This is the Mir-1b 37mm f2.8, it’s often paired with the Helios 44-2 and used as its wide angle lens, but why specifically this lens? As it’s not from the Helios family of lenses. Is it because it also makes a swirly background, or because it’s also a copy of a Zeiss lens or is there something else?
MIR-1B History
But first a brief history about the Mir-1B. It was designed by D.S. Volosov in 1954 and based the design of the Carl Zeiss Flektogon from 1949. There have been several different designs of Mir-1b and Mir 1v lenses, the one I’ve got is from the last version of the Mir-1B, but still has the same optics as the rest.
You can still find a lot of them on the used market, prices ranging around 100 to 200 bucks. There is a Mir-1 automatic version which costs a lot less, but doesn’t have an iris and has a mount that is difficult to adapt.
37mm
The Mir-1B being a 37mm lens, it’s an overall use lens that can capture your wide establishing shots to medium close ups, due to that the closest focus of 70cm with 270 degrees focus throw, it’s not close enough for a proper close up framing on full frame, but does a better job on Super 35mm.
Close focus
But there is a modification you can do on this lens to get a much closer focus. Remove the ring on the back of the lens, then the helicoid of this lens can be removed. There you can see the focus has been limited by three pins. Just remove the left pin which allows you to focus to 54cm with almost 360 degrees focus throw, which allows you to get a more proper close up.
However the drawback is you can’t really use this lens for any close-up of small objects as they end up being very small in the shot. If you remove both pins you can focus even closer to 41cm with a 450 degrees focus throw, however at 41cm the lens feels like it wants to fall apart and it’s not a recommended mod.
Focus Gears
A reason why I prefer the last version of the Mir-1B is that you can mount follow focus gears easier on it than the Grand Prix version which has a very small focus ring. I purchased the Tilta 56 to 58mm seamless gear rings for mine and cut it into two gears and placed them on the iris and focus ring.
M42 to EF
To mount the Mir-1B onto my camera I use the Fusnid Adapter which is the best one out there and it is also quite affordable. It fits snug onto the EF mount without any wiggle and I and adjusts the angle of the lens so the indicators are in the correct position when mounted to the camera.
M42 to PL
Though the Mir-1B can be modded to PL as you can find cinemodded PL versions sold, however it seems the information about this mod is being gate kept as I could not find the information how to modify the lens for PL anywhere online. So I had to figure this out myself. I bought a M42 to PL adapter and when attaching it to the lens, the focus ring gets locked up as the adapter is blocking the focus ring from moving.
I notice on the focus ring there are 3 screws that I can loosen up which allows me to remove the focus ring. From there I measured the parts and designed a new focus ring that is a bit smaller and hopefully gives enough clearance with the PL mount and then 3D printed the new focus ring and installed it onto the lens and it works, however in the future I might improve the design more as the focus gear is quit eclose to the back of the lens then I want it.
Lenshood
To complete this lens mod, I’ve added a 49mm lens hood which has an open with threads for 72mm and added a 80mm O.D. Ring on top, so it matched my other lenses, but also I can easily add a NISI 80mm to 95mm clamp ring and the Smallrig VND onto the lens and on top add the smallrig mini matte box.
Lensflare
This lens really needs a matte box to capture good contrasty images as it flares quite a lot and it can be quite an unnatural flare to see. However I do think there is a good use case for this flare, especially if it’s the pov of a patient and the doctor is shining a light in the patient’s eye, this flare feels like it would be a good match for such a pov shot.
The blooming and haze can be controlled with the iris, but the ring flare still remains in sight. At night this lens will bloom around bright highlights, but it’s not too overpowering and looks like using a light pro-mist filter. While the rest of the image still looks nice and contrasty.
Also using a f2.8 lens at night you really need to bump up the ISO and was mainly around ISO1600 and 3200 depending if I needed to close the iris to f4 to control the flares.
Aperture
Talking about the aperture, Mir 1B has an aperture lock system like the helios, where one ring locks the maximum aperture and uses the ring below it to open or close the iris. However the issue is that it spins in the opposite direction of the indicated number so it’s hard to tell which aperture you are on unless you lock it to that aperture first. This lens has 10 aperture blades which does a great job keeping the bokeh round.
Swirl
Talking about the bokeh, we gotta talk about the swirl. You have to get pretty close for this lens to swirl and need a specific background to get the swirl effect, as in an urban environment it’s not that visible. Also the bokeh isn’t that big because it is an f2.8 lens and you quickly lose a blurred background when going for a wider shot.
The Mir-1B almost covers a Medium format sensor with some minor corner vignetting, but it does cover the 16:9 area of a medium format camera and future proof yourself when medium format cameras become more affordable and commonly used for filmmaking.
A common mod is to Anamorfake this lens with an oval iris, but in my opinion there is no need to anamorfake this lens as the swirl does make the bokeh oval shaped on the sides, when we letterbox the framing to scope, it does remind me of a 1.33x anamorphic footage.
Also cropping out the top and bottom, helps the lack of close focus with this lens and get a tighter framing to capture small objects. As this shot without the letterboxing feels framed too wide and with letterboxing feels more properly framed.
Another common mod is to make this lens into a deakinizer. I already made a video about this and there is a link to that video. As when using it as a deakinizer it’s a more out of this world look and is great for a dream sequence or flashback. I shot an entire micro short film with the deakinizer mod to represent a visually impaired person’s perspective of the world he sees.
At first I didn’t think much of the Mir-1B as I mainly had used it as a Deakinizer, but I was pleasantly surprised by the image I have captured after I unmodded it. Not only can it separate the subject from the background while its a wide f2.8, occasionally 3d pop the subject from the background.
I can definitely see why this lens pairs up well with the Helios 44-2, as the swirl in both lenses create an anamorphic vibe while the lens is still spherical. And both are the most affordable way to purchase your first lens with a PL mount, which may come in handy as renting PL mount lenses for a short film project can become quite expensive.
