I figured a good way to really see the difference between the Helios 85mm and a more modern lens would be to throw it on a tripod and do some direct comparisons. If you drop it, I’d be more worried about damaging the floor than the lens. In hand, I have no doubt that it could withstand nearly any punishment and given that previous generations of this lens have managed to last thirty plus years under heavy use, still functioning well, I have no doubt that this one could do the same. It is made out of a solid metal body, which presumably is pretty thick because it weighs more than lenses twice its size. The Helios 85mm certainly doesn’t disappoint: the thing is built like a tank. This lens is a specter of a different time, when sheer ruggedness was the bullish priority above all else. The Helios 85mm thrives in soft, beautiful, light. I’ve learned to avoid high-contrast situations as a rule. I’ve also noticed that the lens sometimes seems to almost flare from specular highlights, which can look quite odd in images. After receiving mine, I quickly purchased a lens hood for it, as it doesn’t come with one. Virtually any cross-light coming into the lens obliterates your images and creates effects that I’m not terribly keen on. The Helios 85mm flares like crazy - sometimes in very cool ways, other times in image-ruining, awful ways. Crop in post to achieve the desired composition. Below are two unedited images taken at f/1.5 and f/2 respectively.ĭepending on distance to background and aperture, the Helios 85mm’s bokeh ranges from the legendary swirling that it is known for to an interesting, almost painted, creamy look. The best way to ensure sharp images is to stop worrying about composing in camera and just always shoot with your subject dead center. Personally, I find the lens to have the best balance of bokeh and sharpness at about f/2.0. Wide open, this lens is fairly soft, though usable if you only need the very center of the frame to be sharp. Step outside those limitations and sharpness falls off like crazy. If you stop down the Helios 85mm and place your subject in the center of the frame, sharpness isn’t too bad. In late 2015, they finally started to find their way to being easily accessible in North America. Two of the Helios lenses have become legendary for their extremely characterful rendering of bokeh, the first being the relatively common 58mm f/2.0 and the second being the much rarer 85mm f/1.5, which ended up being used more in night vision devices than cameras, which made the few M42 mount versions of the lens quite expensive given the exotic beauty of their performance.Ī few years ago, in reaction to this demand, the Helios 40-2 85mm f/1.5 was updated for modern DSLR mounts and put back into production in Russia. Over the course of a few decades, dozens of Helios lenses variations were created, the majority designed for non-photographic uses. Many years ago, the Helios lens line was first born as a clone of sorts to port the legendary Zeiss Biotar lens formula into the M42 format that was used in the Soviet Union.
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