Quality on a budget

Good quality comes at a price right? Well I would argue that as I have a number of old lenses that I have picked up on the well-known auction site and at charity shops. These almost forgotten gems are making a comback, now that people have seen what they are capable of.

In this post I am featuring the popular Helios 58mm prime (M42 mount) that was standard issue on Zenit cameras. I have two of these lenses (there were many variations) The 44M which I paid £1 along with the Zenit EM that it was attached to and the 44-2 (preset) which cost me £4 is what the photos in this post were taken with.

This bee shot was taken at F8 with a 20mm extension tube added.



When used on my Canon 40D, the 1.6x crop factor makes the field of view of this lens just over 90mm making it a short telephoto lens; ideal for portraits, but I also find this focal length very useful for other uses.

This shot of the 1st Severn Crossing was taken hand held at F11 using 400 iso.

This shot of a display by the RNLI was taken at F8 using 200 iso to give me a shutter speed of 1/1250 which has frozen the movement of the boat, waves and the man `falling' out of the boat.

Again adding a 20mm extension tube has allowed me to focus very closely on the bolt. This shot was taken at maximum aperture of F2 which has given a shallow depth of field. This is what I would call a photographers shot as we seem to be the only ones that shoot this way. The average joe with a point and shoot just wouldn't take a photo of a rusty bolt on a fence and would not try and throw everything else out of focus. And it only appeals to other photogs.



Another shot using an extension tube and an aperture of F5.6



The next few shots were taken with the lens at F2, which really shows off how well it performs. The `bokeh' is its strong point (although it probably is an acquired taste).

Last but not least is the swirling bokeh that happens in certain circumstances (click the image for larger view to see this in its glory). This can be obtained when using an aperture of F2 with a busy background.