It’s time of a new lens giveaway and as promised this time I’m giving away 4 lenses, so more of you guys will have a chance of winning. 

The lenses I’m giving away are Helios 58mm f/2 primes. They are great for low light and archiving a very nice, shallow depth of field.  I’ve tested these lenses and I was really impressed with the performance. You can check out my test videos on my youtube channel.

3 of the lenses are Helios 44M which are older, more common 9 aperture blade version and 1 of the lenses is Helios 44M-4, which is virtually the same, but slightly newer, 6 aperture blade version.

All of the lenses come with both lens caps and are still in great optical condition. A couple have slightly stiff focus rings, which is common for these lenses, but still work fine. I will post these anywhere in the world for free, so don’t let you location stop you from entering; my last lens was won by someone in Algeria.

Since I’m giving away 4 lenses rather than 1, I hope that there will be more entries, so I decided to try out the raffle website called rafflecopter.com to help me track all the entries and make things cleaner.

Entering is very simple as before, all you need to do is complete 1 of 6 steps below. At first I made 3 mandatory, but then decided that I don't want to restrict people from entering just because they don't have a Tweeter or Facebook account, so yo qualify for 1 entree you only need to complete 1 point, but completing all 6 will give you higher chance of winner. Please note, that the winner will NOT be chosen by the amount of point. The extra points will just give extra entries: 1 point = 1 entree, 2 points = 2 entries , 3 points + 3 entries, etc.

To earn yourself extra entries you can also tweet the message shown in the widget below once every day, just make sure that you do it through rafflecopter widget below. Any entries made in any other way will not be entered into competition, only the ones processed through rafflecopter.

Good luck to everyone entering and the winners will be announced in 2 weeks time, once the competition is over.

As you may know, I don’t have any sponsors and I fund all my giveaways myself. I giveaway what I can and as often as I can. If you like my giveaways and would like to help me fund my future giveaway, please consider donating anything that could go towards new prizes. If you can’t spare anything, you can still help, by spreading the word about www.budgetfilmmaker.co.uk. All your help is greatly appreciated  

I’ve tested both of these lenses before, so the individual write-ups and opinions can be found here (for Olympus) and here (for Helios).

Someone on the website asked me what was better just considering the image quality Olympus Zuiko 50mm f/1.4 or Helios 44m 58mm f/2, so I decided to do this quick test with my Olympus and the Helios I’ve used in my previous test.

I think the results in the video are quite obvious, Olympus performs much better at f/2, which means it’s already slightly stepped down and you are getting more out of it than the Helios, which at f/2 is wide open. To get more out of your lens you generally want to step it down a little bit. It is really hard to judge the sharpness from a video anyway and in the video mode lenses are much more forgiving, so to get a better idea about sharpness I’ve also included some photos. Again with all the compression the video goes through you can’t judge the sharpness that well.  So have a looks at some side by side crops below.

I think in the video I didn’t used the best Helios photos I actually managed to take during the test.  Maybe the focus was just slightly out, which introduced a lot of glow and some chromatic aberration around the highlights. So below you can see these close ups again (click to enlarge). I found that the second badge of Helios test shots was much better than the first and in this one even at f/2 there is very little difference between these 2 lenses. If anything I think Helios produces better results, with lens less chromatic aberration and ghosting around the highlights that can be seen in Olympus crop. Absolutely amazing considering the price of this lens.

Both lenses definitely benefit from being stepped down to f/2.8 and you are getting a really nice image from both at this f-stop. In the video test, Olympus still looked better, but the close-ups below are virtually identical and Helios has virtually no chromatic aberration around highlights where Olympus still has some red/pink ghosting around the edges.

At f/5.6 I think Helios is sharper, but Olympus performs quite nicely too.  I perform the warmer look of Helios too, although there is nothing wrong with Olympus.

I think the very crucial thing with these lenses is to get the focus right. The difference between the Helios close-ups that were maybe just a bit out and the ones that were spot on is massive, not only in sharpness levels, but also chromatic aberration and ghosting.

I think both of these lenses offer great value for money. Olympus is one of the cheaper 50mm f/1.4 and performs great and Helios is just incredible value for money, being one of the cheapest lenses you can buy, the results it produces are amazing. If you are stuck with your plasticky, slow kit lens, go and get one of these babies. At f/2 it is quite a fast lens and it well be a great lens for your mid to close people shots. At this price you can’t go wrong.

If you still can’t be bothered to buy one, then stay tuned, because I will be giving away a few of my Helios lenses very soon. 

Both lenses definitely benefit from being stepped down to f/2.8 and you are getting a really nice image from both at this f-stop. In the video test, Olympus still looked better, but the close-ups below are virtually identical and Helios has virtually no chromatic aberration around highlights where Olympus still has some red/pink ghosting around the edges.

At f/5.6 Helios is sharper, but Olympus performs quite nicely too. There isn't much between them at this stage and in video mode you couldn't tell the difference.

I think the very crucial thing with these lenses is to get the focus right. The difference between the Helios close-ups that were maybe just a bit out and the ones that were spot on is massive, not only in sharpness levels, but also chromatic aberration and ghosting.

I think both of these lenses offer great value for money. Olympus is one of the cheaper 50mm f/1.4 and performs great and Helios is just incredible value for money, being one of the cheapest lenses you can buy, the results it produces are amazing. If you are stuck with your plasticky, slow kit lens, go and get one of these babies. At f/2 it is quite a fast lens and it well be a great lens for your mid to close people shots. At this price you can’t go wrong.

