Russian | Soviet | USSR Lens Survival Guide

[Ilya O.]

Just snapped up a Helios 28mm f2.8. Cheap enough to justify trying it out. If it doesnt quite match my set its no big deal and to be honest for these kinds of lenses each one has its own little quirk that I like. Would love a 100mm.

wow that is not USSR lens! It is by Kiron Vivitar etc. I'd advise you not to buy it but it is too late;-)

 

[Lee Kelly]

Yes I think it was made in Japan and I have seen some poor reviews but it was cheap and if its rubbish it doesnt matter. Need to fill that gap between 20mm and 35mm
I may have been mistaken with my 58mm speed. Maybe its f2. I have 2 of them from Richard Gale at Dog Schidt Optics and theyre fun little lenses.

 

[Ilya O.]

Lee, could you please expain why you went with DSO?
I mean what's behind that decision?
Cause you can just buy any Helios-44, mod it, and bam you are there having special effects lens.

 

[Lee Kelly]

A little while ago I saw some stuff about what he was doing with those old cheap lenses and they seemed quite cool and he was, as far as I know one of the first to brand this kind of mod. I bought my lenses second hand and they were still somewhat cheap. I wanted a couple to compare the effects of the different modifications and then wanted to find some lenses that could compliment them a bit. Of course with the tints and whatnot, that is close to impossible however, as I said earlier, the old Russians lenses we have both collected, have a lovely look of their own, convert to a simple cine-mod and cut pretty well together and with one of my DSO versions.

I actually think that in 20yrs time those DSO versions will be collectors items ha ha

Plenty of others doing similar things these days but they look a bit rubbish.

My DSO 58mm when not copping too much flare is quite gorgeous and the older Russian primes from 20mm-135mm are also really pretty.

I was looking forward to seeing how the 28mm f2.8 would go, as having that little extra bit of available stop and depth of field control is important to me.

What I love about my 20mm f2.5 or whatever it is, is that you can get in nice and tight to the subject, it doesnt warp things too much and has good close focus and throws out background really well for such a wide angle. More versatile than I expected.

 

[Lee Kelly]

Oh and also keen to see how the MC versions will cut with single coated older copies. I know a lot of people get hungup of matching sets of lenses and for good reason, however in my limited experience I actually dont know you can pick it in the real world context of a scene.
Different angle, different lighting direction, different focal lenth, things should look different.
Some people get caught up in different bokeh and thats cool too but your average audience member is not going to scream out how that shot was with a cooke and the next one was Angineaux zoom, or whatever.

So with all that said and again in my little experience, of testing my Russian primes, out in the world, taking location stills I was pleasantly surprised how contrast and colour and sharpness and the overall look worked.

 

[Ilya O.]

UPDATE.

Guys I'm moving to Goa for the sun till New Year.
So as not to freeze the thread I publish my documentary about Faroe Islands, all shot on KMZ m42 lenses and Canon C100 (wide DR gamma).
So you guys may look for overall picture character of USSR lenses.
Sorry for YouTube heavy compression. I've added a grain, but that was a huge mistake since Youtube then compresses it to mud...

Faroe Islands. Democracy in the Ocean (Documentary)

This 30-minutes doc is about social and political history of Faroe Islands from 50-s till 2000-s.

I was happy to work with a person behind this film, Petr Silaev, the author and producer, — he is known for "Exodus", a book of contemporary Russian classic literature I would say. It was nominated for numerous prizes, translated into English, German, Finnish, Swedish, Italian, Greek, Spanish etc... The best review I could find is here.

Krisitain Blak is a main storyteller in the first lyric part. First he is very kind and friendly person, and after that he is very prolific talented Nordic composer. His (and traditional local folk) music was used as a soundtrack here in the first part. Wiki page here.

The second part of the doc has more fun featuring 200 (Tveyhundrað), Faroese punk band (frontman Niels Arge Galán, drummer Uni Arting and the bass Mikael Blak). Wiki here.

 

[Tristan Pemberton]

That's a really interesting film from a part of the world I really knew nothing about. Well done!

 

[Ilya O.]

Thanks, Tristan. Hope you've got the atmosphere and have watched at least for couple of minutes a ha ha h ha

 

[Dan Kanes]

Have a wonderful time in Goa!

And don't fall into a Trance...

(Very dumb joke about Goa nightlife scene)

 

[Ilya O.]

