The Random Lens Generator this week married the Sony A6700 with the M42 mount Helios 44m-4 58mm f/2. Of all the (over?)hyped vintage lenses the Helios must be up there – one of several lenses I own that are famed for their ability to create swirly bokeh with distinctive cats eye shaped bokeh balls. I can’t be sure as I don’t have records of any purchase but I am fairly sure this was the first vintage lens I bought, I think in April 2011 and married with a simple M42 adapter that did nothing but mount the camera to my A mount Sony A700, meaning it was a totally manual focus affair and rather difficult without the bells and whistles of focus peaking, focus confirm (Which I think I then got with a newer adapter that allowed such a thing) and now – with my fancy Techart LM-EA9 adapter, full autofocus.

Although having tried it out several times over the years I’ve never really fallen in love with it the way many others have, although I appreciate that for a very inexpensive lens (£35 or so currently) it is of reasonably good construction and capable of producing some good looking pictures. It doesn’t see much use because I have a number of lenses in that focal range that produce better quality images, especially in terms of colour reproduction, and other lenses that, in my opinion, produce better swirly bokeh.

It’s unfortunate too that for this quite short camera walk, it was mostly cloudy with the sun soon to set, which meant that specular highlights (for which this lens is famed) were in short supply. Also using the crop sensor A6700 means that the full effect of the swirls when shot wide open at f/2 are mostly missing from any image taken. Most of the images I took were taken at f/2 or f/2.8 (the EXIF records everything as f/2 due to the adapter used) mainly because light was in short supply. For that reason, this is a rather short look at the results.

This shot of a dumped Sprite bottle shows on the right hand side of the picture the beginnings of what would be swirl if the background and light was appropriate. In this instance though the right side of the picture just looks a bit unpleasant. The fence on the left however is fine, and the Sprite bottle is sharp enough to show it could be a pleasant portrait lens.

As in previous weeks I have shot originally in black and white then edited the raw to produce the colour version. That is why when I took the photo above I didn’t notice the colour rendition is fairly unique if I am being kind, and not very nice if I am being honest. It should be said that the light was very flat and dull so not conducive to a pleasant looking image even with the best lens, but it was noticeable how poor this and other photos (I am not posting) looked.

Black and white, of course, hides the sins of many a poor photo as shown above. This is a portrait crop from a landscape image, which doesn’t show the beginnings of swirl but I preferred it in portrait orientation – once again impressed how well the Techart AF worked with this lens.

I quite like the shots above and below, as the lens wide open has a kind of dreamy sharpness to it in the centre of the frame which, in certain instances like these, works quite well.

It’s a similar story with the shot above, the flaws in the lens giving it a bit of nostalgic character (the tree branches especially) which compliments this historic Grantham street quite well.

This shot of the side of St Wulfram’s church taken moments later really didn’t work when I tried to convert to colour, but the original black and white version has atmosphere which worked out better than anticipated. I tried to get more of the same with some of the vintage houses along the street, but it had gotten too dark.

This is a shot I have taken a year or so ago – the last time we had enough rain to leave big puddles in Wyndham park reflecting the spire of the church, which looks great in the dark. I shot it last on the RX100-VII and would love to have taken it on a lens that was a little sharper than the Helios but, considering it was a hastily taken shot with what I had available, I was quite pleased with the outcome.

Literally the last shot I took before I made it home and one where the colour works really nicely with the brake lights of the car illuminating the garage floor. The Helios somewhat blurring the foreground works quite well – I think it could probably be cropped a bit more.

A short opportunity to reacquaint myself with the Helios 44M – a shame that I didn’t get to test it with the conditions that would suit it best and with a full frame camera that could show of its talents to its fullest. In that respect it’s not really fare to offer a recommendation or not, but even without the USP of the lens I think it’s recommendable as an inexpensive and widely abundant lens for those who want to dip their toes in the world of vintage lenses attached to modern cameras.