Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/06/08
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 05:36 PM 6/8/2001, Victor Wek wrote: >The Jupiter 8 is my only 50mm lens I owe right now. The results are OK, but >I can not count grass or someone hair. The colors are sort of flat, but I >will put this lens in Cosina league. Cosina Nokton/1.5 and Jupiter 8 give >the same impression. I did not check flare on Russian 50/2, I had sun always >behind me. Soviet/Post-Soviet gear must ALWAYS be judged in light of their rather creative envelope-pushing when it comes to quality assurance and quality control. The best Jupiter lenses are VERY good, the worst are VERY bad. That having been said, the Jupiter-8 is generally regarded by most scholars as the weakest clone of the Prewar Carl Zeiss Jena Contax RF lens line. For reasons never specifically identified, the Jupiter-8 seems to lag somewhat behind the quality of its progenitor, far more than do the Jupiter-3 and Jupiter-12. And, of course, the Prewar CZJ 2/5cm Sonnar was not as highly regarded as was the 1.5/5cm Sonnar. I have a Jupiter-8 in LTM and a number of them in Contax RF BM. The LTM lenses come from Krasnagorsk, the Contax RF BM lenses from Arsenal. In very general terms, the Arsenal lenses seem to approach the level of the CZJ progenitor more closely than do the Krasnagorsk lenses. Marc msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!