Interesting article on Russian lenses
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Many of the Jupiter-3s that I see listed now (2022) look a bit suspicious or manipulated. I guess the supply has dried up and now they're at the bottom of the barrel. How about the Jupiter-8? Are any of these decent now or they also the the dregs?
THE DREGS. The Last TWO Jupiter-8's that I bought needed to be shimmed for use and the barrels were epoxied into the mount. You might get lucky. I had been asked by some longtime forum friends for an adjusted J-8. Figured I buy a couple, adjust them, then offer them. Saves the hassle of back-and-forth of "this Ebay auction looks good". I tore down the mechanism down to the inner helical with the barrel in place to get a good grip- usually works, did not. Next step is to remove the glass and soak the mechanism. No Go- they glued that too. I relubed the lens and gave it away to a friend shooting mirrorless. Same thing happened to a 1954 J-11 in LTM: focus is off, and the barrel is frozen into the inner helical. The friend that asked for a lens bought a black J-8 while waiting, it needed to be adjusted- so I did that for him. The Last Jupiter-3 I bought: advertised as a KMZ, stated could only be used on mirrorless. SOMEONE had teken the front element and middle triplet from a 1955 KMZ and put it into a Valdai barrel, left the rear triplet in place. THEN ground down the barrel to get deep enough into the KMZ focus mount to work at all. The focal length was wrong. I had a spare KMZ barrel and rear triplet, "It works much better now".
SO: You can take chances on Ebay, and it's Russian Roulette. You can get lucky, but it seems 3 chambers are loaded when it used to be 1.
Better to put a Want-to-Buy, or get one on sale here or RFF when they come up.
SO: You can take chances on Ebay, and it's Russian Roulette. You can get lucky, but it seems 3 chambers are loaded when it used to be 1.
Better to put a Want-to-Buy, or get one on sale here or RFF when they come up.
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These sound like old husbands' tales, as leaded glasses went away a while ago. (Ohara makes great glass BTW; my university buys a lot of it). The problems for consumer optics include manufacturing and disposal. Older lenses with leaded glass aren't themselves a hazard during use, but the increasing volume of stuff being made means one has to think about where that stuff goes when it's done. Designers can compensate for these materials: optical glasses aren't magic lost ingredients, like the formula for Greek fire.
I didn't know the details about Schott's PA plant burning down and their moving the manufacturing of infrared-optimized materials. ZnSe is not uncommon in IR astronomy. At least one of the instruments for the James Webb space telescope uses zinc selenide in the camera design. It has good transmission from about 550 nm to way out in the mid-IR, 14 microns or so. It also has high refractive index, and high dispersion, which can make it useful for dispersers for spectroscopy - glasses that are useful in the optical may not disperse strongly enough in the infrared. Its lack of transmission in the blue means it isn't good for general purpose use (in addition to being expensive, of course).
If you mean real world, critical thinking on a topic many of us have experience in, having used and using FSU camera kit, etc, well what else can we offer, other than actual opinion based of the truths we've learned from our own kit.
This is no a kids show with funny musical setups.
Do you feel better now. You got to say someone is wrong on the internet.
Optics and lens design are a complicated subject where the expertise needed to practice at a really high technical level is not that common and is mathematically or computationally involved. Meaning you can work out approximate things such as depth of field or bellows extension from simple math like the thin lens equations, but if you really want to calculate lens aberrations, even for a fairly simple lens the math gets involved. (I am a physicist in a field that uses a lot of optics, and I know optical designers, but am not myself such a designer.)
Unfortunately, this has led to a lot of myth and lore about what gives various photographic lenses their desirable or undesirable properties. However, actively amplifying that myth and lore with fresh or reheated myths, which seems to be the goal of that blog, doesn't help anyone.
Unfortunately, this has led to a lot of myth and lore about what gives various photographic lenses their desirable or undesirable properties. However, actively amplifying that myth and lore with fresh or reheated myths, which seems to be the goal of that blog, doesn't help anyone.
See the post above yours.
@_Brian - have you had the chance to check out the 'new' Lomo Jupiter 3+?
