Helios 58mm 44-2 f/2 Review - Discover Vintage Charm

One of the benefits of mirrorless cameras, like the Sony A7 III, is their ability to mount vintage film-era lenses as well as modern lenses. The Helios 44-2 58mm f/2 is known for its swirly circular bokeh. Many fine art photographers use unusual vintage lenses—like this Helios glass, inspired by the Carl Zeiss Biotar lenses—with mirrorless cameras to achieve artistically interesting results.

At one point or another, all photographers find they’re lacking inspiration and grow bored with their images. You could call it photographer’s block. One way out of this is to experiment—in this case, by using a vintage lens. So, to put this to the test, we sourced a Helios 44-2 58mm f/2 and attached it to a Sony A7 III before heading out to the English seaside to see how this setup performs on artistic merit. Keep reading to learn more and discover the resulting images.

Sharpness Isn't Everything

Often, your choice of kit will be dictated by your needs or the needs of the job at hand. High-megapixel bodies give us crop options, and a brand with a great lens range and sharpness are key necessities.

But, sometimes, aiming for perfection can begin to hinder your creativity in your work. The standard lenses needed for accurate representation within a professional environment aren’t necessarily what you need for your personal artistic work. Some people may dull the sharpness of their images to give them a more raw feel.

Sharp shots aren’t for everyone. Your eyes don’t see the world that way. Whenever you look at something that really piques your interest, you don’t usually notice the sharpness in the renditions your eye provides to your brain.

Photography isn’t always necessarily about truth, just representation. The photographer sprinkles their magic to give images their signature, either in camera, in the edit or through their choice of kit.

Swirly Bokeh

This is where the Helios 44-2 58mm f/2 comes in. This Helios vintage lens offers swirly bokeh and soft renditions. Due to its mass production, this lens doesn’t cost much at all.

At maximum aperture, this lens creates unique renditions. At f/2, it’s perfectly imperfect.

Stopped down a little to f/2.8, the lens begins to normalise. But it still gives off a dream-like feel, with corners that fall off into very soft focus.

Interestingly, by f/5.6 the lens renditions cool down and start to re-normalise in colour reproduction and rendition.

Image Quality

You might argue that the magic really happens between f/2 and f/2.8, but extra care is needed if your subject isn’t centred in the frame. Otherwise, it’s a bit of a gamble—better to play it safe and stop down to make sure you nail focus.

It’s difficult not to shoot everything fully open on this lens, especially with landscapes—a genre in which accuracy and corner-to-corner sharpness are preferred. If you want to recreate the idea of a fading memory, this lens is perfect. Fine art photography is all about creating a feeling, and this lens absolutely captures that.

While this lens is solid and well-built, it also has a couple of idiosyncrasies. On the front ring, the aperture lock mechanism effectively sets a ‘stop’ between apertures. So, when you move it along the aperture scale, it only gives you access to f/2, f/2–f/2.8 or f/2–f/16, and you never really know what aperture you’re on. When you disable the aperture lock mechanism, however, you feel like you’re randomly turning a ring. This design flaw isn’t as much of an issue when you’re shooting digital, but would cause a problem for film photographers.

Focusing

Focus is another thing to watch out for. While Sony cameras have focus peaking, shooting at f/2 means it can be tricky to nail focus perfectly. It’s a good idea to keep your subject in the centre. And better still, move your focus ring forwards and backwards slightly and get a few safety shots. Chances are that at least one of them will be in perfect focus.

In hindsight, we should’ve shot the image above with a smaller aperture to ensure everyone on the beach and the rock formation is in equal focus. At least the arch and the paddle-boarders in the centre are nice and sharp.

Slower vs Faster Apertures

Another interesting thing about the Helios lens is the radical difference between stops. The lens warms up the closer you are to f/2, but it also loses contrast. While this isn’t unusual, it's still impressive just how much it changes an image. Deactivating the aperture lock mechanism means you can see these changes happening seamlessly in the electronic viewfinder, which helps choose the look of your image.

When shooting portraits, this lens creates dreamlike backgrounds—and the busier the background, the better the look. You have to get focus fairly accurately, but the 58mm focal length is more forgiving than an 85mm, for example.

Stopped down, you can still expect a vibe. Here, the lens exhibits aberrations in the far reaches of the frame, giving you a similar look to Ektachrome film on a cheap travel camera. In a good way.

Night-time shooting is phenomenal—the lens creates a slight halo around bright light sources—even stopped down. It’s up to you whether you ramp up the ISO or use a tripod. The images were shot at ISO 3200 at f/4. We didn’t have a tripod, but it would’ve been interesting to see the same shot on a tripod with lower ISO. But the ISO performance on the Sony A7 III is excellent, working nicely in tandem with the inherent look of the lens.

Experiment with Vintage and Retro Lenses

There are so many low-cost lenses that you can mount on a modern camera to give you an added burst of creativity. Shaking things up and shooting with a lens like this isn’t for everyone. With this type of experiment, you have to be prepared to give up some control and not necessarily even like everything you shoot. But it’s an important exercise in trying something different—you shouldn’t let the fear of failure limit you as an artist. Fine art photography is all about experimentation and using all the kit at your disposal to achieve the look you want. For this article, we used the Sony A7 III and the Helios 44-2 58mm f/2, but the beauty of having access to so much different kit, is you have almost endless opportunities. Whether you're shooting travel or nature photography, play with different lenses to see what suits your style.