Soviet lens Helios-81M  2/53 mm, mount Nikon F, Kiev-Avtomat, for Kiev-10 camera, made in USSR.

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“Helios” is the name of a family of Soviet anastigmata lenses for various purposes: photographic, film, aerial photography, projection, etc. The Soviet version of the German Zeiss Planar lens. According to the optical design, they are semi-symmetrical anastigmatas of the “double Gaussian” type, usually including six lenses in four groups. Seven-element lenses are less common.

Lenses of the Helios family were produced both by the Krasnogorsk Mechanical Plant and other optical enterprises of the USSR, including BelOMO, as well as by the Jupiter and Arsenal plants. The Helios optical design was also used in some film lenses of the OKS line for 35 mm film. In addition, according to some sources, lenses were produced under the Helios brand in Japan for the main exporter of Soviet photographic equipment, TOE (Technical and Optical Equipment Ltd). The most famous are the 28/2.8 and 135/2.8 threaded lenses produced by Chinon Industries labeled “Helios”. The same marking, along with the KMZ trademark, was used for some time by the South Korean Samyang Optics.

Nikon F mount, F mount is a standard for bayonet attachment of lenses to small format single-lens reflex cameras, first used by the Nippon Kogaku K. K. Corporation (currently Nikon) in the Nikon F camera in 1959 and, with some modifications, still in use today, including number in digital equipment. This is one of two small format camera mounts that have remained unchanged since the advent of autofocus and digital photography. Another type of such connection that has survived to this day is the K mount, developed by Asahi Pentax. The remaining mounts for small-format optics, which appeared before the mid-1980s, are considered obsolete and have been replaced with fundamentally new ones, incompatible with previously released photographic equipment.

Bayonet "K-A" (Kyiv-Avtomat), combined with a mechanism for automatically setting the pressure diaphragm. "Kyiv-10" became the second Soviet SLR camera, after Zenit-4, whose lenses do not have an aperture ring controlled from the camera.

Helios-81M 2/53 is very similar to its brother MS Helios-81N 2/50. In fact, these are the same lens, but with a different body frame and coating. The difference in focal length has more to do with the designation itself than with actual differences.

It is very strange that Helios-81M 2/53 has the designation ‘M’ in its name. Typically, all lenses from ‘Kyiv’ brand cameras with an ‘H’ mount have the letter ‘H’ in their names. My Helios-81M 2/53 lens can be installed on Nikon cameras such as D700, D80, D40 without any adapters or modifications.

Attention: Helios-81M 2/53 lenses from different years of production may require slight modifications and cannot always be installed on some modern Nikon central control lenses. Here you need to look at each individual specimen. To install a lens on a camera that does not want to be installed just like that, just cut off the back of the skirt on the aperture ring.

It is easy to find adapters for other systems.

The lens has a single-layer coating, which is visually weakly expressed.

The lens aperture consists of 6 blades, the blades are not blackened. In the bokeh you can see 'nuts' on closed diaphragms. You can set the values F/2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16.

The focusing of the lens is smooth, the focusing ring rotates approximately 270 degrees, while the front lens does not rotate, and the lens extends its trunk by 1 cm. The minimum focusing distance is 50 centimeters. According to the focusing distance scale, infinity ‘begins’ after 12 meters. The lens has a depth of field scale.

The lens is very sharp, at full frame it gives a noticeable vignette at F2.0. It handles side and backlight worse than the MC version. Helios-81M 2/53 is best used with a hood, as the lens catches hares and various glares. In general, it’s a good fifty dollars. On a cropped lens it can serve as a portrait lens. Of course, Helios-81M 2/53 has cool bokeh :) and for that we are very loved by many photographers.

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The buyer will receive exactly the same item as in the photo.

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