JOV HELIOS 44-2 58mm f/2 M42

[Headcell]

Just picked up this JOV HELIOS 44-2 58mm f/2 M42 LENS on eBay for £25 (inc. postage), in near mint condition.

Does anyone have any experience of this lens? From the reading I've done, the Helios lenses are well regarded, and the earlier generations (1 and 2) are even more well regarded because of their sharpness and the bokeh they produce thanks to their 8 blades. The later generation are reported as having a more harsh bokeh because they have 6 blades.

I'm looking forward to giving it a try. £25 doesn't seem too bad a price considering the later versions are going for about the same price (inc. postage). Just have to wait for the M42 to alpha adapter to arrive...

[UrsaMajor]

Does anyone have any experience of this lens? From the reading I've done, the Helios lenses are well regarded, and the earlier generations (1 and 2) are even more well regarded because of their sharpness and the bokeh they produce thanks to their 8 blades. The later generation are reported as having a more harsh bokeh because they have 6 blades.

I have not used the Helios, and I have no personal experience of using any of the Russian lenses on a digital camera, but I've used several of the Russian lenses with film - either Contax mount or M39 (Leica) mount.

My experience with the Russian lenses is that when you get a good one, they can be very, very satisfactory. I have a couple of Russian lenses that I like as well as anything else that I have ever used. However, there seems to be much more variability between different copies of the same lens than I have ever seen with the Japanese lenses. My personal experience agrees with the comments that I read on the web before I bought any Russian equipment - buying Russian camera equipment is like gambling with dice, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.

With best wishes,
- Tom -

[Headcell]

Thanks for the reply, Tom.

I guess any lens from ebay is going to be a bit of a risk, but the seller has good feedback, so I trust him not to be selling a dud. Even if the lens isn't up to much, it will give me a flavour of how to focus manually, and help me get to grips with using the a230.

The photos I've seen from similar Helios lenses have been extraordinarily sharp and have a very pleasing bokeh. Fingers crossed the lens I've bought will be equally sharp and pleasing.

[Dr. Harout]

... sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.

With best wishes,
- Tom -
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Correction: ... sometimes you win and most of the times you lose. (soviet made lenses immediately after WWII were good, and in time they made worse and worse lenses)

[Headcell]

Good job I bought the second generation lens, then, and not the 7th generation version!

At least I've not spent a fortune on a dud...

[Dusty]

Correction: ... sometimes you win and most of the times you lose. (soviet made lenses immediately after WWII were good, and in time they made worse and worse lenses)

That's because early on they still had those Germans and their equipment that they captured. After a few years of no maintenance on the equipment, and the realization by the workers that hard work won't get you ahead under Communism, the results were as we would expect.

Dusty

[David Kilpatrick]

It depends what you call 'immediately after' WWII. In fact, there were relatively few Soviet (Kiev Arsenal) lenses right away, and a large number of Dresden or East German lenses servicing makes like Praktina and Exakta as well as Contax S which eventually (as the Wall closed the system) transformed into the Pentacon Super. Some of the early Dresden lenses like the Primotar, Domiplan and Triotar are quite terrible - they were bad even on 1960s black and white films. Of course the Tessar was generally OK, and the Industar in its Tessar-like variants.

But there was a golden era for Russian and East German gear much later on, around 1963-1975, which saw massive increases in sales to Western Europe even though other parts of the world might not realise this. During this period, Zenith and Praktica were the leading hobbyist brands in Britain and by the early 1970s the cash flow had funded some extreme experiments. The Praktica L vertical laminar shutter was a pioneer, as was the LLC electrically transmitted FAD iris with full aperture metering. Zenith made some advanced cameras which never reached export markets later on.

The really major difference was that 1950s Russian lenses still used either no coating, or single coating. They were only in control of Zeiss's 'Opton Tessar' coating technology. But in the mid-60s they began to use double-layer coatings; sadly, the engineering quality was not getting better. So you get superior optics in rough mounts.

In 1970, I won an 'Amateur Photographer' monthly contest and my prize was a Zorki 4 with f/2 Jupiter 50mm lens (Leica thread Sonnar). This had really good coating and in retrospect was a pretty exceptional lens. It was very high in contrast and produced great negs, but the camera itself was agricultural in quality.

David

[UrsaMajor]

In 1970, I won an 'Amateur Photographer' monthly contest and my prize was a Zorki 4 with f/2 Jupiter 50mm lens (Leica thread Sonnar). This had really good coating and in retrospect was a pretty exceptional lens. It was very high in contrast and produced great negs, but the camera itself was agricultural in quality.

That same lens - the 50mm f:2.0 "Jupiter 8" in Leica Thread Mount - is one of two Russian LTM lenses that I have that I really, really like, although I haven't used it since going almost 100% digital about 5 years ago. The other Russian LTM I have that I love is an Industar, and if my memory is correct, it is a 53mm f:2.8 lens.

To me they are very different lenses, each with its own appealing characteristics. At my amateur level, the Jupiter does not seem to have any dramatic strengths - it just makes images that look nice and "work". The Industar's strengths are more obvious - the images are wickedly sharp, with high contrast. I loaned that lens to a colleague who is very, very serious about photography, and is also a collector with almost every landmark 35mm camera ever made by a major company. He used the Industar on a couple of his Leicas and then asked if he could buy the lens from me - he was that impressed.

I also have Contax mount copies of the Jupiter series 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm lenses, which I have used on a Kiev rangfinder. (Contax rangefinder, made in Kiev when the Russians moved the Contax tooling and technicians there after the war.) I like the 50mm and the 85 mm Jupiter lenses very, very much in the Contax mount, but I was never able to get a copy of the 85mm Jupiter in LTM that was satisfactory. Fortunately, the lenses were available at very inexpensive prices on eBay in the early part of this decade, so I didn't waste too much money before I gave up trying to get a good LTM version of a lens that I love in Contax mount.

With best wishes,
- Tom -

[Dr. Harout]

You're right David. All I had in mind that lens design was based on German copies.
Sarcastically speaking: end of WWII ---> Soviet took over factories and staff members
"gently" "asking" them to work
plans designed ----------------> to be approved by CPSU (communist party of the Soviet Union)
meanwhile some of the workers "voluntarily" register themselves for an "adventurous life" in Siberia
the approval gets back to party officials in the factory who prepare special meetings for "persuading" workers
then some of the Siberian "volunteers" are "kindly asked" to return
some of them do return and some of them had already died due to young age
.... and then they begin to plan to how to plan their planning....
and then Stalin dies and the whole Soviet "mourns" and cannot work in "grief"
So Khrushev begins with a new era.... and then cold and hot wars
and eventually they manufacture lenses
So that makes roughly 1963-1975