Have a wonderful time in Goa!

And don't fall into a Trance...
(Very dumb joke about Goa nightlife scene)

— thx, Dan

ahahha ha haa h ah

no no it is a family trip with my mom and some other relatives

a ha h ah trans

 

[Mathias Erichsen]

I have a set of 20mm, 37mm, 58mm and 85mm, but still bought a set of DSO Optikov's because I think they fit better on a professional shoot. Similar size, same f-stop, aligned focus gears, PL-mounts and matching glass helps everything go a bit faster on set and in post.
Looking forward to the 28mm but I will hang on to the tiny USSR's for personal projects where I do not want to carry the weight of the DSO's.

 

[jake blackstone]

Isn't Soviet and USSR understood to be one and the same, except Soviet is a shorthand for citizens of Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and USSR is a shorthand for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and is a country? Unless you're talking about Совет- Soviet Congress, but then what does it have to do with lenses?:wink5:

 

[Ilya O.]

Jake, Soviet and USSR are synonymous here. Soviet, being an adjective, relates to Lens, meaning 'a lens from the union of soviet republics'.

Soviet(S) could be a shorthand for USSR citizens, but not in this context.

USSR is indeed a shorthand for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Or maybe I missed the whole point behind your questions?

 

[Ilya O.]

MIR-10A 28mm f3.5​

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Mir-10A lens diagram and look:

Mir-10M is smaller then its 20mm brother having 'only' 70mm (2.75'') front dia.
It fits hand well and feels firm and massive (for a 28mm photo lens), the weight is 520g (1.14 lbs).
Focus ring is wide enough and handy for use. It has ~330deg. focus throw, quite impressive for a stills lens.
Externals and internals are of the same build quality as Mir-20M has, all durable and still lightweight metal construction.
Mir-10 accepts front filters of 67mm.

Mir-10A is single coated and has 74% Transmission Coefficient.
So the actual T-Stop is ~T4.

Minimum focus distance is only 0,2m (7,87'') from the image plane.
You can find tons of pics on the net where Mir-10 is used as a 'macro' shooting all this bees, flowers and cats, but sorry I luckily don't have this type of a shots of my own

At first I did not use Mir-10a (with its odd 28mm focal length) often. If I needed wide, I took 20mm Mir-20m.
But lately things changed and I started use it more and more and I like it.
I now see 28mm's special character:
for being a wide lens in nature Mir-10 at the same time gives me more proximity, push to the character, it is more intimate than its distant and objective 20mm brother.

I would say 28mm is my last focal length for hand-held moving shots. I would not go to 35mm and further cause it all gets too shaky for the regular shots.
Mir-10 is much more forgiving than 20mm Mir if we talk about perspective on the edges and character distortion when staying too close to the lens.

Mir-10A is okay wide open, no special effects or extreme aberrations.
It has even sharpness across the frame (that differs from the Mir-20m having pronounced falloff).
At least it seems so on s35.

Mir 28mm seems to render colors in a special way. It could deliver pop-up, dense and saturated colors, as well as calm and pastel palette.
And both feels convincing and pleasant.

The overall look of Mir-10a is warm, actually a bit warmer than of Mir-20, (since the coatings are same).
Contrast is not as high as we see on modern lenses. It is moderate, I would say, and what is nice it leaves some healthy room for the color correction; you won't face crushed and compressed blacks ever.

Mir-10a has typical for soviet lenses of the era light scattering coefficient of ~2% (a middle, not extreme value).
What is this?
Imagine you film dark square placed on a white field.
This coefficient shows the relation between dark field illuminance level and white field illuminance level (then multiplied by 100%).
The higher the coeff, the brighter blacks would rise (if there is bright light in the frame).
Best lenses have it around 1% and less.

What this technical stuff means for us creatives is that if you have middle or high light scattering coefficient lens, you can have some magic going on in the frame!
When you have some part of the image bright you get the blacks react. They rise and go down depending on what the whites do! The picture comes alive

The second thing that happens is that this coefficient transmutes otherwise intangible and spiritual thing, I mean the light itself, so that it becomes a substance, corporeal, something that can be seen directly in the picture.
It is not regular hard halo or diffusion effects, but what I am talking about is a very subtle effect and it helps to build some mood and add tonal dimension to the scene.
While this is not the best example (and besides, all these effects must bee watched in motion; best when you have huge windows), but here you are and can you see what I mean?:

Mir-10A has, well, one of the most complex and showy flares of all soviets. If hard lighted, nice veiling flare occurs which still leaves the blacks distinguishable.

