.mflenses.com/comparison-sh ... 38216.html

I have found that on a MFT camera it is difficult to get that swirly bokeh on the edge of the frame, since you are only using 25% of the center of the image without a focal reducer. I have much better luck with a petzval lens when I want swirly out of focus area..

The swirl comes in part from the misalignment of the elements using Soviet-era production techniques. It was accompanied by a loss in sharpness. This was corrected by the later lenses in the series.

Here is a comparison of the last in the series, a 1993 Helios 44M-7 with it's MC coating against a 44-2:

Re: Russian Vintage Lens
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=70922&p=551058&hilit=44m+7#p551058

Thanks Chris! I agree the modded one with EF mount would be way more convenient. I’m wondering if you know of any other lenses besides the Helios that will offer me a more soft, organic and artful feeling on the pocket 4K?

I own the Sigma 18-35 which has that sharp clinical look, so now I want something opposite to that. So many things look over digital these days, so that’s why I was drawn to the Helios but I realize it’s one of many lenses with character.

Any leads appreciated.

I wanted to clarify, the Helios will have a different look and might work for you just fine. Just not likely to get the swirlies on MFT. If you look at the Iron Glass site they have sets of Russian lenses and some people are fans of those for similar reasons. Like others have suggested, there are various lenses to look at. I ended up settling on Contax Zeiss lenses and had them modded by Duclos and put in EF mount. They have a mix of sharpness and lower contrast that doesn't look clinical. I am not a fan of Sigma lenses at all.

Another line of lenses worth looking into are the Pentax Takumars.
Not modern sharpness, but neither too soft with nice colors.

I have the Takumar 28 2.8 and the 50 1.4 and those are nice lenses. I've compared them directly against a Sigma 70mm macro and found the Pentax to be sharp, but not...sharp like the Sigma. I felt like I was getting a more organic rendering from those lenses. I only use the Sigma to scan negatives.

I used the later K mount Pentax SMC 35-70 2.8-3.5 as my main zoom on my BMPCC for years and was happy with the results. I used an SLR Magic 12mm as my wide. But I got tired of sharing the zoom with my K1000 and I wanted to standardize on a set across all focal lengths. That's when I invested in the Contax set and got a Metabones. For an amateur it was fun to experiment with different lenses, but I'm much happier with a matching set. No more color mismatch from scene to scene and the handling is more precise as well with no fumbling with different adapters, etc.