[Leica] Jupiter-8 (50/2.0) piddling around

[msmall at infionline.net (Marc James Small)]

At 08:46 AM 9/14/05 +0200, Daniel Ridings wrote:
>Ok, I'm just farting around. When you by one of the lenses you have to
>run them through the tests so make sure that someone hasn't
>disassembled them and put them back together any old way they felt
>like. It happens. I have one that is literally less sharp than the
>bottom of a Coke bottle (remember those?) because of that.
>
>And ... I've always heard that the Sonnars had such nice bokeh:

Well, for starters, sir, Bokeh is Bunk.

Second, the issue is not improper repairs;  the issue is lousy Quality
Control/Quality Assurance by the Great Workers' Paradise Factories in the
"bweela SSSR".  The LTM Jupiter-8's were either all made or primarily made
by the Krasnagorsk Opto-Mechanical Works near Moscow;  those in Contax RF
BM were made by the Arsenal Plant though I am not certain whether these
came from their main plant in Kiev or from their secondary plant in Uman,
both of these being in the Ukraine.  

"Planned production" under the Soviet system meant that a plant was told to
make so many items of such-and-such description to a fixed price-point.
(Soviet lenses were supplied in black Bakelite cases with the price
hard-impressed on the bottom to ensure that no hickery-pockery price
gouging occurred -- given the sloth-like response of the Planned Economy,
this also meant that price changes were few and far between even when
economic realities demanded such.)  The practice was for the plants to
concentrate first on military orders and to get those out early in the
month and to allow consumer lens production to languish until the last
couple of days of the month.  At that point, management got the few sober
workers on hand to crank out lenses sufficient to meet the quota, and
quality be damned.  Some were good, many were bad.  

So, in the end, you want a consumer lens produced around the 15th of the
month or so.  If you have the complete lens, you might well be able to
identify the actual date of production, as it will come with its
certification sheet (a "Passport" in Russian) which will include the date
of production for lenses made up to around 1970 though, after that date,
the Passport only states the month of production.

Marc

msmall@aya.yale.edu 
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