The iris has 6 blades and is saw-shaped when closed down:

 

[Ilya O.]

MIR-1 37mm f2.8​

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Mir-1 lens diagram/scheme and overall look:

First thing to know is that these white barrel MIRs are all m39 mount! SLR soviet mount, not that Leica rangefinder one.
M39 has the flange of 45,2mm.
This is only 0,3mm less than widely spread M42 mount (45,5mm FFD) but yet what you get is that in no way you can reach infinity focus or true distant scale readings
if you use SLR M39 lens on any kind of adapters!
Besides, I know NO adapter for M39 SLR. NO m39 to Canon, NEX, PL etc...
What people do is just putting little threaded ring on a lens mount (m39-to-m42), and then they use m42-to-anymount piece.
If you go that way, you can focus the lens to some distance, lets say 5-10 meters, but you still won't get infinity.
What I did is mod some internals so that the lens unit sit closer that 0,3mm to the sensor.
Some users of NEX system say that one can use the soviet smallest macro extension tube, and then add any Chinese Leica m39-to-NEX adapter to get infinity. I personally did not try that.

There were plenty of MIR-1 versions, check here for the details: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...rvival-Guide&p=1710368&viewfull=1#post1710368

As seen above Mir-1 is tiny. It is the smallest lens of my set.
And it is a disaster cause I find 35-37mm as the main and neutral lens on s35 format so the lens should be of a proper size to operate!
Not so with Mir-1. The lens' max diameter is 59mm (2.32''), the length is 56mm (2,2''). Mir-1 weighs is only 200g. (0,44lbs).

The most awkward is Mir's rings design: iris ring is the widest one, sits in the middle and you will always try to touch it instead of a focus ring,
which is strangely placed too close to the mount to pull focus and besides too narrow...
Besides, iris ring is always too loose and has free play so occasionally while focusing you'll loose you iris settings.
The first thing I did is dampened it with the nice drag grease.
I would call Mir-1 a Cute Lady's Lens: take DSLR or Sony Alpha, set an eye against viewfinder tight, right hand on a cam handle,
and support the camera with your left palm's thumb so that your little finger can pull focus! Presto! I swear this works, guys!

So the focus ring is not wide enough and not handy, but what is nice is its ~270deg. focus throw.
Minimum focus distance is not so impressive 0,7m (27.56'') from the sensor.
Mir-1 accepts front filters of 49mm.

Mir-1 is single coated and has 78% Transmission Coefficient.
Therefore expect the T-Stop to be ~T3,2.
Here we come to one interesting thing. White Mirs have two types of the coating: mine is yellow and it gives really neutral look, and the original blue one, which gives the warm gamma:

Blue ones were made by both KMZ and ZOMZ (Zagorsk Optical-Mechanical Factory) before 1967, and after that time MIR-1 was color corrected and got yellow front lens coating to give neutral look. Besides, the contrast rose.
So please see the front lens color or the first two digits of a serial number, they mean production year.

That original blue MIR indeed had a superb vintage look and a kind feel!

​

You get that cordial retro-filter on blue Mir at the left, and regular look of after-1967 Mir on the right:

Mir-1, as any lens in this set, is sharp, CA and other aberrations free wide open at the central part of a frame.
At f2.8 it has a kind of 3-d space feeling, which is caused by a mix of mild aberrations and a bit of vignette towards the edge, if only you will even notice:

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This freeze frame below is also wide open, look at the background, isn't this little swirly Boke gives the illusion of dimension to a plain 2D picture?
Besides, I like the tonal perspective of yellow Mir-1 here:

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I personally find this expressive bokeh and vignette very pleasing, sorry for just a a hawthorn tree (full frame example):

Most pics before were made wide open. But what happens if one close the iris to f5.6? Well, a miracle!
Ladies and gents, with my hand on my heart, this little lens with a price of Leica plastic hood and so simple 6-elements construction becomes ULTRAsharp.
I can assure it is the sharpest lens in the set! To say more, it seems Mir can beat or equal many modern prime lenses, some Canon and Nikon zooms aside.
This is freeze frame from the Canon C100 footage, set to Wide DR gamma, which sets minus -2 sharping:

