I recently came into possession of a new lens. I received it as a little “thank-you” for quickly sending a mislabeled parcel back to an eBay seller that I had recently purchased a camera from. While they certainly didn’t have to send me anything, I was happy to accept a new-to-me Helios 44-2 lens that would fit my Spotmatic, and received it in the mail on Friday.

With a little bit of time in between chores this afternoon, I felt compelled to go out for a little walk and give the lens a little test.

Outside of (a) being unaccustomed to using such an odd manual lens on an SLR¹; and (b) running afoul a man who thought I was making a photo of him², I think it went quite well and gave me the sort of rendering I was expecting and hoping for!

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1. To compose and focus with full light, you must open the aperture manually (there is no mechanism to hold it open automatically), then set it at the desired f-stop and release the shutter. Moreover, it’s stepless (stopless?), so you have to use a little mechanical “brake” to stop from underexposing. ↩︎
2. Yet again, he walked past the frame, distant in the background while I was making a photo of something nearer. While he did get into the frame, the aperture was quite open and he’s little more than un unfocused blob in the background. People seem a little touchier this year than they have before, so I think I will be more mindful and cautious. Being angrily accosted is unpleasant. ↩︎