For this review on this lens, I am on a mission in owning all of the lenses in the 44 Helios series. I am happy to say that I own all of them now and will be reviewing them here on lens hooche reviews. Out of all the lenses in this series, this one is the most unique with its color scheme of yellow,white,red and black. Most of the other helios lenses are either black/white or black/yellow/green(Helios 44-2). The Helios 44-3 was produced in Russia during the middle of the 20th century and was produced by the KMZ (Krasnogorskiy Mekhanicheskiy Zavod) factory in Krasnogorsk, Russia. This particular lens was made in the MMZ (Minsk Mechanical Plant) factory.
For this review i have been using the Fotodiox Pro m42 type 2 adapter with my Sony A7C II.
Technical Specifications:
- Focal Length: 58mm (87mm on APS-C)
- Focusing Distance: Ranges from 0.5m to infinity.
- Aperture: F/2-f/16
- Lens Construction: 6 elements in 4 groups and is made out of Metal
- Weight: 220g
- Filter Thread Size: 49mm
- Year Built: This copy i am reviewing was most likely built 1993 based on the serial number.
Build Quality:
- The outer casing is made of metal. My copy came with a slightly loose focus ring. No biggie as I can just fix this myself. For how old this lens is, I was particularly surprised how clean it came from Ukraine. This is the only lens in the Helios 44 series with a yellow,red and white coloring scheme. Similar to the 44-2 but that one comes in yellow and green.
Price for the Money:
- I paid $75 for this lens. This is the market rate for this lens at this condition at the time of publishing this blog post. I got it from the same seller to be able to save on shipping with the Helios 44M-4.
User Experience:
- This lens is for M42 mount cameras and was usually paired with Zenit cameras at time of release. Out of all the helios lenses I have reviewed so far this one is by far the easiest to focus on target. I like how easy it is to use and the images I got from this lens are fantastic. Many look like they belong in nature magazines and I love that about this lens. You get the vintage look you are looking for from that Helios era.
This is a very cool lens to own. As mentioned above, it has been the easiest Helios lens to work with so far when it comes to getting the right focus. One thing to note, there is about a 1.13x crop factor when using this lens on a full frame camera like the Sony A7C II. The view will be a little bit narrower when using this lens. Still worth the buy if you are getting into vintage lenses.
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