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This kind of performance we have from the lens which was calculated by Volosov in 1954!
He writes in his book, "Photographic Optics", 1978, p.369:

Mir-1 is an outstanding lens. We have developed it in 1954 on the basis of the optical scheme of Flektogon of Dr. Zöllner (GDR).
Contrary to Flektogon, in which lanthanum heavy crowns are used, we used simple optical glass. Though we succeeded in more complete correction of the spherical aberration of higher orders
and all chromatic aberrations in the region of the spectrum from G' (l=434,1nm) to C (l=656,3nm), in particular the chromatic aberrations of the rays of wide oblique pencils,
which led to an improvement in the overall image...

Well, that broad CA correction is usually called APOCHROMATIC. MIR-1 is APO, can you imagine?!

A bit later in the book Volosov adds that Super-Takumar (6/8) 35mm f3.5 and Elmarit R (5/7) 35mm f2.8 are good lenses, but not as good as Mir-1.
The same goes to the father of Mir-1 — Zeiss Flektogon. Here are some MTF charts from Volosov's book:

This charts are boring, let's better look at how Mir-1 likes the Sun and how it renders the light and tonal depth, right click-open in new tab plz:

Mir-1 does gorgeous things, and even Canon's C100 AVCHD 4:2:0 color compression can't let it down.

White Mirs have 10-blades iris, matted black, always round:

Mir flares like this:

And could be pretty romantic and charming creamy on skintones even in harsh backlight conditions (full frame):

Picture taken by DP Nadezhda Solovyova.​

To sum up, Mir-1 is little but powerful two-in-one lens: has a character at f2.8, and becomes very modern looking when stopped down.

 

[Ilya O.]

HELIOS-44 58mm f2​

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Helios-44 (m39 mount) lens diagram/scheme and overall look:

Helios-44 in all of it's mods is one of the most mass produced lenses in the world. That's why it is so price-friendly.
But does the cost reflects the performance? Not at all! Helios IQ is quite okay by even the modern standards. Why is that so?
Helios is derivative of TTH Cooke Series 0 (Opic) Lens and at the same time direct Zeiss Biotar 2/58 clone, and that is quite a noble family tree, check the Opic/Planar evo article here. The Biotar design is so powerful, that Helios-44 wide open is performing extremely well versus today's 50mm-s including Zeiss 50mm f/1.4, delivering high sharpness and, what I consider as main feature of all of my Soviet lenses set, has virtually none chromatic aberration! And forget about purple fringing wide open, your black color are now pure black! I find this tests by Swiss mbphoto very useful: 50mm Lens Comparison II – Sharpness I and 50mm Lens Comparison II – Sharpness II.

My Helios-44 is M39 one, KMZ made, bare aluminum barrel. It's not much bigger than Mir-1, but Helios is designed well with the wide focus ring so operation is very handy and smooth. I consider it as the most comfortable lens in my set to operate in a light hand focusing setup. Helios has ~270deg. focus throw with the minimum distance of 0,5m (19.7''). Filter size is 49mm. What is nice is that the lens has built-in lens hood in the very housing design.

Alu Helios-44 is single coated and has 81% Transmission Coefficient so expect the actual T-Stop to be somewhere at T2.2.

On s35 sensors I tend to use Helios as a universal portrait lens, often I rush after the character to capture his emotions and 58mm is a focus length that I still can hold steady in my hands, this one at f/2:

Helios is a good starter and gives not overly close shot for an interview, but beware green screen effect wide open, I mean it separates subject and background very much at f/2 giving rather flat impression:

If you wanna close-up shot, you must approach a person to somehow aggressively close distance, and he can feel uncomfortable in this ruined privacy space:

If I use Helios for other type of shots, again, wide open sharpness performance on s35 is okay even in low-contrast light, spot the man in black I focused at and notice the foreground&background plane separation:

To finish f/2 performance theme, have a city buildings f/2 inf. test shot, pixel peep the full 5k resolution and how the sharpness falloff happens because of spherical aberration (focus point is at the upper left central spot, grey roofs with vertical pattern&chimneys):

Ah, nearly forgot to mention, that Helios f/2 out-of-focus rendering together with some type of natural objects in foreground give me a kind of anamorphic feel! Can you participate my ana look impression at the rocks and grass to the left?:

