Thanks to your suggestion, Smeagol, I bought a Helios 44-2 58mm lens back in September. Best purchase ever. I personally love this lens for the unique look and the awesome manual controls. It has many uses, but seems to be perfect for brickfilming. Of course, since it is a 58mm lens, you have to set your camera back a ways to get a larger subject in-frame, but that can be helpful for brickfilming so you can get between the camera and the set. If you want closeups, extension tubes (like the Fotodiox ones) are extremely useful. Here's an extreme closeup I took using extension tubes:

The Helios has no lens coating on it, so lens flares are possible and extremely common, which can be bad at times, but honestly, I love the lens flare (I'm not as obsessed with them as J.J. Abrams is, though). Here's an example of a lens flare I got:

Glorious Lens Flares by rioforce, on Flickr

A downside would be that it has a narrow depth of field, even stepped down. It's according to how you are using the lens, but this can be a blessing and a curse at the same time. It has worked well for me, though, because it has simulated real-life depth when I am only using minifigures (for example)

Rioforce - Sigfig by rioforce, on Flickr

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"Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." - 1 Corinthians 10:31b

I'm a bit unclear on the differences between the various Mir-1 models, I think they were just made in different time windows but are fairly similar.

My shortest extension tube (a Fotodiox set) still ends up focusing much closer than a +1 or +2 diopter, so I find I have to use diopters for most shots that aren't ultra-close.

To be fair, the shallowness of the DOF should be roughly the same at a given aperture as any other lens of the same focal length. But 58mm is a bit longer than your typical 50, thus shallower DOF, and even stopped down all the way the Helios lens only goes to f/16, so you don't have the ability to get to f/22 like some Nikkor lenses. My feeling is that the look this lens produces when there is some shallowness to the depth of field is where its real value is as far as producing a distinctive look, so perhaps you could just switch to other lenses when you need deep focus.

These images look fantastic! I saw one of the recent THAC films shot with a Helios (I'm pretty sure it was rioforce's entry), and really wanted to get one of these lenses. This just compounds that interest (that reflection on the baseplate in the second picture tickles my eyes). How much are the extension tubes/diopters that you use?

I'd be interested in getting the Helios lens, managing to scrounge around ebay and finding one for £29! Pretty cheap, yes?
I may come off as cheap when I say that, but thats mainly from the viewpoint that I am investing in a new DSLR (for photography, not animation) and like many of us; money is tight, and I wouldn't mind getting a good lens for (cheap) good value for money.
Would you recommend the Helios, or the Mir?

I'll take a think about it, thanks for the informative reply!

This is the only one I found. It has an autofocus chip in it for some reason. I looked around, but didn't see just a simple old metal adapter ring, not even on eBay. My guess is that the lenses are not used very often, thus, they don't make many adapters.

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"Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." - 1 Corinthians 10:31b

Thank Rio and Smeagol for the replies. It helps quite a lot.
I think that I might just go for the Helios 44-2 (or similar) lens once I have the funds for it. The price of the Helios lens and adapter combined cost less than the adapter for the Fujica X mount...

As far as this thread's topic goes, I do think the Mir 1-B and Helios are a good value. You'd need the lenses, an "eos to m42" adapter, a 49mm to 52mm step up ring so you can get filters that fit the front, and a set of 52mm diopters to get started with them. I bet you could get all of that for around $200 USD on eBay, not sure what foreign shipping to your country would be like but most of these items typically come from China, Russia, or Ukraine anyway.

When I started this thread I feel like maybe I would have been reluctant to recommend these lenses for a beginner. I feel they're not super versatile, having a baked-in "style" to them; maybe you'd be better off getting some Nikon lenses like the old, manual Nikon 50mm and 24mm lenses, which would require an EOS to Nikon adapter and some 52mm diopters. Those lenses are slightly more expensive, I recommend buying on KEH if possible. But they are likely to be slightly less old and they have a more traditional, clean look to their images compared to the Russian lenses. I would say that makes them more versatile.

However, the reason I mention "when I started this thread" is that I've realized after completing a brickfilm with my Russian lenses that the "style" they produce is not as dramatic as I expected because you really have to stop down quite a bit at LEGO scale to get anything in focus, and that reduces the strength of the stylistic look of these lenses. It is there, but it is subtle. So, it may well be that these lenses are a better value for a beginner. We should get some other opinions on that probably.

I absolutely agree with Sloth. 55mm, 35mm and 28mm Nikkor prime lens are the lens I got, and they are excellent. The adaptor and extension tube are a must, too.

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