KMZ MC Zenitar-K2 50mm f/2

Fill the frame with a friend's face from 35 centimetres away on a Pentax K body and the Zenitar-K2 is right at the end of its focus ring. Plenty of K-mount fifties give up at 0.45 m, the Pentax-M 50mm f/2 among them. You also get a true 50mm field of view instead of the slightly tight 58mm of the Soviet standard lens this one was designed to retire. One LensTip owner paid $11 for a copy.

The Helios-44 had been the kit lens on Zenit cameras for decades when, in the early 1990s, KMZ held a design competition to find a proper 50mm to take its place. S.B. Byshkin's computation won. It uses six elements in four groups, the layout most f/2 double-Gauss normals share, with multicoating and a six-blade automatic diaphragm. It arrived in 1995 on the Pentax K bayonet for the Zenit-212K and became the standard lens on the last Zenit SLRs KMZ built. Own one of those late bodies and there is a fair chance this is the lens that came in the box.

Expect it to draw the way most f/2 double-Gauss normals do. Wide open that usually means some softness and lower contrast toward the corners, and stopping down to f/5.6 or f/8 is where designs like this tighten up across the frame. Don't buy it expecting the Helios look. People hunt the 58mm for its swirling backgrounds, but Byshkin's brief was a correct 50mm, so judge this as a normal lens rather than a character piece. With only six blades, out-of-focus highlights take on a hexagonal outline once you stop down a few stops. Shooting into the sun, fit a hood, as you would on any budget fifty.

LensTip's owner review did not go easy on the build. The barrel is plastic, the helicoid is plastic too, and the reviewer found the focusing jerky rather than damped. At roughly 190 g it feels like what it is: a kit lens made to a price in the 1990s. Then there is the filter thread. Other Zenitar normals take 52mm filters, but this one uses M46 x 0.75, so the filters you already own will not screw on without help.

As for value, it is one of the cheapest K-mount fifties you are likely to find, and that $11 copy gives you the scale. An obvious alternative is the Pentax-M 50mm f/2, which brings a metal barrel, SMC coating and a smoother focusing feel for somewhat more money. What the Zenitar offers in return is the closer focus and that honest 50mm view. If you shoot a Zenit-212K, it is simply the matching lens. On a K1000 it makes a cheap normal for tabletop work and tight head-and-shoulders portraits, provided you can live with the feel of the focus ring.

A 46 to 52mm step-up ring costs a few dollars and is worth leaving on the lens for good. If you put an ND or a grad on it that way for slow shutter work, enter the filter factor in Zone Light Meter and the app adds the correction to your reading before you set the shutter.