Ruskie Lens Pictures

A few months back, I bought a Helios 44-2 58mm f/2.0 lens from a Russian ebay seller for the royal sum of $31.00 plus shipping and handling. It was shipped quickly enough: the package came covered with Russian stamps, lined thickly with Russian newspaper pieces. I unpacked the thing, deposited it in a desk drawer, and made a mental note to buy an adapter for it to use it with my K-mount cameras. A man can dream, right?

It stayed that way for a while, until Roshan came along one day to visit us, got excited by some sample images made using the exotic lens, and bought me an M42-to-K mount adapter off amazon.com. (Here I make another mental note to pay him back.) It worked pretty flawlessly, and I made some images, a selection of which is shown below.

This Communist lens plus adapter contraption is pretty clumsy to use, and 58mm isn’t exactly a “general purpose” focal length – unlike my regular go-to lens: a Pentax FA 35mm f/2.0. Once the initial excitement died down, I found myself going back to my regular go-to lens.

That said, the Helios is, truthfully, a fun toy. I might pick that toy up again someday when the weather is right. Or it might go back to where it came from (ebay!) someday. I don’t know. It’s just too inconvenient to possess too many little things that eventually start to possess you.

(Here I make yet another mental note to get rid of as many worldly possessions as I can, as soon as I can. All that freedom is going to be fantastic. A man can dream, right?)