Good vintage lenses for bmpcc?

[cantsin]

A disadvantage of the Schneider Arri mount lenses is, though, that they don't cover Super 16/1" sensors at focal lengths below 25mm, whereas the Kinetal 17.5mm and 12.5mm do cover.

[Quirky]

The Helios 58mm is a wonderful lens that can often be found on fleamarkets for less than $20. But on the BMPCC, it will be either a long tele lens when mechanically adapter or a portrait tele lens with a focal reducer. In the latter case, it would require the Canon EF Pocket Speed Booster in combination with a M42-to-EF lens mount adapter (since M42 lenses cannot be adapted to the Nikon mount Pocket Speed Booster). Its focal length would then still be 33mm, twice as much as a normal lens for the BMPCC. Even with the a Century 0.7x adapter on top of this lens combination, it would  remain at a portrait focal length of 24mm.

 

Yes, yes yes, thank you for your opinion. I'm sure the entire planet has established it by now, as you've mentioned the same thing three times on the first page alone. So thank you, thank you, thank you. It's an m42 telephoto lens, we get it.  ;)

 

Like I said, the 58mm focal length with a crop factor of 3 is an obvious downside, with or without a focal reducer, but not always. Sometimes that can be exactly what we want for a particular shoot. As such, the F2.0 Helios has a pretty decent price to usability ratio, and thus it is worth a mention. Especially if it's the model with that separate aperture control ring. 

 

It was an impulse buy, but I've actually had the Helios for a good while now, and I've been using it with a multitude of different sensor sizes and even film for stills, so I do know how it behaves. I haven't used it with the BMPCC earlier because I haven't had a mFT adapter, until now. I already did one quick low light test shoot and the result didn't look too bad, for such an inexpensive lens. Stills shot in bright light against the sun didn't have too bad a flare, either for an old school lens. Telephoto or not, I think I might as well keep it.

[cantsin]

You can actually use any Helios M44 (and any other M42 lens) on an MFT mount camera if your M42-to-MFT lens adapter is well designed and pushes in the aperture lever of the lens. Most adapters, including the cheap Chinese ones on Ebay, should have this feature.

[froess]

helios has also a 28mm 2.8 which is quite good from 3.5 and really good at f4. has some very nice blue tinted flares.