These prices are insane. You can buy all (most?) of the lenses they’re recreating for a fraction of the price and adapt them to a mirrorless camera no problem. I bought a Helios 44-2 recently for $100 and adapted it to my camera for like $15.

There's a difference between adapting for mirrorless versus adapting for cinema. They're not just throwing on an adapter to change the distance to the focal plane, they're actually rehousing the lens. Usually that means adding a de-clicked aperture and reducing focus breathing. These are all primes, but cine lenses are usually parfocal as well.

To your point, none of those things are important if you're just a regular consumer and taking stills, but they're all really nice to have/important if you're working on a film.

> There's a difference between adapting for mirrorless versus adapting for cinema.

The article says they’re adapting to mirrorless cameras

> As reported by CineD, the new Air series of lenses is designed to cater to the growing number of filmmakers who are using compact, lightweight mirrorless bodies for high-end professional work.

> The IronGlass Air lenses move away from IronGlass’ standard PL-mount cinema design toward compact, mirrorless-friendly designs

It doesn’t matter what they’re being put on. I put cinema lenses on Red’s, DSLR’s (5DmkII/t3i back in the day), mirrorless (GH6/BMPCC4K), the works. “Cinema lens” indicates a build type, not what they can mount to. Like the declicked aperture the previous person mentioned.

For instance, Rokinon released a fantastic cinema lens line for consumer/prosumer cameras in the 2010’s, they were rehoused versions of their photo primes. They’re built entirely different.

"The Helios 44-2 is a very popular Soviet-era lens among cinematographers" - yeah, not like there were any other Soviet lens available there. Legendary in this context means the only ones anyone there could get their hands on. I bought Zenit ET with those and can't say they were amazing compared to my Nikon or Sigma lens. Exotic factor is likely in the play here.

If it was just a simple matter of "what was available" these lenses would be an interesting footnote in Photography history. But that's not the case, people still buy them for their unique properties 50 years later and the fact a company exists to re-house them more than proves their legendary status in my mind.

There is a phenomenon I observe with people being fascinated by russian/soviet things even when in reality the subject of interest is pure shit.

Being it either a low quality lenses in which people see a artistic quality of manufacturing defects or text from Dostoevsky which ruminates in extended length the inner thought process of a moronic character which some mistake for a mysterious russian soul.

I own Helios lenses with Zenit camera I inherited from my father which is of the sentimental value as it was a first significant purchase after my parents wedding, and most of my childhood photos are done with it, but even my dad will trade it for a good Nikon lenses without a second thought.

I myself dislike Dostoevsky and all this "old Soviet lenses" obsession reminds me of audiophile's craziness. I however can assure you that "shit" is not the only things USSR has produced. Far from it.

The swirly effect is certainly unique, though I always considered it a bug as it's not even, some parts look oversharpened, some diffused. Like some weird algorithmic filter in Photoshop.

What was so amazing about this company's soviet era camera lenses?

I googled it and all the pages were just this company saying "Yeah! We rehouse amazing soviet era lenses in modern lens bodies!" | Which is cool, but where's the "legendary" part of the story? Like, why would you want one as opposed to another lens?

Google "Helios 44-2 bokeh" and look for portraits with a blurry background. The "swirly" effect is the artsy element. Add the fact that these lenses were mass-manufactured back in the day and it means that you can get them pretty cheap.

Interesting. Those images make me a little disoriented. I am prone to visual-based motion sickness, so it's probably just me. But I do not really like the swirly effect one bit.

Ahh. Now I see. That's a pretty cool lens effect.

Some bizarre obsession with 'Soviet'. Did they invent optics, that was since forgotten ?

No, they disassembled German optics industry plants in 1945, moved them to the Soviet Union and started cranking out great cameras based on German designs. I've heard that some Soviet cameras had Leica labeled parts inside.

Stuff like that happened repeatedly: GAZ Chaika was a copy of Packard; SM-1 computer was a copy of PDP 11/34; Tu-144 looked just like Concorde, etc. etc.

Chaika was not a copy of a Packard. (They certainly admired the Packard bodywork, but Soviet industry was in no way ready to clone a Packard sedan)

Tu-144 was not a copy of the Concorde. (Convergent evolution is not the same as copying a design!)

The Soviets did clone a lot of DEC gear but I don't think SM-1, specifically, was a DEC clone. (In this lastmost case, the Soviets were left cloning computer equipment because it was forbidden to export to COMECON states)

Sorry, SM-4 not SM-1, was a full emulation of 11/40, with UNIBUS, and all. There were DEC copyright strings latent in some system files. It was a pretty good copy, but quite unreliable, and the reason was quite pedestrian---the connectors! It was a good lesson on how the entire technology chain needs to be high quality for the final product to work well.

Another example I forgot: the first Soviet nuke was directly copied from the stolen Fat Man design. Of course later they did novel stuff, especially the fusion designs of Sacharov et al.

It is well known that KGB got hold of the Concorde blueprints, so yeah, not a direct copy but certainly a lot of influence in that design. Again. the details like engine performance made the difference: apparently Tu144 had to continuously use afterburners to stay supersonic. It was also quite unreliable---I've heard that towards its end of life it was just flying cargo and airmail.

Swan and b1.. which came 1st...

These Soviet lenses are copies and adaptations of classic optical formulas at the time, e.g. the Helios 44 is a Carl Zeiss' Biotar. But while Zeiss produced in limited numbers, these Soviet versions are abundant in the used market and therefore very cheap.

Due to this, these lenses developed a cult following, and even more now that some prominent cinematographers used in some high caliber productions (The Batman (2022), Dune (2021)).