You can always go by the serial number, with the first two numbers delineating the year that the lens was made… except that some plants only specified the decade, and some models didn’t put the year in the serial number at all. I’m in the process of writing a few shorts which I plan on shooting entirely with the Helios 44-2 58mm as a test to see what it is capable of. But most people will tell that the saving grace of many less-than-stellarly-built Soviet lenses is their overall image quality in relation to their cost. A little bit more expensive than the Helios ones but from Zeiss and with other aperture blades and designs as the Kiew products. The Helios’ 58mm focal length is at the longest end of the definition of the 35mm “standard,” which ranges anywhere from 35mm to 60mm.

That said, I do recommend ditching the Zenit and mounting the lens to a Pentax M42 mount camera like the Spotmatic or the SV for an easier shooting experience, unless you really like fighting with your equipment. So, here is my Helios 44-2 review, I would explain how and why you can use it for travel photography, as well as give some practical pieces of advice.There are a few reports elsewhere on the web that talk about the Helios 44 being only ‘passably’ sharp, or that it is ‘barely usable’ when shot widen open.

They are reportedly named according to the lens mount, and the optical resolution; with the M standing for a lens with an automatic diaphragm. The 44-2 version itself has been produced in different variants and at different factories (KMZ, BeLOMO and Valdai) in the Soviet Union. This is not too unusual for old 35mm lenses that are being adapted to deal with the microlenses found in modern digital sensors, especially full-frame sensors. As you stop down the lens the focus point is moved away from the center of the image, compared to where the focus was at f/2.

Quality did begin to decline before the fall of communism, but stuff from the really hardline communist period, from the 1950’s and 60’s, has the best quality control.