Material on the lens especially for Radozhiva prepared Rodion Eshmakov.
Lens Selena 58/1.9
Zenit Selena 1.9/58C (hereinafter referred to as Selena 58/1.9) is a modern manual lens for full-frame SLR cameras, mass-produced at KMZ (Krasnogorsk, Russian Federation). This review presents the 2019 model of the lens for cameras with a Canon EF bayonet. There is also a version for Nikon SLR cameras, which differs in the design of the aperture mechanism. The lens was specially provided for the review by Nadira Tulasheva, while KMZ representatives ignored the request.
Navigation
- Technical specifications
- Design and execution of the lens
- Optical properties. Bokeh control. User experience
- The Riddle of Selena's Calculation 58/1.9
- Conclusions
In its main parameters, the Selena 58/1.9 is very reminiscent of the popular Soviet lens Helios-44 58/2, but in reality there is nothing else in common between them. Selena 58/1.9 is a deep reworking of the "spectacular" artistic lens Lomography x Zenit New Petzval 58/1.9 with a specific vintage design, created by order of the Lomographic Society at KMZ in 2013. The calculation of the lens was performed by the famous optician Vladimir Bogdankov (patent RU 2607738 C1), which he told about earlier for Radozhiva in interviewThe key feature of the lens is the option to change the nature of background blur, which has not been implemented in such a manner in any similar lens before.
After the sudden collapse of cooperation between Lomograph and KMZ, hundreds of already manufactured sets of lenses remained in the plant's warehouses, which needed to be sold. In connection with this, KMZ designer Artem Timirev and his colleagues developed a new original mechanics, already in a classic design for manual photo optics, but retaining its main "feature" with changing the bokeh. The lens was renamed from Petzval to Selena to avoid legal problems with the previous customer. The new name sounds like something completely randomly chosen: I still haven't managed to understand what the connection is between a lens for drawing bokeh and the goddess of the Moon.
Back in 2021 Selena 58/1.9 me seemed the most interesting of all modern KMZ lenses, since no other manufacturer has optics with a similar set of proposed properties, but I was only able to evaluate this development in detail - optical calculation, execution, real properties - now.
Technical specifications
Optical design – 4 lenses in 3 groups, aplanat type modified Petzval lens;
Drawing of the optical scheme according to patent RU 2607738 C1 indicating the brands of optical glass and their parameters. Basic configuration of the lens.
Focal length – 56.8-60.2 mm (depending on the selected bokeh control position);
Relative aperture - 1: 1.9;
Field of view angle – 42-40° (depending on the selected bokeh control position);
The estimated frame format is 36×24 mm (full-frame lens);
Aperture – 12 blades, manual control, step adjustment in 1 EV increments;
Aperture limits - 1: 1.9-1: 16;
Focusing – manual (manual lens);
The minimum focusing distance is 0.8 m;
Thread for light filters – 62 mm (M62×0.75);
Camera mount – Canon EF bayonet;
Mass - 400
Features: a separate ring for controlling the lens bokeh.
Design and execution of the lens
I received the lens for review without the original packaging and the original back cover. Selena 58/1.9 has a completely metal body with quite impressive dimensions: in terms of size, the lens is more like a fast 85-100 mm portrait lens.
Selena 58/1.9 (Canon EF) and Zenitar-S 50/1.2s (APS-C, Canon EF).
The large dimensions are due to a rather complex mechanical design: the lens has two independent lens movement mechanisms - one for focusing by moving the entire lens block, and the other for changing the distance between 2 and 3 lenses. The compact lens block of the lens is deeply recessed into the body, forming a kind of deep hood around it, like in lenses Industar-61 LZ, MS Volna-9 and different macro lenses.
The front lens element is recessed deep into the body.
The arrangement and execution of the control elements on the lens is a bit confusing: for example, the widest and most accessible ring is not the focus ring, but the background blur adjustment. The degree of bokeh transformation is reflected by a linear scale on the ring from 1 (standard lens configuration) to 7 (the extreme position of the lenses, +12 mm to the interlens distance), the ring rotates smoothly, steplessly by ~120°. The lens does not change its dimensions when using the bokeh control function: the moving front block of lenses does not go beyond the plane of the title ring when focusing at infinity.
The widest and most accessible ring on the lens is for bokeh control, not focusing.
