Vintage Lens – Helios-44 58mm – Soviet-era Relics Of Georgia & Armenia

Welcome to one of my Vintage Lens series blogs! These blog articles showcase collections of photographs taken with vintage lenses, mounted to my trusty Sony camera body.

A few years ago, my mom dug out my grandfather’s old camera and gave it to me to look after. The poor thing is a rather angry-looking Prinzflex (Zenit) 500E 35mm film SLR camera, which I am fully planning to shoot with in the future. But that will be a tale for another day.

Some of my friends shoot with vintage lenses, attaching them to their modern cameras. This is quite easy because of cheap and readily available adaptors. In the days before my Georgia and Armenia 2022 trip, I had an idea! I carefully unscrewed the lens from my grandfather’s camera, gave the lens a clean, and ordered an adaptor for it. This surprisingly hefty chunk of metal and glass (last used in the 1980s) was going to go on a little adventure with me.

For any photographers among you I will take a slight detour to share some info about the lens and some of its interesting features.

Feel free to skip to the photographs if this sounds a little too nerdy for you 😉

Lens details – Helios-44 “Zebra” 58mm f/2

• Manufacturer: Minsk Mechanical Factory (Minskiy Mechanichesckiy Zavod, “MMZ”)
• Manufacturer Location: Minsk, Belarus, USSR
• Lens Model: Helios-44
• Focal Length: 58mm
  Aperture: f/2 – f/16
• Aperture Blades: 8 blades
• Mount: M39 thread
• Body Colour: Black and silver, “Zebra”
• Serial Number: N9021946
• Year Of Manufacture: circa. 1970

The Helios 44-series was born in the USSR; manufactured by several labs across the former Soviet countries. These lenses have unusual specifications, deviating from the “standard prime” set up (usually 50mm focal length, aperture  f/1.4 or f/1.8). The specific set up of the Helios 44-series lenses (58mm focal length, f/2 aperture) betrays that these lenses are in fact copies of the original Zeiss Biotar lenses.

The manufacturers’ mark on this specific lens indicates this was made in Belarus, at the Minskiy Mechanichesckiy Zavod (MMZ) factory some 450 miles south-west of Moscow. These lenses were manufactured with a silver-colored body or a black body with silver accents on the focus ring. This specific lens is an example of the latter, often called the “zebra” style. Based on the lens’s model number and zebra-patterned body, this was likely one of the last Helios-44 series 1 lenses made, around 1970. After this time, various other models were produced, each with a suffix to indicate the model (44-2, 44-3 etc).

Manufacturing defects creating beautiful Bokeh!

Curiously, the feature that makes the Helios 44-series lenses the most beloved are their optical flaws. These lenses are famous for the interesting bokeh the lens produces, affectionately termed “swirly bokeh”. This is a result of the bokeh pattern becoming more elliptical towards the edges and corners of the frame. Since this effect is most pronounced at the image’s edges, the bokeh balls appear to be revolving around the image’s focal point.

A popular use of this effect is to photograph a subject in the foreground at f/2 with a backdrop of vegetation with bright light peaking through the leaves. Here is an example I snapped near my house during a test shoot.

Pretty nifty, right! This effect is reportedly more pronounced with the 44-2 lenses, but I think this one does a good job considering I have a lot to learn about shooting with this lens. Plus, the sentimental value of this lens for me trumps even the swirliest of bokeh another lens can offer ;).

Exploring Soviet relics and abandoned places of Georgia and Armenia with my grandfather’s old lens

I can honestly say, the £15 I spent on this M42 to Sony FE mount adaptor was well spent! I honestly had a blast shooting with this lens. I tried to dig this lens out of my bag whenever time and a vintage artistic mood permitted. I still took most of my pictures at each place with my usual gear, opting for wide-angle shots most of the time. It was wonderful to go off-tripod with my grandfather’s old lens for a few minutes, and with a focal length of 58mm it certainly pushed me to shoot differently than my usual style.

I took some artistic licence with the editing, to give these photos a vintage 1970s/1980s feel to them. The aim here was to emulate the feel of analogue photographic film prints in terms of colours and a pinch of added grain. Other than this, I have tried keep the image as close to the original as possible (no cropping, no fixes other than some minor brightness adjustments)