STEP BY STEP / Old-school remains totally cool

1 Mount your adapter

Mount the adapter directly to your lens, rather than the camera body, as it’s easier to attach or remove the entire assembly in one piece. Once the adapter is connected to the lens, just mount the whole thing to your camera as you would a normal lens.

3 Get used to manual

These are old lenses, so the focusing and aperture are manual. Your camera still controls the ISO and shutter, but everything else is up to you. Adjust the aperture by turning the ring; the Takumar’s aperture ring clicks into place, while the Helios has a smooth aperture ring.

5 Look for bokeh and bloom

The Helios’s most distinctive characteristic is its eliptical, ‘swirly’ bokeh when shot at f/2 – definitely the reason that most people pick up this lens. It also has a soft, filmic focus and highlights naturally ‘bloom’, making this a great lens for creative shooting.

2 Check your flange

Helios lenses can be tricky; some have an aperture pin at the back, so you may need an adapter with a flange to make it fit. On other models, the focusing mechanism pushes the lens elements back, which can interfere with the mirror on smaller cameras. If in doubt, check online.

4 Shoot wide open

With vintage lenses, their character is most obvious when shooting with wide open apertures. The Takumar at f/1.4 creates a lovely thin depth of field with bokeh. It also offers a unique colour cast thanks to its radioactive thorium elements, which have yellowed the glass.

6 Final settings

On the day we found that settings of f/2, 1/250 sec shutter speed and ISO400 was the best for making the most out of these character-filled lenses. You may find there’s a lot more sun flare, too, so shooting directly into the sun may prove overpowering – or extremely creative!