The focus ring is made almost twice as narrow and smaller in diameter compared to the bokeh control ring. In order not to lose it, you need to have a certain habit - at first, confusion often occurs. You can understand by touch that you have grasped it correctly by the large knurling applied to the focus ring. The ring travel is 90 °, the rotation is smooth, without jamming, the amount of movement of the lens block is about 6 mm, which provides a minimum focusing distance (MFD) of 0.8 m. It is worth paying attention to the unusual distance scale on the lens focusing ring: since changing the interlens gap leads to a small change in the focal length of the lens, the focus position also changes. For this reason, the ring only has infinity and MDF position marks for the two extreme configurations of the bokeh control ring 1 and 7. Of course, in this case, there is no need to talk about the presence of a hard stop of the infinity position.
Selena 58/1.9 when focusing on MDF.
In truth, for a lens with a focal length of 58 mm, such a MDF is very large, which is the main drawback of the mechanical design of Selena 58/1.9. When focusing, the lens unit moves entirely inside the lens housing, but its overall dimensions do not change: even when focusing on the MDF and the selected position 7 of the bokeh control ring, the front part of the lens unit housing is 2 mm below the edge of the thread for filters. This also explains the rather strict limitation of the MDF of the lens. Another thing is that, as you can see later, it was really possible to completely reduce the range of change of the interlens gap in favor of increasing the maximum shooting scale.
The lens aperture ring is located right next to the bayonet and switches in 1 EV steps with clear clicks. The ring's travel is linear due to the 12 aperture blades being Γ-shaped rather than C-shaped.
View of the Selena 58/1.9 aperture from the front lens.
View of the Selena 58/1.9 aperture from the rear lens.
A perfectly round lens pupil opening is achieved at F/1.9 and F/16, a round opening with jagged edges is achieved at F/2.8, F/8 and F/11, and a star-shaped opening is achieved at F/4 and F/5.6.
Change in the shape of the lens pupil when stopping down from F/1.9 to F/16.
The lenses of the objective are coated with an anti-reflective coating with a green highlight color. Most likely, this is a two-layer coating applied by vacuum deposition. For a lens with such a simple optical design, this is a completely adequate option, although the two-layer coating can significantly affect color rendering in some situations.
Rear lens view of the lens.
Selena 58/1.9 is a rare case when designers can be praised for the measures taken to protect against light, that is, to combat parasitic light reflections. Firstly, of course, this is the deep fit of the front lens in a well with ribbed walls. Secondly, in the lens, everything that should be black and matte is black and matte. If you look closely, you can notice one interlens insert without ribbed edges, but its effect can only be observed in special situations and then outside the calculated field. Even the insides of the chrome bayonet have a black metal insert.
The bayonet itself, by the way, is made very well and is fixed well both in cameras with Canon EF mount and in adapters. Funny as it may seem, but for KMZ to master the precise manufacture of bayonet mounts was an achievement at the time, and the same LZOS has not mastered bayonets to this day. The lens does not have any electronics, so with Canon cameras, focus confirmation and transmission of any shooting parameters from the lens to the camera will not work.
The design of the Selena 58/1.9 is quite simple and minimalistic. Perhaps even better than copying Leica like the Chinese. The markings on the lens are applied using a laser: in this case, the black dye in the anodic aluminum oxide layer on the surface of the part burns out, leaving a silver metal shining through the oxide film. The inscriptions on the lens, therefore, cannot be erased by anything except a file.
Overall, the lens, from the point of view of mechanical design and execution, is rather good, considering its complexity.
Optical properties. Bokeh control. User experience
Selena 58/1.9 is designed as a purely spectacular artistic lens, which should provide an extraordinary picture with a clearly expressed optical pattern, and therefore it would be unfair to expect any miracles in terms of optical quality. However, the lens is not positioned as a soft focus, which means that ideally it should provide a sufficiently sharp image within its curved field, at least in the basic configuration.
In fact, with the aperture wide open, the Selena 58/1.9 even in the center of the frame produces an image with a pronounced soft effect, that is, low contour sharpness, due to the influence of strong spherical aberrationsThe lens has a fairly high level of both higher-order and 3rd-order distortions: detail is low even when stopping down by 1 stop, as shown in the photo below.
At the edge of the frame, the situation is further complicated by the rapidly increasing spherical aberration of oblique beams, which, on the one hand, makes the bokeh more expressive, but on the other hand, does not allow the subject to be placed outside the center, often even at F/2.8.
