Hey guys, thank you for joining me for this video today and today we are going to be talking about this lens. So this is Helios 44-2 and old Soviet lens made for film cameras and well today I'm going to convince you to buy this lens because it's really fun. It's really weird but it's really fun. So for starters I'm going to go through the specs of this lens. So first of all it's called Helios 44-2. It is 58mm of focal length and F2. First of all it's called Helios 44 but the focal distance is 58 which is weird but okay. Next you can adapt it to any contemporary camera that you like. It has M42 mount but there are a ton of adapters for Canon, for Nikon, for Sony, for Foggi, even for PL. So which is really nice and I will find those and I will list them down in the description below so please check them out. So what else it has 49mm filter thread. I know many people want to use filters with their lenses so 49mm is the way to go. So first of all it's completely manual. Well it's an old Soviet lens so what else do you want to to explain what else can you expect from it. So it's completely manual. It's completely de-clicked so you can like move your aperture from minimum to maximum easily and what else. It has a really weird thing. It's kind of an aperture limiter but it does it backwards. So let me explain first and I will show you like close up and I will explain how to use it. So it has three rings, a focal ring, like a focus ring, a ring that actually adjusts the aperture and in like aperture limiter ring with the numbers. The thing is like you know how in normal modern lenses if you have like a notch or like red dot or white dot or whatever and you align this red dot with the number. So this is like what the f stop of your lens is currently set to. Well not with this guy because it shows it backwards. So I will readjust the angle and I will show you the close up and I will explain how to do this thing with it. I'll be right back. So this is the quirkiness, the quirky aperture ring of Helius 44-2. So let's just see. So this is the focus ring. This is not really interesting. So you see that red dot and it says that we are now at f16 but we are now wide open. So this is actually f2 and let's go just for this sake of interest. Let's go to f2 and we are now closed fully closed. So this is f16. So let's now try and use this weird aperture limiter. So the aperture limiter ring is actually quite tough. So it has like those really tough metal clicks to it and it's like just this is the ring that moves the aperture, the one with the dot and the one the ring that you have to adjust. So to limit the aperture is the ring which has the numbers on it. So let's just it's quite tough to you know. Yep, now it moves. So let's leave it for example at f5.6. Right now it says at f5.6 and red dot is here. So and we are still wide open. So this is f2. Let's go to back to f2 and this is now f5.6. This is a total weirdness. But this is the quirkiness that we have to put up with if we want to shoot a really creamy and cinematic footage. So for example let's go again maybe let's go to f4. Come on yes, f4. So and what do you know this is still f2 but let's go to f2 and we are now at f4. So this ring actually shows the limit of aperture set is available to us right now but it shows it backwards. Logic, there's no logic. I don't know. Let's just get back to my face. To be honest it's pretty weird. But the weirdness actually ends here because this is an amazing lens optically. It's really sharp in the center. It's kind of a blurry to like the edges but well it's an old Soviet lens. It's really old. People actually say that it emulates a promised filter. The highlights actually bloom when you shoot things with this lens. And with the f2 aperture it separates the subject from the background. It's really awesome for portraits because it's sharp. It's crazy sharp in the middle and it costs $50. And if you want to you can have it re-housed. There are companies like Iron Glass that produce this kind of lens. Well they just got this lens and make the new metal housing for it. And it costs $1000 and it's aimed more at the professionals because you know it has like more accurate f-stops, more precise focus ring and it's actually a bigger kind of housing. And it's really way more convenient to use. So if you want a lens for fun do go ahead spend $50 buy a make a $5 and adapter ring and just have fun. Because the image quality is really good and the price is really low. What else there is to say. So that's been me and Helios 44-2. All the links you can find down in the description below. And otherwise thank you guys very much for watching. Hopefully it was helpful. If you have some other questions about this lens please do feel free to leave a comment. And I will see you in my next video.