KMZ Helios-40-2 85mm f/1.5

Put someone in front of a hedge at six in the evening, open the Helios-40-2 to f/1.5 and step back about two meters. The leaves behind them stop being leaves. They wind into a spiral around the frame, smearing in a circle at the edges while the face holds in the middle. People carry a kilo of Soviet glass around for exactly this. A Takumar 85 draws the same face more cleanly, and its background just melts and stays put.

KMZ started making the black M42 version in about 1969, replacing the older M39 Helios-40. Krasnogorsk kept building it until 1990, when production moved to the Rostov optical plant. The optics descend from the Zeiss Biotar, scaled up to 85mm, and the lens was meant for Zenit bodies. Mount it on a Zenit-E and the balance goes wrong. Depending on the version, and on whether the tripod collar is fitted, it weighs somewhere between 880 g and 1.2 kg, so most of the outfit's weight ends up hanging off the front of the camera.

Wide open it is soft and low in contrast. Highlights bloom, and high-contrast edges pick up color fringing. On faces that reads as a glow, which is flattering for portraits and frustrating if you wanted crisp detail. Stop down to f/2.8 and the center tightens up a lot. By f/4 or f/5.6 it is a perfectly decent 85, which misses the point of carrying it. As you stop down the swirl fades into ordinary smooth blur, and the ten diaphragm blades keep out-of-focus highlights close to round instead of hard-edged polygons. Point it toward a low sun and the old coating gives up: contrast washes out and you get veiling flare. Shade the front element.

The diaphragm is a two-ring preset with no auto pin. You set the working aperture on one ring, focus wide open, then turn the second ring to stop down before you shoot. On a body that meters through the lens, you stop down before you take the reading as well, or the meter is looking through f/1.5 while you shoot at f/4. Many copies focus down to 0.8 m, and some only to 1.15 m. At 0.8 m that fills the frame with a face; the 1.15 m copies stop at about head-and-shoulders. The focus throw is long, and on copies with old, dried grease it can be stiff. Miss by a few centimeters at f/1.5 and the eyelashes turn to mush.

KMZ restarted production in August 2012 and sold the first new copies from its own Krasnogorsk shop for 8,041 roubles, about $250. Those later lenses also came in Canon EF and Nikon F mounts. The M42 originals need nothing more than a cheap adapter ring on a mirrorless body, and plenty of them live there now. Original M42 copies usually sell for more than common Soviet lenses like the Helios-44. The usual alternative is the Jupiter-9 85mm f/2, which is lighter and much calmer. The Helios is the one you pack on days when the background matters more than your shoulder.

Daylight is where the f/1.5 habit runs into the camera's limits. ISO 100 film in full sun wants somewhere around 1/10000 to 1/15000 at f/1.5, and a Zenit-E tops out at 1/500. That calls for roughly five stops of ND on the 67mm thread. Check your copy before you order filters, because some take 66mm. Enter the filter factor in Zone Light Meter and the extra stops are folded into the reading, so the shutter speed it shows is the one you set on the body.