The lens has relatively good coma correction, but astigmatism makes sharpness unachievable at almost any aperture for 36x24 frame angles (angle greater than 25°) within the curved image field (radius of curvature approximately 75 mm). The image field is so strongly curved that when shooting at half-length portrait distances, objects with a difference in distance to the photographer of about a meter can be in focus at the same time, which opens up some scope for imagination when composing a frame.
The bokeh control operation has a very slight effect on the image quality in the central area of the frame, but it determines the degree of manifestation of the system's astigmatism. The level of coma also changes little. As we move from the basic configuration of the lens to the extreme, at position 7 of the bokeh control ring, the astigmatism increases, due to which only a small central area of the image remains sharp, and the background acquires a pronounced radially symmetric blur. The nature of the background blur in the basic configuration is quite consistent with Petzval lenses of the type LOMO P-5 90/2, but due to more pronounced edge distortions it also has the bokeh features of lenses like Tair.
Below are some sample photos taken at F/2.8 and bokeh ring positions 1, 3 and 7.
For full-frame cameras the effect is rather excessive, but the extreme configuration is valuable when using the lens with APS-C format matrices.
Below are example shots taken with the bokeh control ring in position 1 and apertures of F/1.9, F/2.8, F/4, F/5.6.
Next, the same thing, but in position 3 of the bokeh control ring.
Then do the same for position 7 of the bokeh control ring.
It is easy to see that aperture has a rather weak effect on the nature of the lens pattern, especially when using the bokeh control option. On the one hand, this is a plus, since you can control the depth of field without losing the characteristic optical pattern, on the other hand, even at F/4, the image quality is sometimes insufficient for some scenes due to weak edges.
The advantage of the lens is good image contrast, which is achieved due to high-quality light protection and two-layer lens coating. There are no problems with color rendering, expected from green enlightenment, did not happen: the lens is not inclined to catch colored (green) veil, and small deviations of the transmission spectrum from neutral are well compensated by the camera without user intervention.
Light transmission spectrum of the Selena 58/1.9 lens.
Selena 58/1.9 even manages to cover a 44x33mm frame (Fujifilm GFX), albeit with significant vignetting. The lens can also work with shift adapters on full-frame mirrorless cameras. Photo examples on Sony A7s with shift-adapter for vertical and horizontal shift are given below.
Despite the high image contrast, extraordinary pattern and the presence of a unique bokeh change option, Selena 58/1.9 makes a mixed impression. The lens really allows you to achieve unusual effects in pictures, create accents, to some extent - play with the composition, but with all this, it simply lacks sharpness. The desire to shoot with an open aperture evaporated very quickly after the first tests, when people's faces become indistinguishable in the fog of spherical aberrations. What's worse is that stopping down to F/2.8 may not be enough: in this case, only the central part of the image is noticeably tightened, and shooting at F/4 may not always be comfortable. The bokeh control option also has a not entirely clear meaning: on a full-frame camera, the bokeh is already quite "crooked" in the basic configuration, although this is subjective. I very rarely used this option, almost never going beyond position 3 of the control ring.
Below is a gallery of photos taken with a full-frame camera. Sony A7s and the Selena 58/1.9 lens.
The Riddle of Selena's Calculation 58/1.9
The optical design of the Selena 58/1.9 lens has generated a lot of discussions on the Internet on the topic of “Petzval or not Petzval”.
Optical diagram of a typical Petzval objective (“Computational Optics”, edited by M.M. Rusinov, 1984, Fig. 34.1, Table 34.1, pp. 355-356).
There are even opinions that the optical design of the Selena 58/1.9 is a deliberately incorrectly assembled Petzval, which does not have the properties of “that very” original lens.
If we approach the issue systematically, it is worth noting a number of extremely important features of the Selena 58/1.9 lens: 1) compared to a typical Petzval lens, Selena has a 2-3 times larger angular field, but this field is still curved; 2) Selena has a very large back segment relative to its focal length - the typical value of this ratio for a Petzval lens is 0.45-0.55, while for Selena it is 0.7; 3) The lens has an option to change the lens bokeh by independently moving the front group of lenses.
Changing the lens tip distance on the Selena 58/1.9 lens to control bokeh.
The optical design of the lens differs little in principle from the original Petzval design: only the front component has changed significantly, made in the form of a doublet of plano-convex and plano-concave lenses with an air gap instead of gluing, while the rear doublet, on the contrary, has become glued, retaining the previous shape of the lenses. The glued surface has a very large curvature and plays a significant role in the correction of lens aberrations (Merte surface).
Drawing of the optical scheme according to patent RU 2607738 C1 indicating the brands of optical glass and their parameters. Basic configuration of the lens.
The Selena 58/1.9 lens uses extremely simple optical materials: crown K8 (analogue of Schott BK7, CDGM H-K9L) is the cheapest and most common optical glass in the LZOS catalogue, and heavy flint TF8 and barium flint BF13 - the most affordable lead glass from the 1940s catalogue.
X-ray fluorescence spectrum of the rear lens of the objective (K8 glass).
You could say that Selena 58/1.9 is made from shards of a broken window and melted crystal glasses. Considering that two of the four lenses have flat surfaces, the lens turned out to be very technologically advanced and cheap to produce. A high degree of simplification and cheapening of optical design is a characteristic feature of many lenses developed Vladimir Bogdankov.
Thus, Selena 58/1.9 is a compromise redesign of the original Petzval lens to meet new requirements for the lens, i.e. an increase in the angle of view and the operation of the bokeh control option. In this case, it becomes clear that the lens's insufficient sharpness is a consequence of maintaining a simple optical design and primitive optical materials.
I am not a supporter of saving on glass in lenses like Selena 58/1.9, where the price of the material itself is drowning in the costs of manufacturing complex mechanics. In the end, demand creates supply - if you do not order normal optical glass, then they will forget how to weld it, which in the realities of LZOS is not even a joke. In addition, Petzval lenses are known, made using lanthanum glass, for example, the lens from patent US 2500046 A. Then why not try to recalculate Selena 58/1.9 for more advanced materials?
An analysis of the optical design of the Selena 2607738/1 lens given in patent RU 58 C1.9 showed that for the basic configuration, the image quality within a field of curvature of 75 mm is limited primarily by spherical aberrations and astigmatism. The graphs of aberrations, spots, and MTF are given below.
What is characteristic is that the frequency-contrast characteristic of Selena is very close to that of Jupiter-3 50/1.5 (he is still the champion in terms of optical distortion) and is even inferior to it.
Therefore, for this lens it should be very useful to use glasses with a higher refractive index, which has a positive effect on the correction of spherical aberration and astigmatism. The difficulty is that the use of lanthanum glasses will inevitably lead to the need to use heavy flints, which, in turn, will lead to a strong increase in spherochromatism due to the peculiarities of the dispersion properties of these materials. Therefore, it seems reasonable to replace the glass K8 on barium crowns of the type BK8 or heavy crowns with low dispersion by type TK14, to avoid the use of highly dispersed heavy flints of the type TF5.
Indeed, replacing glass with K8-TF8-BF13-K8 on TK14-TF3-BF16-TK23 Even while maintaining the dimensions and flat surfaces of the original lens, it allowed for a dramatic improvement in image quality in the basic configuration: astigmatism and spherical aberrations were corrected.
But, as it turned out, when changing the gap between the front and rear doublets in this version of the lens, the coma increased greatly, which has a destructive effect on the image, worsening its visual quality. Consequently, the coma should be minimized not only for the main configuration, but also for the additional ones. In turn, this leads to a deterioration in the properties of the main configuration - mainly due to an increase in spherical aberrations and higher coma. This is the main difficulty of the calculation performed Vladimir Bogdankov: The lens requires multi-configuration optimization of the aberration balance based not only on optical quality requirements but also on aesthetics.
I was not entirely pleased with the result obtained during multi-configuration optimization for the lens based on TK-TF-BF glass: the increase in image quality was too small compared to the original version of the lens, or it was not good enough in terms of the pattern. Spherochromatism correction became the main problem, and therefore I used modern high-refractive low-dispersion glasses from the CDGM catalog in the calculation - heavy phosphate crowns that are not produced by LZOS, which, however, can weld colored (neodymium) glasses for lasers with similar parameters.
New version of the lens with glass H-ZPK5 - H-ZF2 - H-ZBAF52 - H-ZPK5 not only was it not inferior to the previous one in the basic configuration, but it also had a larger aperture (F/1.8 vs. F/1.9) and no longer suffered from growing coma when using the bokeh control option. Heavy phosphate crowns also allowed to reduce spherochromatic aberration, due to which the lens becomes very sharp in the central area already at F/2, and in the corners of the frame sharpness is achievable at ~F/5.6. It is important that the lens has not lost its artistic qualities and has almost the same overall parameters as the original.
Below are comparison charts showing the direct impact of optical material choice on the quality and performance of lenses like the Selena 58/1.9.
Conclusions
Selena 58/1.9 is a unique lens. High-quality production, with a characteristic pattern and creative bokeh control option, the lens stands out among numerous modern manual optics. For lovers of expressive twisted bokeh, soft but contrasting picture - a very good solution.
10 main advantages
• The most modern and unusual implementation of the Petzval lens;
• Large angle of view for such lenses;
• Very bright and expressive optical pattern;
• Unique option to change the nature of bokeh;
• Good overall image contrast due to properly executed light protection;
• High-quality designed and executed mechanics;
• Nice minimalistic design;
• Multi-blade diaphragm;
• Canon EF mount provides excellent compatibility with other systems (BZK and film cameras), tilt-shift adapters;
• The overall dimensions and position of the rings remain unchanged when focusing and using bokeh control.
10 main disadvantages
• Optical design without the use of modern materials;
• Produced by the current KMZ – there is no guarantee of consistent quality from one copy to another;
• The lens uses filters with a large diameter of 62 mm for its parameters;
• Large minimum focusing distance of 0.8 m;
• Very pronounced soft effect at F/1.9-F/2.8;
• Edge sharpness is not achievable at any aperture;
• Large dimensions of the lens for its parameters;
• The diaphragm forms an uneven opening at all apertures except F/1.9 and F/16;
• Bokeh control has limited meaning on full-frame cameras;
• The focus ring is not very conveniently located and designed compared to the bokeh control ring.
wanted the best, but it turned out as always... an immortal phrase from V. Chernomyrdin
I would like to have one like this in my collection, despite all the shortcomings mentioned.
It's a pity that you can only buy it in Russia. The same thing didn't happen with Petzval. The delivery service lost it.
Yuri, I think you can get penzvals on eBay, take a look there. I also ordered a penzval on Avito, and literally immediately went to see what else KMZ had, and I was just lucky enough to notice Selena.
P.s. By the way, the author of the review couldn't connect the metaphor of the title, I'll give you a hint: what could be the name of the evening prime optics that draw lights in the night.
The material is interesting, thank you.
Lots of clever letters, not a single interesting photograph reflecting the potential.
My story and thoughts on this subject. I managed to get this lens for my collection before the price increase last New Year in the regional DNS for 21.000 rubles through friends. Regarding the design: the body is aluminum (hundredth of the info, I wrote off from KMZ, I was worried that it was silumin). Regarding the aperture. They could have implemented it with a perfectly round bokeh circle, even in Soviet lenses there are such examples, fortunately this is not the kind of glass where you need to cover something. Regarding the sharpness. It is not excessive. But sufficient, for social networks this is definitely, an example will be below.
It is not enough for perfectionists printing in A1 and mother's gurus examining pores, as well as strange people photographing monuments torn off by pigeons traditionally exclusively with a watering can. If you understand what blackpromist is used for, true sagittality is always your friend in terms of communicating with the viewer in artistic language.
The lens has a weird foreground bokeh, it doesn't screw in, it pulls in. Remember the hyper jumps in Star Wars - that's the effect.
About work:
If you don't know how to take interesting pictures with Helius, you're unlikely to take anything with this lens. I highly recommend getting a cheap Gel and trying to get material with it. If you think it's spinning everywhere. No, it's not. You have to understand what kind of back is contrasty and whether it fits fully behind the subject of interest, otherwise you'll end up with a heavy soap hat that's inconvenient in terms of mobility and doesn't give results. It would be great if Arkady published an article with examples for beginners - how to look for such backs and how to frame by eye, without a camera. Again, I repeat, this lens is simply pointless in any other use case. It takes a long time, is heavy, inconvenient and doesn't give results.
When I was learning, I did it this way as a life hack: set an approximate portrait distance and walk around, look at the bokeh pattern, what fits and what doesn't, correlate it to your virtual framing frame, by eye or with your fingers. Anything high-contrast is your friend.
Sorry for the toxicity, but I still don't understand how such examples can reveal the strong points of the lens and talk about the weak ones. I think that the examples in the article mislead readers, especially beginners, who I think are the main readers of this type of material. Don't scold me for typos. All the best.
If you have a gallery of photos you took with this lens, you can contact me and add it to the review.
Rodion is kind, but there is nothing more to brag about, I took it for a walk a couple of times and attached what turned out well and reveals the picture. The rest of the boring ones I deleted. There will be something in the coming season, I will send, if I do not forget. Another thing I forgot to write, the line of sharpness is spherical, the shape of the U. Directed by an arc towards the viewer, it is very much limited by the center of the frame, especially at the maximum values of the effect - almost like a ping-pong ball in the center, if you know this feature, it is also a plus in a portrait (in fact, this is a street portrait lens both in focal length and in concept). The second point is the Viltrox ef-eos m2 0.71x and similar attachments with a resolution higher than 4K do not spoil the picture, since they have a higher resolution than the lens. Viltrox blurs in the corners, but this is not a problem for this lens.
Here's what I found from the test - a drawing of the foreground bokeh.
Astigmatism is common. The sagittal direction is out of focus, the tangential direction is out of focus.
Rodion, thank you for the clarifications. It would be great if you expanded these wonderful words into practical advice in your reviews – at what distance what kind of picture can be obtained using these values, for example, in a milky portrait this effect is barely noticeable, but at a distance with the size of an Easter portrait, by turning the frame to a horizontal orientation, we can get such a picture. And perhaps for some project of your reader – such a nuance will be unacceptable. Or, on the contrary, he will find a creative use for it.
Gennady, you were very lucky to grab it at such a price.
At the start they were asking 45-46k for it.
You couldn't buy it anywhere for 21k. And even now people who have played with it enough sell it for 27-28k.
The most interesting thing is that I saw several Zeiss Macro Planar 50/2 for sale in October for literally the same price. I understand that these are very different things, but still.
Good remark by the way. Just different things because macro planar for real shooting - sharp, contrasting, for many subjects, and selena - it's about playing around for 3-4 walks. And the funniest thing is that the same ttartizan, which is a replica of the biotar 75 1.5 looks much more interesting and most importantly, even a cheaper option! ... Somehow KMZ, like many other domestic enterprises, should learn business from the Chinese.
Bravo standing - the only speaker who wrote on the case.
I took this one for Nikon with a discount for 28 - at first it went down. But then, as they say, "earlier our cat was afraid of the vacuum cleaner, but then nothing - he got into it" here is the same. The glass is absolutely masterpiece and interesting. A very rich choice of combinations of bokeh-character-blur and twists. Its sharpness from 2.8 is sufficient! Even high in the center. From F4 it rings - what else do you need? At 1.9 it softens but not much - Open it works absolutely. The overall quality of the lenses (color and contrast) is an order of magnitude higher than that of the bastard nauseating Petzval 85 \ t2.2
The most difficult thing is to choose the right background and distance for it + you need to have an interesting object in focus (plot). For many, this is laziness or clumsiness that cannot be cured
Photo on 2.8 D800. Took about 100 shots. There is a detailed review and more examples on Lens Club
By the way, it would be interesting if the owners of this lens added as many examples of photos from it as possible.
Rodion, with your attitude towards KMZ, people and the country, I wouldn’t give you anything either! IMHO!
People from KMZ who are directly involved in the development of these lenses read my reviews of their equipment, help correct inaccuracies and say that they like the articles. My condolences to the rest.
Yes, yes... and 20 business jets, 50 Zelensky Bentleys along with Hitler's car and hard drives with bitcoins worth 50 googolplex dollars.
If the glass cost adequate money, then perhaps Selena would have been a success. So, looking at the modern price tag of bricks from KMZ, only a smile with tears stretches on the face….
PS: 7 craftsmen have knocked together their own biotar 1.5\75, which is lighter and looks more interesting... where are the Krasnogorsk people looking...
Selena 58 costs $370 now. Biotar 75/1.5 Chinese costs $320. At the same time, Selena is noticeably more complex in design. I can't call the price inadequate.
I'll suggest something strange, but is it possible to make a comparative review of Selena and Helios 44M-6/44M-7 based on the drawing? No one has done anything like this yet.
I had such an idea. But not for long. I don't have Helios anymore - otherwise I would have taken a couple of photos, probably. And the difference is quite obvious, especially if you open the photo from the G44 review and a similar one from this article. The main difference concerns the curvature of the field. Helios has a flat field, so all the bokeh disks from the center to the edge decrease by about 1/2 - 2/3 of the area, thus the degree of blurring decreases from the center to the edge. In the case of Selena in the main configuration, the circles along the edge will be approximately 1.5-2 times larger in area than in the center, that is, the blur is enhanced. The distribution of energy in the circles, of course, is different (Selena has a border on the inner side, G44 has it all over the disk + more on the outer; Selena has a border for the disks in the center of the frame, G44 almost does not), but few people understand such details anymore.
Rodion, thanks!
And in terms of feeling, if you compare Selena and the successful 44M-6/M-7 Helios in terms of sharpness in the center of the frame at apertures of 2.0-2.8, will Helios or Selena be sharper?
I'm thinking of buying one for cropping - to spin it on Fuji Propyatka.
I have provided a chart of the MTF for Selena within its curved field. It can be used - the lens is assembled well, without decentering. I am providing the same chart for Helios-44.
In terms of user experience, for me, Selena was more like the Petzval P-5 90/2 and Richter KO-90 90/1.9.
there is a saying - if you put a Circassian (Cossack) saddle on a cow, although you can also use a Circassian one :-) it will still not become a Don Cossack :-) - this applies to everything Russian, comparing it with Soviet and especially with foreign, except for Chinese of course :-)
And what kind of Soviet cow suddenly became a “Donchaklm”, I wonder? The Chinese thing really made me laugh. Do you still believe in Leika and Zeiss? Or maybe in Nippon Kogaku? It’s even surprising to see such things in 2025, when the Chinese have learned to make optics that are not inferior in their properties, and sometimes even superior to the optics of Japanese companies.
Rodion, you shouldn't be so sarcastic. I'll tell you from my own experience that eradicating some "postulates" requires a lot of nerves, money and time. And very often, someone else's experience doesn't help here. I don't know how in Soviet times many people got it hammered into their minds that German and Japanese goods are unsurpassed in quality, that crystal and carpets in the house are a sign of success, etc. Since these "axioms" were clear as day to everyone and for a long time, then if you encounter a low-quality or not very high-quality Japanese or German thing, then blame yourself, since this cannot be at all, it turns out to be a kind of "skeleton in the closet". And only after a certain amount of money, attempts to join in and wasted time - comes the understanding that reality is more complex than simple and convenient cliches for the mind.
The Chinese lenses from CANON for amateur digital cameras are made well in terms of optical properties, but they obviously desperately saved on the costs of implementing the mechanical properties of the design :-) about the hoods - this is generally an epic poem :-) They are not included with the lenses - and on sale there is a wretchedness at a price that makes you think - were they accidentally made by geishas with their golden hands?
Chinese lenses from NIKON for amateur digital cameras are made much better in mechanical properties than the same lenses from CANON...
A purely Japanese lens from TOKINA with its optical and mechanical properties is made head and shoulders above Chinese NIKON, and Chinese CANON is ashamed to even stand next to it :-)
Arkady, should we advertise for Muscovites?
Why, having gone to Europe, the war is already over? Just don’t tell me that the photo is outside of politics...
Some complain that not enough praises have been sung, others complain that nothing has been sung at all. Essentially the same people in different circumstances.
The respected Vladimir Bogdankov tried to make contract production of this optics for the Lomographic Society as cheap as possible (so that KMZ would earn something).
This results in only four lenses, cheap glass and two flat optical surfaces.
Lomographers did not strive to obtain a lens with high sharpness in the center. They are interested in the wow effect of pronounced twist and a cool retro appearance.
This is not even a niche, but a narrow-niche optics for a very limited circle.
Somehow they will gradually sell off the collected copies from the accumulated stock.
Canon and Sony had lenses with controlled bokeh blur in their lineup. But not this extreme.
My indignation about the glass is connected with the recent experience of real calculation and launching into production of eyepieces for a medical device. The optical design is just as simple - 3 lenses for one and 4 lenses for the second. I was given this order due to the fact that the previous four-lens calculation was made on glass equivalent to LZOS glass, and after testing it, there were suspicions that this was not the best option in terms of quality: problems with distortion, field size, vignette, image sharpness across the field and in the center. I did not hesitate and "went for broke", using in the calculation the epic expensive CDGM glass with a refractive index of up to 1.95-2.0. Result: as it turned out during the cost calculation, the choice of material does not make any difference at all, because its price is drowned in the cost of manufacturing the lens itself, applying blackening and enlightenment (by the way, it was an excellent honest 3-4 layer MS). The use of expensive, super-heavy glass has fully justified itself when it comes to image quality: distortion is restrained, the field is increased, astigmatism and curvature are low, and the spherical chromatic aberration is nailed in such a way that you can see 7 mm with a drug addict's pupil and distinguish 10 µm (100 lines/mm) - God grant everyone such sharp vision.
