Convert Your Vintage Lens into a Cinema Lens | No Film School

Vintage photography lenses are super affordable and can give you amazing footage which rivals modern, expensive glass. The problem is, vintage lenses weren't originally made to be used with modern cinema cameras. They are super small, which makes them difficult to operate and they lack things like focus gear rings so attaching things like a follow focus are a struggle.

Well, that's until now. With the power of 3D printing, we’ve upgraded the 40-year-old Helios 44-2 58mm f/2 lens bringing it into the 21st century and turning it into a cine lens.

This works by 3D printing six parts that fit over the lens and fix in place with small screws.

The new size is a massive improvement, especially when pulling focus by hand. The larger diameter improves accuracy, and the gear rings have been built to attach a follow focus.

Lens_built Credit: The Film Look

The aperture gear ring makes it easier to change your f-stop and since the Helios 44-2 is a manual lens, your aperture information doesn’t get sent to the camera.

Now with the larger number ring, you can clearly see which f-stop you are set to.

Lens_used Credit: The Film Look

The total material cost to print all of the parts was around $3, which is great value if you already have a 3D printer. If you don’t, I bet there will be someone on Facebook marketplace in your local area offering their 3D printing services.

The Helios 44-2 is one of the most popular vintage lenses out there so it’s worthy of the upgrade. If you don’t have a Helios lens, there are other cine lens upgrades that Edward Park has created. Find them here.

Follow The Film Look on YouTube.

lens lens adapter helios

What's the Hype With 'Interstellar' Revisiting Cinemas After a Decade in 70mm IMAX?

Here's Why You Need to Revisit 'Interstellar' in 70mm IMAX

Celebrate the love and hope at the center of Nolan's space epic in the format it was meant to be seen.

If we know anything about Christopher Nolan, he likes to go big. Nolan started with smaller-scale stories (as many of us do) with early noir adjacent works like Following, Memento, and Insomnia, then started going and staying big with his illusionist drama The Prestige. Since then, the scale has been various degrees of massive, with the biggest scope in his time-and-space sprawling epic, Interstellar.

While Interstellarmight not be everyone's favorite Nolan outing, there's no denying it's an impressive feat of filmmaking and his most emotional—if watching Matthew McConaughey's Cooper desperately try to reach his family through quantum space-time doesn't make you cry at least a little bit, what's going on, dude?

With Interstellar'sIMAX release, it's a great time to shed some tears in a public setting in one of the most prestigious film formats around. As we mentioned in our film gauge piece, Nolan loves shooting on film and utilizes 65mm intentionally to provoke a tone of massive scale. In that regard, Interstellar was made for 70mm IMAX. That goes without saying, dawg. That being said, other factors make Interstellar a perfect movie to revisit in theaters while you can.

Let's break down the release further below.

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