I finally setup the Helios on the Sony and had time on the weekend to get outside and use it. It took a little bit of testing to discover how the lens worked and how to get familiar with how it produced certain effects, and I instantly fell in love with it at that point. This lens holds so much character to it. It has that vintage look, incredible bloom that gives depth and a great cinematic perspective, while also having that very famous swirly bokeh that resembles anamorphic lenses. I took a few portrait shots of my girlfriend, to which I saw the true potential this thing offers. Though this lens has been thrown onto an adapter and placed on a digital, mirrorless Sony camera. This means I get all that goodness from vintage glass with a modern camera sensor. As many shots as you'd like without the threat of running of out film! Just SD card space, I guess. But I had an absolute blast with it, and both of us ran around taking photographs of different things and feeling that spark return a bit with the excitement of trying something so different in photography. The other lenses which are made for digital cameras and more recent still being great, but a bit too familiar and slightly lacking in that aspect of character.
Vintage glass on modern cameras seems to be the future, capturing the beauty of them without just pursuing the idea of the sharpest image possible. The love for the flaws in an image or video which gives it a little bit more personality. Perhaps we'll start even seeing smaller lens manufacturers pursuing the vintage look.
Truthfully, I feel the lens best performs in colour for capturing the more swirly bokeh look. But this image I took with a ton of highlights in the trees was just too nice for me to pass up and not share. I love the dreamy circular shapes of the backgrounds, the bokeh that seems almost disorientating. This effect isn't always present, it takes getting a little bit of distance from the subject for it to appear. With closer shots having a more regular bokeh look to it. But those moments it does appear feel magical. And it's something that I found so engaging as you start to hunt for subjects it'll pull out with. I've never owned a lens like this before, never have I found one that holds such a distinct look to it that makes it stand out from the rest. I've seen some modern lenses which have wider focal lengths have some incredibly beautiful bokeh styles to them, but nothing quite like this. Particularly for the price differences given this one is an old camera that's already 50 years old, and the lens barely costs double digits (depending on where you are in the world). I find that the lens best works under harsher lighting, where there are plenty of highlights and lots of things going on in the backgrounds.
I think this really will live on the camera for a while. The focal length is great and doesn't seem too wide, nor too tight. Like a great middle ground for the 85mm and 35mm I have now.
Under certain conditions you can really see that the lens still has that vintage look to it, and the aforementioned bloom is what really sells it. Things remain sharp but with a degree of grain, like a filmic look that removes just a slight fraction of detail. I think in regards to portraits that's already a major plus given you don't want sharpness that pulls out every spot, pore, or freckle in your model. Having some of those, what many may consider to be, imperfections removed. I think it makes the lens a very diverse tool that allows it to flourish both on people and still subjects, as well as environments and general natural locations. I don't feel that way so much about the 50mm Canon FD lens I have, which is interesting given the focal length isn't much different. A little more on the Helios. Perhaps that's what adds that extra bit of style to it, and this is something that cinema lenses also do: a few extra mm on the focal length than regular photography lenses, thus allowing them to stand out a little more from the usual looks we have from smartphones and consumer cameras.
I think it'll still take a bit of getting used to though. One thing I have to remember is to really take my time to nail the focus. Sometimes things look in focus, but once pulled up back at home on the laptop, you notice it's just slightly off. It can be a little harder to tell on the Helios given the focus ring within the lens looks.
Here you can see a bit of that bloom works. The gentleness of the trees but the slight blur of people if you just slightly miss focus on a subject. This happens a lot in cinema lenses also, where it's almost intentional to lose a bit of focus on some aspects of the shot given the character it holds in the areas it does hold its focus. It's interesting to look at how lenses may have flaws but how that can be utilised within filmmaking and photography, how visually those moments can actually be more appealing than when everything does seem too perfect and real.
