Just Sheer Madness

Canon EOS 350D with the Incredible Helios 40-2 1.5/85mm

Veijo Vilva

The Helios is huge, slightly longer, considerably thicker and a lot heavier than the CZJ MC Sonnar 3.5/135.

FOV corresponds to a 135mm lens on a 35mm camera

soft at full aperture, very sharp stopped down
very shallow DOF at full aperture, less than 5mm @ 0.8m, 3cm @ 2m
hyperfocal distance about 250m at full aperture, 48m @ f/8!
very nice bokeh

considered to be one of the very best portrait lenses.
At 1.6m DOF is about 2cm @ f/1.5 and 7cm @ f/5.6
so a very precise control of DOF is possible.
However, focusing and keeping focus on a live target
is very difficult, and I often end up shooting at f/5.6,
which usually is shallow enough.

an old lens, made in USSR (my Helios-40-2 is from 1978)
slightly better than the older, single-coated, silver finish Helios-40
(the multicoated Helios-40-2 is available in black finish only)
very heavy, weighs about 900g (2 lbs)

the lens is mounted with an M42-to-EOS adapter
built-in, rotating tripod mounting bracket
(the older Helios-40 had a non-rotating bracket)
manual focus
AV (aperture priority) or M (manual)

Presently, Helios-40-2 is ridiculously over-priced on the market,
and 99% of the time you'll be as well served by a 2/85 Jupiter-9,
which is available new and at a much more reasonable price.
Jupiter-9 is a very good lens and certainly soft and shallow enough
when used fully open and sharp enough when stopped down.
A favorite lens of many photographers, see Lens of the Week #1.
Getting a Helios-40 now is sheer madness, bordering Stupidity.

A Self-portrait (f/5.6, softened by the mirror)

A hand-held shot with EOS 350D + Helios 40-2, 1/640s at f/8
[the original (3456x2304, JPEG quality: normal), a 1024x768 wallpaper, a 1024x768 detail wallpaper]

A NOTE CONCERNING THE BOOKSHELF TEST PHOTOS

my test procedure isn't very rigorous
bad results may be caused by bad focusing as manual focusing in dim lighting isn't any too easy when the DOF for this level of expected sharpness is just a few millimeters in either direction
the backs of the books aren't at exactly the same depth, the maximum difference is about one inch. Only a few books at the center and at the upper right-hand corner have been aligned - roughly.
the test only shows that the specific tested lens is at least as good as my results -- even that individual lens might be better, and others of the same make and model may be better or worse
anyhow, the equivalent magnification of the 100% crops is just plain sick, i.e. about 48x on a typical 17", 1024x768 CRT. Normally, 8x has been considered a reasonable maximum for critical sharpness from film. At 48x magnification, a 35mm film frame would be about 172cm (68") wide, and even a 1.6x crop factor dSLR frame would be 107cm (42") wide!

Nothing Wrong with the Sharpness (Full-size)
(f/8, focused using a Canon magnifier, tripod-mounted, remote release)

A crop:

Note the cloth texture of the book to the right of the middle, the width of the back is 20mm

Note: All shots hand-held
Note: these are all in-camera JPEGs

(Full-size)
A Crop:

A crop from the lower right corner. Resolution is quite good for a hand-held shot despite the original
"normal" JPEG quality and repacking after cropping and seems mainly to be limited by
the 350D sensor Bayer matrix resolution and the rather slight JPEG artefacts.

(Full-size)
A crop: