Overview of the M42-FX adapter. We install the Soviet Helios lens on a modern mirrorless camera

I have a Helios 44–2 lens lying around for a long time (like many). And I’ve been using a Fuji­film X‑T30 mir­ror­less cam­era late­ly. And so I decid­ed to try to shoot on the old Helios. To do this, I ordered an M42-FX adapter on Aliex­press, with which Sovi­et optics can be put on a mod­ern cam­era.

Aliex­press has a fair­ly large selec­tion of dif­fer­ent M42 adapters, from very cheap to quite expen­sive. But in fact, they have the same func­tion­al­i­ty, since this is just a ring with the bay­o­nets and threads we need. I chose the medi­um priced option. Focused pri­mar­i­ly on reviews.

Deliv­ery of the lot took almost two months. But since it’s not a neces­si­ty, I did­n’t get too upset.

The adapter arrived in such a sim­ple box:

The kit here con­sists of an adapter and a hexa­gon, with which you can turn the out­er ring for more con­ve­nient posi­tion­ing of the lens:

The adapter is arranged quite sim­ply. On one side there is an M42 thread for screw­ing in a Helios lens (or anoth­er Sovi­et lens with an M42 thread), and on the oth­er side there is a cutout for the FX mount (Fuji­film)

The adapter does not have any chips or elec­tron­ic com­po­nents. On the side of it there is only the inscrip­tion M42-FX:

And this is how my copy of Helios 44–2 looks like:

With a sim­ple move­ment, with­out any prob­lems, we wind it onto the adapter:

And then put on the cam­era:

Using the sup­plied hexa­gon, we loosen the out­er ring of the adapter, which is held on by three coun­ter­sunk screws, and turn the lens so that the risks on it are on top and they can be seen:

All. You can shoot. Almost. In Fuji­film cam­eras, you still need to enable work with­out a lens. In my case it looks like this: go to set­tings-gen­er­al-but­ton/disk set­tings and there in the para­graph “shoot with­out a lens“set” on “:

All. Now you can shoot mas­ter­pieces.

Well, in fact, there are plen­ty of exam­ples of how Helios lens­es are shot on the net. It all depends on the direct­ness of your hands. My arms are hon­est­ly not very straight for a pho­to, but below I will show my exam­ples:

Sub­ject shoot­ing, flash illu­mi­na­tion:

Street shoot­ing, nat­ur­al light­ing:

As for me, the result is very pleas­ant. True, there is one minus. Helios 44 is a man­u­al lens, and you won’t be able to take pic­tures on the machine. You need to man­u­al­ly adjust the aper­ture and focal length. And with not very much expe­ri­ence, some of the frames will turn out to be blur­ry due to the fact that the focus did not hit. It’s bad that with this adapter there is also no focus point con­fir­ma­tion (it hap­pened on Canon), but as far as I under­stand, this is not gen­er­al­ly the case on the Fuji­film sys­tem.

Con­clu­sion:

Of course, I do not urge you to run and buy such adapters and start using old lens­es on mod­ern cam­eras. The process of shoot­ing with man­u­al glass­es is very ama­teur­ish. Here it will not work just to press a but­ton and get a good frame, here you have to catch a focus, a frame for a long time, and hope that the pic­ture was a suc­cess. It is rather nec­es­sary for gain­ing expe­ri­ence, well, for fun. The process here is very med­i­ta­tive. The qual­i­ty of the optics is gen­er­al­ly very good con­sid­er­ing its price. In gen­er­al, I was sat­is­fied with the pur­chase.

M42-FX adapter link: M42-FX on Aliex­press

There are also sim­i­lar adapters for oth­er pop­u­lar mounts:

M42-EOS

M42-Nikon

M42-Sony (M42-Nex)

There­fore, you can eas­i­ly choose the right adapter for your cam­era and, for exam­ple, by buy­ing an old Helios (or, for exam­ple, indus­tri­al, jupiter, zen­i­tar, etc.) at a flea mar­ket, try the old optics on your cam­era.