I just spent a few months shooting with the Helios 44-2 adapted onto the Sony E mount. It has been an incredible amount of fun shooting with that lens, and I fell in love with the way it captures more portrait environments. It's a genuinely beautiful lens that I will definitely continue to use. Though recently I have been photographing things more with the drone, and the digital camera has been sitting idle for a while. I think some of the idleness also came from the fact that the digital camera's SD cards actually ran out of space. My laptop is also at the same point. And I don't have an external HDD just yet to store the massive number of photographs I now have. I transferred much of them to the laptop, about 3,000 something in total. Many also got uploaded to Amazon Photos once I realised they have no upload limit and they maintain the quality with no compression. All those RAW files finally have a home! I formatted the SD card and now I'm back to photograhing with the digital lens a bit more again. I'm quite excited to get back into it, and with this I also made the decision to mix things up again and yet again change the lens. I'm back to using the 85mm F1.8 Sony lens that I love.
The 85mm focal length is a lot different to the 58mm Helios. Sometimes it felt a bit tight much like the 85mm can, and the bokeh with its fun swirly nature was more from a distance rather than something that always appeared. I quite liked it for that, the feeling that it was more random or fixed at a certain length. There's definitely a lot of fun to be had with it, but I think at the moment I'm a bit tired of the endless sunny days and captured enough of that atmosphere with that lens. The 85mm starting to feel a bit more fun given the tighter focal length and sharper features. Sometimes it felt as if the Helios wasn't always in focus and that came from vintage glass and manual focus. Still very fun, but wasn't as run-and-gun like the autofocus on the 85mm. That style of shooting certainly suits me a bit more, being quick and capturing small moments. I do plan on using the Helios a lot more throughout the weeks. Especially as autumn rolls in. I can't wait to capture the atmopshere of autumn with that lens.
At the same time I've been looking into using the 35mm lens a bit more too, wanting to have wider perspectives of the areas I tend to find myself in. The tighter focal lengths not as suitable for dense natural areas or interiors. I intend to explore some of the more abandoned sides of Tbilisi soon and that 35mm focal length will be essential. I even considered just using my drone as a handheld camera due to the focal length on that. Anyway, here's the first few shots back on the 85mm, shot during a storm in a cafe recently.
For the best experience view this post on Liketu