If you still can’t be bothered to buy one, then stay tuned, because I will be giving away a few of my Helios lenses very soon.

Above is a very simple test I’ve done on 3 great 50mm f/1.4 lenses. I often use a Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 and everyone knows that it’s a great lens, although the focusing ring is certainly not the best.  A few months I shot a little test video with Nikon 50mm f/1.4 and I really enjoyed using it. The Nikon 50mm performed really well and this lens along with other Nikons is very popular amongst the DSLR/Large-Chip-Camcorder filmmakers. The third lens in this test is the least popular and the cheapest out of 3, the Olympus Zuiko OM 50mm f/1.4.  It is also the smallest and probably the lightest lens in this test.

The purpose of this test was to determine how well does Olympus stack up against the more (and more expensive) popular alternatives. Below are my own thoughts about the results. You are more than welcome to share your own thoughts and the comments below.

The first test was to determine how nice is the bokeh from these 3 lenses. Wide open all 3 lenses have nice, soft bokeh. The Canon, probably has the softest, Olympus is also really good,  but I would say Nikon was producing the least round out-of- focus circles. I personally prefer round circles. At f/2.0 Canon and Olympus still managed to produce circle bokeh circles, while Nikon was producing heptagon bokeh, which is still fine, but I just prefer circle bokeh. Pretty much the same goes for f/2.8.

Next and much more important test was to determine the sharpness of each lens at different f-stops.  In my 200% timeline video crop test, the Olympus really surprised me. At f/1.4 it appeared to have the best sharpness out of 3. It also handled the highlights from the lights at the fruit stand really well, probably even better than the 4 times more expensive Canon.  Nikon had the most ghosting.

At f/2.0 Nikon has really caught up and actually performed better than Olympus. Canon performed nicely as expected.

As I was stepping down the aperture, Nikon kept getting better and probably performed the best at f/2.8. Canon was very close and Olympus stayed behind, although still a great performance for the money.

To get the better idea what the sharpness is really like I took some photos with each lens and placed on the timeline at the 400% crop. This gave a much better picture of how each lens really perforce. 

At f/1.4 all 3 lenses have very similar sharpness, but Canon actually has the most chromatic aberration.  At f/2.0 Nikon performed better than the other 2.

At f/2.8 Nikon was still slightly ahead of other 2 and I think when stepped down it actually performs the best, which probably explains why Nikons are so popular.

Anyone who would buy the Nikon or Olympus, would probably buy them for video work only as there is obviously no auto focusing on these lenses.  The difference in image quality is not that different, especially in video mode.  Both Olympus and Nikon lenses offer great value for money for video shooters. Both have very nice focusing rings (much better than Canon’s), on-lens aperture adjustment (great for different brand cameras) and they are much cheaper than the Canon (Olympus being the cheapest and Nikon slightly more expensive, but still 3 times cheaper than Canon), so if you are only using your DSLR for video, there is really no point buying Canon EF. The Canon lens is great for photographers, but does not offer such a great value for money for videographers.  All 3 lenses really benefit from being stepped down to at least f/2.0.  For me Olympus is probably the best wide open, so really a great choice for them low light. My Olympus is not even is such a great shape, there is some dust and spots of fungus inside, which might have affected the performance slightly. I wonder what it would have been like if it was in such a great condition as my Nikon. I have to say Nikon was probably overall the best performer for the money.

Conclusion:

Canon lens wasn’t mine; Nikon is great, but focuses clockwise unlike my Canon lenses (which is the pain with a follow focus), so I’m keeping the Olympus to be my 50mm f/1.4 for now.

I highly recommend this lens for anyone wanting to invest into some fast glass at a bargain price.  If you are Nikon person, then Nikon 50mm is a better choice.

Above you can see a quick test I’ve done with this lens while out in a local park. It was really bright and I couldn’t use this lens at wide open aperture, so I think this test footage doesn’t do the justice do to this lens. I really need to test it out in low light next time. At f/2 is should be a great low light performer. I’ve also done some quick tests against the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4, which is a great lens and while Canon produced better results in my test, it wasn’t 10 times better, but it’s 20 times more expensive than Helios, so in my opinion, Helios offers much better value for money than Canon.  

Helios 44M is one of the first lenses that started my interest in vintage manual photo lenses for video use.  It is a very interesting lens, not only it is one of the cheapest lenses you can buy, but it’s also apparently a Zeiss Biotar copy.  The lens optics were based on Zeiss formulas, so these lenses are apparently very sharp, considering you get a good copy. Apparently the quality control was quite poor, so optical quality varies. It is possible that the lens I tested against Canon was not the best optically.

The lens itself is very well built, it’s fully metal, with a nice, long through focusing ring (about 270 degrees). I have 4 of these lenses and a few have slightly stiff focusing rings, so that is something worth bearing in mind.

You can find out a bit more about this lens in a great article I found here.  This lens must be the biggest bargain ever. The first Helios 44m I bought, cost me just £3. “Carl Zeiss” quality lens for under £10? That must be the best kept secret in budget filmmaking world, or was I just blinded by “Canon-Only” world around me?  If you didn’t know about this lens, now you know, so don’t hesitate even for a second to get one, at £10-£20 what have you got to loose? In the worst-case scenario you can sell it back on eBay.

I will be giving away a few of these lenses in my next giveaway, but if you can’t wait, just pick one up and you won’t regret it.