Royal Birkdale Winds, Swirly Bokeh, and the Russian Glass Experiment
Posted by Pat Hathaway | July 16, 2026
The coffee is black, the coastal fog is thick, and the television is officially back on. It’s Thursday morning, which means Big Boy Dan has recovered from his Wimbledon heartbreak just in time for the oldest golf tournament in the world.
Royal Birkdale and Dan’s Links Logic
The 154th Open Championship teed off early this morning over at Royal Birkdale in England. Dan arrived at my house before the sun was even up, armed with a box of donuts and a brand new theory on how to conquer links golf.
He has completely forgotten the financial beatdown he took during the Wimbledon finals. Now, he is lecturing me about the aerodynamics of a golf ball in the punishing winds off the Irish Sea. He’s putting his money on the European veterans who grew up playing in the driving rain. You can follow the actual live scoring over on
The Open’s official website, but I’m perfectly content to sit back, sip my coffee, and watch Dan sweat every single bunker shot.
I’m keeping my wallet closed for now. The pot bunkers at Birkdale have ruined better men than Dan.
The Helios 44-2 Rabbit Hole
While Dan was obsessing over morning tee times, I was continuing my deep descent into the vintage glass rabbit hole. After the success of adapting my Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 to the Sony α1 II last week, I decided to push the hybrid experiment even further. I tracked down a pristine, Cold War-era Russian lens: the
Helios 44-2 58mm f/2.
If you know anything about vintage optics, you know the Helios is famous for its optical “flaws.” It lacks modern anti-reflective coatings, flares wildly when pointed at the sun, and produces an intense, swirly bokeh in the background that makes the image look like a surrealist painting. You can read up on the bizarre optical history of this lens over at
PetaPixel, but reading about it doesn’t do it justice.
Swirly Bokeh in the Hub
I took the ATV and the Helios setup out to a dense patch of coastal redwoods to test it out. Using digital focus peaking with this ancient lens is still the ultimate cheat code. The electronic viewfinder highlights the subject in bright red, allowing me to nail the focus while the background melts into a swirling, chaotic vortex of light and shadow.
It’s completely unpredictable, totally imperfect, and absolutely magnificent. I spent yesterday evening cataloging the best shots from the redwood test run and uploading the high-resolution files to the
California Views Gallery Hub. The organic character of this glass combined with the 50-megapixel digital sensor is a match made in heaven.
Naturally, I sent the gallery link to Judge Roy Bacon, fully expecting a lecture on Soviet optical engineering.
“A gimmick lens, Patrick. You have traded the precision of Japanese engineering for Cold War party tricks. The swirl is nothing more than uncorrected spherical aberration.”
He isn’t wrong about the aberration, but sometimes a little optical chaos is exactly what a photograph needs to feel alive.
Comments
BigBoyDan: The wind at Birkdale is unpredictable, Pat. My guys just got a bad draw on the morning wave. The afternoon is going to be a completely different game.
JudgeRoy: Focus peaking and swirly bokeh. You are building a portfolio of digital crutches and optical gimmicks, Patrick. Go back to the Tri-X film.
Video Recommendation
If you want to see exactly what “swirly bokeh” looks like and why adapting this cheap, 50-year-old Russian lens to modern mirrorless cameras has become such a massive trend, check out this great breakdown.
