The reversed front element Helios 44 is... weird

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 The Helios 44, in its many variants, is arguably the single most famous vintage lens. It is a copy of the Carl Zeiss Biotar design, which is a very simple design, consisting in fact of only four pieces of glass, and that makes the lens easy to disassemble to clean and fix, but also makes it easy to modify.

 The most common mod is to reverse the front element and I was pretty curious to try it myself, so I did.

reverse front element helios 44

 At first results are, well, underwhelming. There is a great loss in image quality and contrast, barrel distortion and blooming are much more prominent and I've found that the minimum focusing distance increases to roughly 1 meter.

 I soon also noticed that the shape of the boke balls changes based on where you are focusing, close or far, creating distorted yet interesting shapes.

 When the iris is wide open the image gets so soft that is nearly impossible to focus properly and you have to stop it down quite a bit to get any usable results.

 Sadly I haven't had the chance to shoot any portraits with it but Noe Alonzo (Noealz - Seoul Photowalks on YouTube) has already shared his experience in that regard so go and check his video too and don't forget to tell him I sent you.

 It is no secret that I don't love the Helios. I mean, I don't hate it, but still it's not the lens for me; so at first I did struggle to see the appeal of this modification then I realized I was approaching this the wrong way: I was focusing too much on trying to get the results I wanted, instead of using the characteristic and peculiarities of the lens to create something new, something different, and once I realized that I started enjoying the process.

 In the end it was an interesting experience, a different way of approaching photography and videography.

 What about you? Have you ever used a lens modified this way? Have you ever modified the lens? Do you have a favorite modification? Let me know in the comments!

 As always, let me know your experience with this lens, if you have any question feel free to ask in the comments below and don’t forget to check the full video for all the samples.



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