Your shoes question?
I wore hard boots sometimes, but I find you need to "feel" the pedals under your feet for those fine-tuned movements you need to make - if you've hovered for more than a minute without covering an entire football field, you'll know what I mean!
Autorotations however? The heavier the right foot, the better...
Just experiment and you'll find something you're comfortable with.
Helmets? 50/50 here where I trained. I guess safety is paramount, but if your blade flies off, I'm not sure that a helmet is going to make much difference...
(runs for the door....)
What do you more experiences fellas and fellesses think? If I was working a helo, especially low level stuff, I'd buy a helmet for sure.