and Jupiter 9. |
Taken with Pentax K-7 14.6 MP Digital SLR with Shake Reduction and 720p HD Video (Body Only) |
"I Wish I Were a Good Portrait Photographer: Jupiter-9 85mm f2
I think there are three classes of legacy lenses LBA people go crazy about. The 50mm standards; 135mm medium-teles; and the 85mm portrait lenses. The former two because of the sheer number of specimens, available at a low price (because of their ubiquity), and the last because they tend to strike the perfect balance between high-speed (fast aperture) and telephoto/compression, which can give you, if you're good enough, the creamiest, most bokelicious shots of people and other subjects. I don't believe there are any lenses longer than 85mm that can do f1.2 (like the Canon 85/1.2L or the Contax Planar 85/1.2), and the same may be true for f1.4.
However, unlike the 50s and 135s, the 85s are still quite expensive, and so anything faster than f1.8 becomes a realy luxury. Thus, perhaps the most popular 85s are the f2s (and I happen to have three of these ;-), of which this Soviet/Russian Jupiter-9 is one of the cheapest. It was my first 85, and this is the second copy I've owned, given to me by a friend back in Japan (the first copy was promptly Ebayed off :-)
Jupiter-9 was originally designed for the Contax and Leica copy cameras of the former Soviet Union (Kiev/Zorki/FED), and was a copy of the Carl Zeiss 85mm f2 Sonnar lens. Later it was adapted to the Zenit SLRs with the M39 screw mount (not to be confused with the Leica M mount, which is also 39mm) and later produced in the M42 mount. It's a classic 7 element / 3 group Sonnar design, very compact, and prone to flare (hence I keep the hood permanently attached). It is really soft wide open so even if you nail focus (which is, mind you, hard to do due to narrow DoF), your pictures will get an almost soft-focus lens look. Which is precisely why a lot of people like it as a portrait lens.
Also notable is its weird bokeh, which, nevertheless, will retain a nice circular shape all the way down to f22, thanks to the amazing 15-bladed aperture."
Some samples for Jupiter9 and Canon EOS 5D
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