| Author: | | New Member Registered: January, 2017 Posts: 4 | | Review Date: March 14, 2017 | Recommended | Price: $70.00
| Rating: 9 |
| Pros: | Very sharp, nice bokeh | | Cons: | None | | Sharpness: 9
Aberrations: 9
Bokeh: 9
Handling: 9
Value: 9
Camera Used: Canon 600d
| |
Mine is a valdai version. This lens is very sharp. The only thing that prevents me from using it more is the sticky aperture. My copy needs cleaning. Color is neutral. What I love is the bokeh, of course. Main reason for my purchase.
At wide open:
Stopped down in bright sunlight:
Playing around with studio lighting:
At wide open:
 | | | | | | | New Member Registered: March, 2016 Posts: 1 | | Review Date: March 2, 2017 | Recommended | Price: $90.00
| Rating: 10 |
| Pros: | Fast, fluid focus, sharp | | Cons: | no | | Sharpness: 10
Aberrations: 10
Bokeh: 10
Handling: 10
Value: 10
Camera Used: Sony A7II
| |
Very nice lens, contrast and sharp wide opened. I recommendit to all.
| | | | | Site Supporter Registered: February, 2013 Posts: 456 | | Review Date: November 26, 2016 | Recommended | Price: $80.00
| Rating: 9 |
| Pros: | lovely color rendering, smooth bokeh, plenty sharp | | Cons: | my copy wobbles when I focus:-) | | Sharpness: 9
| |
Mostly I use this lens on extension tubes for flowers. I love the rendering. If I could characterize it, it is plenty sharp and has a restrained version of the Helios 44 swirly bokeh. Here is a very lucky macro shot as the bee did not move even with the lens almost touching its body.
 IMGP4021.jpg by David Miley, on Flickr
I also love the way it delivers out of focus bokeh. Chromatic aberation comes with the package with bright light and very close focus.
 IMGP3866.jpg by David Miley, on Flickr
And then there is just straight wide open bokeh with a group of yellow flowers without the tubes.
 IMGP3720.jpg by David Miley, on Flickr
There is quite a body of work on the web from Russian photographers who use this lens. This is Alexandra Bochareva's go to lens and she gets amazingly evocative portraits from it. If you haven't seen her work, its worth seeking out. For me it is one of the two or three m42 lenses that I go to for florals, the others being a Mir 1b and a Soligor 105mm (non-macro). I just wish it did not seem like it was going to fall apart when I focus.
| | | | | Senior Member Registered: April, 2010 Location: in a middle of nowhere Posts: 165 | | Review Date: December 8, 2015 | Recommended | Price: $120.00
| Rating: 9 |
| Pros: | Goon MF lens, underpriced for its performance | | Cons: | Some color shift may occure at bright oblique lighting | | Sharpness: 9
Aberrations: 10
Bokeh: 9
Handling: 9
Value: 10
Camera Used: K-5
| |
Hi, fellas.
I've been shooting with this lens for quite a long - and I'm very pleased with its performance. I paid around 120 USD for my NOS copy and I do think it is ok to ask $200-300 for this lens: it performs quite well. I don't like all those 'razor sharp' and other 'boy, I love it' cliché, so I'll put it this way: it isn't something astonishing, it is just a good lens with good resolution, decent chromatic aberration correction, nice contrast, color reproduction, background and foreground blur (although, yep, it features that twisty bokeh at f/1.8 and until f/2.8 aperture). I covered several birthday and wedding events with it and the results looked good both the me and people who were on the other side of the glass. The only drawback which I can claim is that sometimes you get some color cast when being lit with bright oblique light, but other lenses will give you glare spots in those conditions, so consider this lens trades glare for color shift.
Some may not like the overdamped focus ring (remember, in Soviet Russia lens focuses you), but I grew on Mordor lens and now I find all those Pentax lenses to have too light focusing feel. De gustibus non est disputandum, as some say - if you prefer lighter focus ring resistance, just re-grease the lens with thinner grease.
The real downside is the Soviet QA for non-military goods: you've got to thoroughly test a lens before buying it. In my case I was offered with three copies, and while the second one was as good as the one I chose, the third one had a couple of dents on the front element coating. Some factories (you've got to learn and google for Zenit, KMZ, VOMZ and other Mordor words) had better QA one year and worse the next one, some were making only M42 versions (or PK-mount, or F-mount versions, whatever). So you can't just go and buy a Soviet lens (in my case: MC Helios-77K-4 by Zenit), instead you have to first spend some time on learning the subject and around.
A proper lens review must come with some photos, so here they are:
 
Sorry for too small resolution, but it is as much as I can get from pentaxforums.
| | | | | | | Senior Member Registered: January, 2011 Posts: 258 | | Review Date: January 12, 2012 | Not Recommended | Price: $70.00
| Rating: 7 |
| Pros: | A little sharper then Pentacon 50 1.8 MC which is the original. | | Cons: | Nothing special about this lens! Nervous bokeh, corner sharpness is bad even at 5.6 compaired to pentax 50s... | | Sharpness: 8
Aberrations: 9
Bokeh: 6
Handling: 7
Value: 5
| |
I think that this is one overpriced Pentacon. I was testing it for a while and I have returned it back with disappointment. Here in Bulgaria Pentacons are about 20-30$ and the 77M is over 50$... I think it is undeserved glory of this lens! There are so much better russian 50s like the Zenitar-M 50 1.7 - great sharp lens with amazingly smooth bokeh and I bought one sheaper then some Helios 77s...
| | | | | Forum Member Registered: October, 2010 Location: Klaipeda Posts: 78 | | | | | Veteran Member Registered: May, 2009 Location: Lithuania Posts: 344 | | Review Date: July 1, 2009 | Recommended | Price: None indicated
| Rating: 10 |
| Pros: | Extremely sharp from the very f/1.8, CA's well controlled | | Cons: | Focus ring is smooth but quite hard to turn, spring loaded aperture, bokeh somewhat distracting | |
I got this lens for free as my father was interested in photography when he was young. This lens is rare (although it has a 'brother' - pentacon 50mm/1.8. They are both identical in terms of produced quality).
This is fast prime which brings some 'wows' when mounted on camera.
I could hardly believe my eyes when I first took pictures using this lens. They were extremely good quality and even some friends who use high end canikon lenses were just amazed with the results.
I did not notice distortion, vignetting was not a problem.
CA's are well controlled and are rare.
The bokeh is a bit distracting although I liked it very much from the beginning. Later I saw that it distracts attention from subject.
The biggest complaint is spring loaded aperture. Everytime I want to use another aperture , I should insert piece of paper and then turn an aperture ring. So most of time I use f/1.8.
Focusing ring is smooth but somewhat hard to turn. So going from the closest focusing point to the infinity takes time a bit.
Finally I found myself using this lens much more often than my AF lenses  . Simply because it is very sharp and produces excellent results. This lens is much sharper than Helios 44-2, although 44-2 has smoother bokeh.
Overall I rate this lens as a highly recommended. I'll try to post some pics and crops. I'll use another aperture values to show corner sharpness and post pics as soon as I can. Sorry for my bad English.
So here is the picture ( f/1.8 )
And here is 100% crop
bokeh
this is the image taken both at 5.6 and 8.
this is 100% crop of image corner at f/8
this is 100% crop of image corner at f/5.6. Looks like stopping down at f/8 is the best for corner sharpness. Center sharpness is always excellent and doesn not differ much.
| | |
;)
;)
;)
