Latest Review Posted | Helios 77M-4 MC 50mm F1.8 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 ... |