Modifying lens for better bokeh.

Weekend passed by working whole day and night. I had my classes and exam so I had to study but at the end everything went almost perfect. Exam was done pretty good which is nice. :)

For today I prepared something interesting and that is modifying your cheap M42 lens to make way better and more creamy bokeh but with some cost of image quality. This was made by reversing some glass on your lens. Lens that I have modified was Helios 44-2 58mm f/2. But I've done something different, I reversed rear glass element. So if you have 5$ to spare, buy this lens and try it your self.

I have made little GIF so you can see how I did. It's pretty easy, you need only screwdriver to unscrew thread that holds that glass element and when you take out glass you just reverse it and place it back together.

You can see that it has way better and rounder bokeh balls, but keep that in mind that this wasn't focused all the way to minimal focusing distance. By focusing closer you will get way bigger bokeh balls and much blurrier background. Best result you will see by focusing all the way to the minimum distance, and that is about 0.45mm close to your subject.

Here is few more photos that I have captured today after modding it. All photos were taken few moments ago. :)

Conclusion
By doing this you will lose a lot of image sharpness but you will get better background blur so keep that in mind. This lens is really cheap so it wasn't that much painful for me to do this, you can always buy it for 5$. In future I will buy probably another Helios lens to try reversing front glass element which will give me more swirly bokeh but also with downside and that is image sharpness. Results will be great but not great for selling your photo on some stock sites or something like that, modding is made just for fun! :D

Thank you for stopping by! Have a nice day! :)