What happens if Helios is moderately closed down? Well, it is screamingly sharp, has a flat field and shows no aberrations of any kind at all. These freeze frames are from the Canon C100 with WideDR Gamma which by itself puts sharpness to -2:

Helios like others lens in my set is obviously has warm look, but I noticed one an interesting and rare effect — wide open Helios makes the some shadows cool when under bright back light! This a kind of veiling flare, but not a regular one with the veil all over the image, but a very local and subtle. Take a look at the hair color under the palm:

By the way, similar blue haze/flare (but in a way greater manner) happens with the uncoated Helios-44, see the shot by Taylor Morrison published here in the thread later:

How H-44 renders strong light and flare when stopped down? Well, I would say it turns on a kind of built-in Ultra&Soft Contrast/Didgicon filter: blacks are up everywhere, and if you have strong whites&blacks in one region, you'll get the blacks risen around that brights. It's not like ProMist or similar round halation filters, it's like wide-front region rising. That's the kind of veil of a local effect. Plus I noticed that highs get a nice roll-off:

Helios means Sun in Greek, so the name forces the lens to love the brightest light And it does, you get the craziest expressive flares, which have smth anamorphic in it; sure they are not oval (but you can easily made them so by placing oval iris instead of a filter, plus put string at front for ana streaks), but maybe that's the color or the behavior? I do not know. It can deliver warm and cool look, depending on the light source/white balance color temp:

Early H-44 have 13 (!) blades in iris, later have 8, but they form pretty rounded shape (I'm speaking solely about M39 white types cause others, black ones M42, have 6). Mine has gorgeous 13 matted blades, which always render smooth and round natural looking bokeh:

Helios-44 has swirly impressionistic bokeh, it helps a lot to focus audience's sight in the central part of a frame and to get a dimensional look:

Above picture taken by DP Nadezhda Solovyova.

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[Florian Berutti]

Hello Ilya,
I'm a big fan of LOMO lenses...i have zooms and primes.
And i have a question for you becuz you seem to know a lot about them.
In my serie of primes i'm not a fan of the OKC11_35...just under i have a CKBK28MM and up the beautiful LOMO OKC_1_40mmm (it's my favorite lens...not fast but it's a real gem) but the OKC11_35 feels not sharp at all...
So i bougth a OKC2_35 because you said on another tread it's a copy of the MIR1 that i love. It's still not arrived but the problem is that the lens if F3,1.
So i was wondering, is it possible to change it my KONVAS OKC11_35 just the optical part and put a OKC8_35 that i have on the side? or do i need i totally new body for OKC8_35?
Thank you for all uou sharing here, it's so great!!!!!

 

[Nick Gardner]

Ilya,

Great info. I think the later Mir-1b may have had a multicoating. I have gone through a bunch of them as I am in the process of re barrelling a set and putting them in PL mount. So far have the 37mm, 58mm, and 85mm Jupiter done. I also polished the coating off of the front element of one of my mir 1s and it blooms really nicely now.

Here's a pic of my redone mir 1 -

 

[Ilya O.]

...i'm not a fan of the OKC11_35...just under i have a CKBK28MM and up the beautiful LOMO OKC_1_40mmm (it's my favorite lens...not fast but it's a real gem) but the OKC11_35 feels not sharp at all...

— hello, Florian, you're welcome! Thanks for appreciation Yeah, the 40mm is a cool lens indeed. Not fast enough? Well, with the modern sensors' high ISO rate, I think it is fast enough even for the documentaries with no light setup at all
Your OKS11-35-1 is a bad or misaligned sample, I think. This shit happens here and there, sorry for you. Can you post some test pics so I can determine the problem?

...So i was wondering, is it possible to change it my KONVAS OKC11_35 just the optical part and put a OKC8_35 that i have on the side? or do i need i totally new body for OKC8_35?

— is your 8-35-1 good?
Well, generally this kind of surgery is not possible: 11-35-1 is significally bigger (d45mm, length 48, mount thread is m36) whilst 8-35-1 is dia36mm, length38, m30 thread. So you will for sure need to draw and CNC some parts...What mount is your 11-35-1?

 

[Tommaso Alvisi]

Thanks Ilya!

have you ever done a direct comparison 11-35-1 VS 8-35-1? I'm curious!

what did you find??