I was probably the first person in the USA to buy one. The company asked if I would do a review of it. SN of mine is "0000200".
https://www.lomography.com/magazine...-of-the-new-jupiter-3-plus-with-brian-sweeney
I have a pair of them. They are beautifully made, multicoated, and built to the Leica standard. Perfect focus on my M9 from 0.7m to infinity, at F1.5.
https://cameraderie.org/threads/jupiter-3-plus-compared-with-three-rare-sonnar-lenses.39055/
https://cameraderie.org/threads/jup...iss-50mm-f1-5-and-1936-5cm-f1-5-sonnar.39063/
I have one set for the focus shift caused by deep orange and red filters, put one layer of copper tape on the RF Cam.
Chris at Skyllaney has done a lot of reverse engineering on the Jupiter lenses. I have ZK and KMZ Jupiter-3 lenses with Zeiss Serial numbers that match them to the batch 272xxxx and 285xxxx wartime lenses. I also have original LTM lenses in those batches. What I learned recently after buying more KMZ lenses is that there are two versions, those that used Schott glass and those that switched over to Russian glass. The individual groups of the 1st version are interchangeable with a Sonnar. The rear triplet of the version 2 is not interchangeable, the front element is "close enough" and I've not tried the middle triplet. As the weather gets better, will do a more formal comparison. Right now- the 50/1.0 Nokton and 1932 Carl Zeiss Jena 5cm F1.5 Sonnar from the first batch of 100 ever made has my attention. The latter- under 150 lenses made before the formula was revised. I had two optical engineers that worked for me, both retired some 20 years ago. They used to get excited about really good anastigmats using BK7 Schott glass. They had them custom made. One was fretting over the "wiggle" of the aspherical surfaces of a lens he was working on. I told him "The Detector is 320x200". Went home and pulled the 9mm F1.2 lens from a Kodak Ektasound 130 and handed it to him the next day. He liked it, asked "Can we get 50 of these".
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The original article linked to: So the guy's first Leica is an M10, now he's an expert, and you have to have a paid subscription to get his expert advise.
And yet the title of his article is "Jupiter-5" and he has not corrected the mistake.
Anybody really subscribe to that website?
Seems like a complete waste of money.
I used to get a lot of inquiries for Jupiter lenses- I ended up buying a lot of them off Ebay, CLA'ing them, then offering them to the person as "right of first refusal". No one ever refused the lens, would have been picked up quickly. If the lens was bad: I'd use it for converting a Sonnar. I'd usually focus on KMZ lenses made between 1950 and 1953 and ZOMZ from 1958 through to 1963. There are of course exceptional lenses in every year. After almost 20 years of cherry-picking Jupiters, I have outstanding examples from every manufacturer of J-3's. Some required a lot of work. One 1950 lens- 40 hours to get everything right. Perfect glass, just all spaced incorrectly in the barrel.
And yet the title of his article is "Jupiter-5" and he has not corrected the mistake.
Anybody really subscribe to that website?
Seems like a complete waste of money.
I used to get a lot of inquiries for Jupiter lenses- I ended up buying a lot of them off Ebay, CLA'ing them, then offering them to the person as "right of first refusal". No one ever refused the lens, would have been picked up quickly. If the lens was bad: I'd use it for converting a Sonnar. I'd usually focus on KMZ lenses made between 1950 and 1953 and ZOMZ from 1958 through to 1963. There are of course exceptional lenses in every year. After almost 20 years of cherry-picking Jupiters, I have outstanding examples from every manufacturer of J-3's. Some required a lot of work. One 1950 lens- 40 hours to get everything right. Perfect glass, just all spaced incorrectly in the barrel.
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Thanks Brian!
Of note you can no longer buy that lens through Lomography, but I do see a few Russian sellers with new ones on ebay. Those are not offered with the LTM-M adapter (no big deal) but I am wondering why they have them (one shows 24 sold) and if they are of the same quality i.e. not rejected after QA. They also are much cheaper than what Lomography was selling them for.
This is a hard lens to make: the Zeiss C-Sonnar 50/1.5 went back to the Ernostar design and skipped the middle triplet. I have my two lenses- both great, both through Lomography. AFTER I bought one, and AFTER the article was published- they gave me one as a gift! That's the one optimized for O56 filters on the M Monochrom.
