APRIL 2024 · ROAM
Helios 44-2 - Bristol North Central
Kingsdown, Bristol
Kingsdown is uphill from the city centre in every sense. Georgian terraces, a concentration of independent buildings, dense street-level history. The architecture layers centuries without resolving them: pink and white rendered facades next to exposed brick, brutalist concrete slabs with asymmetric window grids sitting against 18th-century townhouses. On one building a white art deco face sculpture is visible behind reflective glass that was fitted over it at some point and never removed. The face looks out through its own double.
I brought the Helios again. The lens is slow to use — the backward aperture labelling is a constant small annoyance, and the focus ring demands that you know your distances rather than reading them from a scale. In a place like Kingsdown that slowness has a cost: you miss things while you're adjusting. But it also forces you to commit. You stop, you set, you take the frame you set up. No rapid-fire.
You stop, you set, you take the frame you set up. No rapid-fire.
Kingsdown — April 2024
The lens was built for bokeh and this was not primarily a bokeh outing. Kingsdown's geometry — its layers of period and material — demanded sharpness. The cylindrical metal columns outside one building, shot tight, produce a characteristic Helios rendering: the edge of the cylinder in focus, the background separating into something between blur and swirl. At a courtyard passage the ivy-covered brick and the receding depth of the walkway gave the lens more to work with.
A mauve wall with graffiti and a white boarded window. A minimalist brick building with one white door, small openings, no ornamentation. A Georgian townhouse with mismatched paint colours and a Union Jack in a first-floor window.
The Union Jack in the first-floor window was the only deliberate statement. Everything else just happened.
Cylindrical metal columns in geometric pattern with Helios 44-2 vintage lens bokeh
Pink and white Georgian terraced apartment building with grid of uniform windows
Brick building with white art deco face sculpture behind reflective glass enclosure
Stairwell structure on rooftop with city skyline and industrial buildings beyond
Concrete brutalist building facade with repeating rectangular window openings
Geometric concrete brutalist structure with stacked window elements and weathered surfaces
Brutalist concrete facade with asymmetrical window arrangement and staining patterns
Modern residential building with steel railings, windows and contrasting materials
Covered brick passageway with ivy vines and receding perspective depth
Minimalist brick wall with single white door and small window openings
Georgian townhouse with mixed colors, balconies and Union Jack flag visible
Weathered mauve wall with graffiti and white boarded-up window