Delano Homestead
Yesterday I went for a walk to the Delano Homestead which is part of the Kalamazoo Nature Center. The homestead is an historical farm that’s existing in one form or another since the mid 19th century. It consists the main house and several nearby outbuildings, one of which is the original pioneer cabin. There used to be an old barn near the cabin (not a big barn, but more like a “shack” for sheep or pigs), but it had been in a bad state and recently it’s been dismantled - intentionally or not I don’t know.
My purpose for visiting, other than a brisk walk on a chilly November day, was to take some photos, comparing my Pentax 50mm f1.4 against an older, and less pedigreed lens, a Helios 44k-4 58mm f2.0 that I had purchased several years ago when I was interested in the old Russian / Soviet made cameras. The cool thing about Pentax is their old K-mount lenses are compatible with their newest digital bodies, and in fact all of their K-mount lenses, regardless of era can be used on all their K-mount cameras (with limitations in functionality). I wanted to see how that old Russian lens stacked up against a proven and respected Japanese lens.
Note these aren’t exactly apples to apples comparisons, The settings were different with each lens, but I think they’re similar enough to show some of the characteristics of each lens compared to the other.
First the Pentax 50mm f1.4:
Here are the Helios 44k-4 photos:
The biggest difference is in the second photo of the shack. The Helios exhibits some very purplish blooming in the center of the frame. I looked at this closely in Lightroom, and it didn’t look to be the typical purple color fringing one sees at points of extreme contrast (e.g. dark tree branches against a bright sky). You can make out a similar purple / magenta cast in the third image, in the pioneer cabin wall next to the old wheel barrow.
The Pentax is by far the all around better lens, but I think that the Helios fared pretty well. One doesn’t use those old lenses for sharpness and accurate color rendition, more for the unique characters of the older lens formulas - and in the case of these Russian lenses, dodgy quality control.
Based on these samples, I can’t say I appreciate the unique characteristic of my copy, the purple color cast isn’t that cool. However I still plan to play around with it, those color casts won’t matter too much for black and white photos. Plus these lenses are supposed to have nice bokeh at wider apertures.