Mir 1b 37mm f2.8 - lens review

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 After I got into vintage lenses in 2017, I started looking for some Soviet ones, to see for myself if the hype was real, but for a good couple years I could never find one in good conditions or for a good price, until the day I stumbled into a mint Mir 1b. It's a pretty well-known lens, one of those everyone on the internet recommends, so I was quite interested in trying it out.

Mir 1b 37mm f2.8


 It’s a fairly small lens, 52mm long with internal focusing and a 49mm front thread, but it has a nice heft with its 200 grams of weight due to the all-metal body.

 The focusing ring has a nice gruppy shape and it turns 270 degrees, but minimum focusing distance is a massive 70cm; some people disassemble the lens to remove the screw that stops the ring from turning all the way and achieve a shorter minimum distance, but I still haven’t tried doing it myself.

 The iris had ten blades and the aperture is… confusing. To be honest, when I recorded the video review I still couldn’t wrap my head around it, but eventually I understood the intention of the designers. Basically, the aperture is clicked and goes from f2.8 to f16 and between the aperture and focusing rings there is one more ring, the biggest one actually, that lets you open the iris stepless, so that, on film cameras, you could focus and compose more easily before quickly going back to the selected aperture.

 Yeah, I know. Try it on an analog camera and it will make more sense, trust me.

 That said, overall the Mir 1b is not a bad lens, maybe not the most quirky or peculiar, but it has a nice “vintage look” and while it doesn’t lack in detail, sharpness is not great, and even stopping down there is a bit of blooming in the highlights and falloff towards the edges. Colors are pleasant, but background blur is, in my opinion, a bit “busy” and the hard edges on the boke balls might not be to everyone’s liking. The front element is really nice to look at, but the coating doesn’t do that much for flares, although they are mostly pretty.

 I didn’t really like the Mir 1b at first, and I still don’t love it, but I can see why many people do.

 As always, if you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments and don’t forget to check the full video for all the samples.



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