I bought one that via an eBay seller that had originally purchased one of these Russian eBay specials, probably the same seller with 24 sold. Not that much cheaper truth be told. I've no idea of the provenance but I had the lens sent to Skyllaney to be repaired. The aperture ring was tight and the focus wildly off (Even accounting for focus shift). It works but unlike the lenses Brian reviewed, it does not focus at 1.5 across the full 0.7m to infinity range and instead needs to be shot like a contax sonnar using focus shift to reach infinity. EFL is 52.4 per contax Sonnars so that makes sense. Not sure if this is just this example but Chris suggested he had received a number of the lomo J3s with similar QC issues. One worry I had was that the optical block had been switched out for an older J3 but it does appear to be a newer block from the lomo run so who knows.
Modern glasses available today are better than anything available in the 50s or 60s.
What is the serial number of the lens?
The Jupiter-3+ should be all brass. But given some of the items on Ebay: I would not put it past anyone to buy up parts and drop glass at random into it to make it look like it works.
My Last "1955 Jupiter-3" was like that.
Jupiter-3+, Close-up and Wide-Open
Jupiter-3+ Wide-Open, at distance. Focus is on the nose of the Space Shuttle.
It is not focused to infinity, but I have used it at infinity and wide-open.
I got both of mine from Lomography, would not surprise me of there was a Quality issue. The Jupiter-9+ was not released through Lomography. I've modified original Jupiter-3's to shorten the focal length and focus down to 0.75m. Really cheesy Hack on the focus mount: Remove an internal stop screw and file down the threads of the mount. A "typical" Jupiter-3, cannot get it to focus that close and hit infinity. So I know the two from Lomography are built to the Leica standard.
Jupiter-3+ Wide-Open, at distance. Focus is on the nose of the Space Shuttle.
It is not focused to infinity, but I have used it at infinity and wide-open.
I got both of mine from Lomography, would not surprise me of there was a Quality issue. The Jupiter-9+ was not released through Lomography. I've modified original Jupiter-3's to shorten the focal length and focus down to 0.75m. Really cheesy Hack on the focus mount: Remove an internal stop screw and file down the threads of the mount. A "typical" Jupiter-3, cannot get it to focus that close and hit infinity. So I know the two from Lomography are built to the Leica standard.
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00001550
It is solid and certainly feels like an all brass housing and the optics appear to be of a newer production. I really should have asked Chris at the time why 51.6mm wasn't possible. Off topic, I never had a chance to say before but thank you for all the articles and information you share. Honestly has been great resource for the community.
Thankyou for that, I truly appreciate it.
I'm putting together a "Sonnar Evolution" series, once the Bertele Sonnar arrives- I'll have the first through the last. Chris asked me what SN I wanted on my lens. "Number 9".
1550- much higher than either of mine. The J-3+ uses a one-piece barrel, unlike the original KMZ and early ZOMZ lenses. With those: the rear triplet has its own fixture. You can generally do a little filing and reduce the focal length if it is long. With the one piece: one shot to get it right. If the barrel is a little long, throws off the overall focal length. I'm guessing this is what has happened. I know Chris has used some J-3+ focus mounts for Sonnar conversions.
The Sonnar is my new favorite design for medium speed, high resolution visible band optics at work. Good performance with better tolerances than other design families. Can’t say anything about this specific design or the application, but if you’d like you can say the Sonnar type is still a valid design which also finds use in cutting edge imaging systems outside consumer photography. I’ll be assembling the initial builds next week.
Better is subjective.
MattKing
Moderator
An interesting thing to say to someone who designs modern optics for a living.
20+ years ago, I told my Senior Optical Engineer that at the end of the work week, I've had enough of computers and want to use a lens that was designed without their use. He told me computers really did make his job easier.
This is with my 1934 CZJ 5cm F2 Sonnar, wide-open.
On the Contax IIIa.
And, more recent.
Same Lens, Same Daughter- I've had this lens for 20 years now.
The Bertele Sonnar is based on this lens, will be multi-coated. I have a lot of Sonnars lined up to greet the new lens.
This is with my 1934 CZJ 5cm F2 Sonnar, wide-open.
On the Contax IIIa.
And, more recent.
Same Lens, Same Daughter- I've had this lens for 20 years now.
The Bertele Sonnar is based on this lens, will be multi-coated. I have a lot of Sonnars lined up to greet the new lens.
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