Petzval mode - Modifying Helios 44-2 lens

Today, another modification of my Helios 44-2, old M42 russian lens made few decades ago. It was really challenging to make some of footage to look good and photos to attract you to stay and read whole post. I modified this lens to make Petzval mode of it.

Back in 19th century when first lens was made, there was problems caused by huge glaring issues and lack of sharpness. Aperture maximum was f/15 which gave long exposures to photos, and it was really hard to make decent photo. Petzval was mathematician that came to the rescue by making better way for light to pass through camera and give better exposure time. It was far more better than previous lenses, because minimum exposure time of previous lenses was 10 minutes but Petzval cut it down to just 30 seconds. His lens was really sharp in the middle of photo but in the corners was different story, it was really blurry. And that is what made this photography amazing. He made doublet lenses with a bigger gap for aperture to be placed.

Source: Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0

I created this effect on Helios by reversing front glass element. You can do this also just by unscrewing threat that is holding front glass and taking it out and just reversing its place, same as I did in my post here only difference is that I reversed rear glass element in this example which gave just better bokeh balls. Now by doing this you will get swirly bokeh as you can see. You are getting this kind of results because by reversing glass you are placing curvature of glass on the other side by leaving flat part of the glass in front.

I've made few videos that I converted into GIF so you can enjoy it way better than just looking at photos. You can see creation of swirly bokeh. I made this video with Canon 600D and auto exposure mode for video so I can stop down aperture and still get same exposure. I started from aperture of f/16 and gradually increased it to f/2 which is highest of this lens. You can see that by increasing aperture you are getting a lot softer photo but swirly bokeh is more visible.

Your only job is to find background that will make best blur with more visible swirliness or bokeh balls. Best thing is to create it is trees or a lot of little flowers like in these examples. I've done this few moments ago and I only find this in my backyard but results are not bad at all for just 10 minutes of shooting, in future I will make much more photos of this method.

At the end I will leave you few more videos with different background so you can see how it does on different environment. Enjoy. :)

Conclusion: By doing this kind of modification your are reducing image quality by increasing this amazing bokeh. Doing this with Helios 44-2 lens that costs 5$ here in my country you are not hurting your wallet at all because is so cheap. You can't get better bokeh for much cheaper, this is the best solution and the most affordable. Try it yourself and you will see, buy this lens and have fun! :)

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

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