Actually, replacing the K8 glass in Selena with TK14 wouldn't have made any difference either - TK14 is an affordable and mass-produced product. This is the glass that was in two Helios-44 lenses, for example. But the image quality could have been improved. Not ideally, perhaps, but improved. At least it wouldn't have been embarrassing for F/1.9. KMZ certainly wouldn't have become poor.
I recommend looking at the fate of a similar project, Lensbaby.
Their twist series 60mm/2,5 lenses with a similar effect are out of print.
The velvet and sweet series, which are illiquid, remain and are being discounted.
Well, so what? What next? I'm not saying that crazy bokeh is bad. You still haven't figured out that my main complaint is that it's impossible to shoot wide open because of the blur. That is, this complaint is about the excessive spherical lens of various types, which has little to do with the bokeh twist. Even if the lens is made for bokeh, it should be comfortable to shoot with. Or should it be labeled "soft focus" or something else. A Petzval lens with F/2 is not about blurry wide open.
Rodion wanted to attach it to a microscope, but the sharpness was not enough). But to the point: as always, a deep technical analysis of the lens with weak photo examples. But since the site has almost died, it is good that at least such articles are published. I wish Rodion to calculate and design a lens for mass production, like Volosov's Tair3 from 3 bottle bottoms with good quality and a low price, so that the Chinese would be amazed, and we would be proud)
Microscopy, I tell you, is a great topic and an unplowed field, where “no white man has set foot”. There is not a single resource on micro-optics where you can go and see how this or that lens behaves. There are only scattered scraps of information on forums, random tests, non-reproducible results and dubious methods. I have been looking at this new topic for the site for a long time, but a real use case and development opportunities have only recently been discovered. As it turns out, given the incredible general backwardness of the industry from the already self-evident standards of the world of photographic equipment, articles on microscopy make sense - to summarize experience, set benchmarks when choosing real products, etc.
As for photo optics, simple mass lenses are dead, even the Chinese don't make them seriously anymore. Crop matrices of 36 megapixels have forced manufacturers to make all sorts of large-size ones with 10 lenses even in relatively simple cases - a small pixel requires, for example, the secondary spectrum and astigmatism to be corrected very well. I have a ton of these "simple lenses" calculated, made of heavy phosphate bottle bottoms and more. Maybe they will live to see their time. Considering how much 4 eyepiece lenses with all the advice cost, the forecast is good. If there was a demand for about 1000 pieces, it would be quite possible to implement the project. Additional profit will come from the electricity generated by the rotation of Volosov, Merte and Bertel in the coffins.
From whom did you learn to rage against the dead?
At the “philosopher” of one of Magadan
So it seems like you gave a link to some resource on microscopes, but I haven't studied it, I'm not interested. And so create a blog on such lenses, but it's unlikely to have a large audience. And about the photo: Well, 1000 pieces is not even serious. 10-element lenses are made by anyone and everyone, from glass that was melted by virgins at dawn on the last Thursday of the month, for example, Nikkor 300mm f4 for 200k. When I accidentally bought a Tair 500 for 3₽ at a yard sale and took pictures, I thought it was some kind of high-precision optical multi-lens device, it turned out to be 3 pieces of glass, calculations made in the 40s and production from the 50s to 2005). I don't know how many of them were produced by all the factories in all modifications, but clearly under a million with the corresponding cost price. And now, having all sorts of super-heavy crowns, flints, etc. (I'm not an optician), you need 10+ lenses to assemble a more or less normal 300mm lens with the price of a Superjet wing. It's a pity that for an angle of view greater than 10 degrees you'll have to pour another piece of glass into the tube, like in the Tair 11. In the comments about KMZ lenses, everyone wrote: make the price competitive and they'll be snapped up here and around the world. And the Volosovs and Bertels won't have to spin in their graves.
Photo from flickr
Good lens, no sharpness... What's good about it?
Do you photograph sharpness?