Jupiter lenses on M8??

[poklade]

Jupiter 3 on M8.

Foto Lozica - Photo Lozica -

[poklade]

Jupiter 9 on M8

Foto Lozica - Photo Lozica -

[IMG][IMG][/IMG][/IMG]

[tbarker13]

Love my Jupiter 3 on my M8.

[brianv]

I just picked up an M8, and will be using my Jupiter-3's on them, as well as the Zeiss Sonnars in LTM on them.

"Usually", a J-3 has to be shimmed for the Leica. The focal length is 52.4mm, so the throw of the focus is off by 0.1mm.

Tim's lens is one of the nicest that I've ever seen. So nice, I had to buy myself a near-mint KMZ J-3 from 1953 to see if I can match it.

Shimming the J-3 is similar to the Zeiss Conversion shown here:

http://ziforums.com/showthread.php?t=360

Lubing the J-3 Helical is shown here:

http://ziforums.com/showthread.php?t=374

Modifying the J-3 to focus a little closer on an M-Mount camera is shown ehre:

http://ziforums.com/showthread.php?t=281

So there will be at least Two 1953 KMZ J-3's being used on an M8.

[roydonian]

Originally Posted by poklade

Jupiter 9 on M8

What type of lens hood are you using? It looks like it will be fairly efficient. My Jupiter-9 normally gives sharp contrasty results, but suffers badly from flare. I have yet to find a really deep lenshood for it.

Much to my surprise the lens is uncoated despite being made in 1972. The only other example I've seen from the same factory - Lutkarino Zavod Opticheskso Stelka (LZOS) - was also uncoated.

Best regards,

Doug

[poklade]

Originally Posted by roydonian

What type of lens hood are you using? It looks like it will be fairly efficient. My Jupiter-9 normally gives sharp contrasty results, but suffers badly from flare. I have yet to find a really deep lenshood for it.

Much to my surprise the lens is uncoated despite being made in 1972. The only other example I've seen from the same factory - Lutkarino Zavod Opticheskso Stelka (LZOS) - was also uncoated.

Best regards,

Doug

Doug,
that's the metal lens hood for Practica SLR system, for 50 mm Pentacon or CZJ Pancolar lens. And yes, it is efficient. My J-9 (N8300595) is also uncoated.

Ivan

[brianv]

This weekend is the first use of the M8 for me, and the first lens tested was a Contax mount 5cm F1.5 Sonnar to LTM conversion. The second lens tested is my latest 1953 J-3 5cm F1.5.

On the Jupiter-3: helical disassembled, cleaned, and lubed. Guide screw replaced to get rid of play in the focus action, optics cleaned, and shimmed for up-close and wide-open for the Leica.

ISO 160 setting.

Wide-Open

100% crop


Color:


Backlit:

[brianv]

Infinity:


All the above are at F1.5

At F4 for distance work is best, as Sonnar focus shift pushes backwards.

[roydonian]

Having reached the age where a reduction in the weight of my camera bag seems highly desirable, my casting a jaundiced eye on my early-model 90mm f2 Summicron, a lens that Erwin Puts once said was “no joy to carry around all day”.

On occasions when I don’t anticipate the need for speed, I’ve been packing a 9cm f4 Elmar I inherited in the early 1970s. But I found myself wondering whether a 90mm f2 Jupiter-9 acquired at a camera fair a decade ago might be a more promising candidate. Even if it had to be stopped down to f2.8 to produce good results, I’d still have f2 available if needed.

I knew that the Jupiter produces impressively sharp and contrasty images at ranges of a few metres, but had never tested it at longer ranges.

Set to infinity and directed towards a distant skyline, the Jupiter and Elmar both lenses produced a similar performance at f4, but the Elmar always had the edge in definition. But distant rooftops (100+ m away) were much sharper when seen by the Jupiter, suggesting that in practice the Russian lens is focussed on a location closer than infinity.

When both lenses were refocussed on the roof and frontage a building about 100m distant, this confirmed the Jupiter’s focussing error. The Elmar always produced the sharper image, but the Russian lens improved with objects closer to the camera.



To explore the Jupiter’s performance at wider apertures, I matched it with the Summicron, setting both lenses to f2 and infinity, then photographed the distant skyline.

At full aperture the definition of the Summicron is visibly better than that of the Jupiter, and the Leitz lens had stronger contrast and saturation of colours.

Stopping down to f2.8 brought a great improvement to the definition and colour saturation of the Jupiter, but that improvement in definition is seen at ranges less than infinity. Stopped down to f2.8, the Summicron shows objects at infinity more sharply that does the Jupiter, but is not so good at nearer distant objects – again suggesting that the Russian lens is focussed on a distance below infinity. Despite this problem, the Jupiter still has a slight edge in contrast.

At f4, the Jupiter is finally showing good definition at infinity, and the two lenses are producing similar results both in terms of definition and contrast.

When both lenses were refocussed on a building about 100m distant, and reset to f2, there was no competition between the two – no longer pointed toward a large areas of open sky, the Summicron now showed better contrast than the Jupiter, and much better definition. At 2.8, the Jupiter was still soft, and outperformed by the Leitz lens. At f4, it was obvious that the Jupiter was focussed about 10m in front of the building.

These simple tests seem to confirm reports that when mounted on the Leica, a Russian lens will not maintain its focussing accuracy from minimum range to infinity, since its rangefinder cam is designed to mimic the travel of a Zeiss–designed standard lens whose focal length is different from that of a Leica 5cm lens.

But these were cruel tests – I was expanding each image to the point where each pixel matched a pixel on my LCD display. Displayed at A4 size and viewed from a distance of about 40cm, the Jupiter images and f2.8 and f4 were of acceptable quality.

[brianv]

The Jupiter-9 on a Leica is not a good match. The Fast F2 speed and longer focal length is too much to get good agreement with the Leica. I marginally improved the agreement by reducing the focal length, but it is still not good enough to use wide-open for much of a range.

I tried a 1958 lens and a much later 1975 J-9, the latter has a secondary shim for the rear module. I removed it to reduce the focal length as much as possible. In the end, I use the Black J-9 in Contax mount.

Zeiss User Forums - Brian's Album: 1958 J-9 8.5cm f2 Hybrid, Focal Length reduced

I might reshim the 1958 lens as a portrait lens, but it will be special use. Best to get a Nikkor 8.5cm F2 in LTM.

[Epimetheus]

I have Jupiter-3 and it has serious back focus problem on my M8 and is unusable for that reason.

[petermcwerner]

Originally Posted by roydonian

These simple tests seem to confirm reports that when mounted on the Leica, a Russian lens will not maintain its focussing accuracy from minimum range to infinity

This confirms my own experience. The Jupiter 9 was unusable on the M8, but delivered excellent results on a Lumix G1, where it was focused through the lens.

Jupiter-9 - 85mm/2 - G1 - ISO=100 1/250s @ f/2.0
Developed in RAW Therapee - Resized for Web in gimp

[brianv]

Originally Posted by Epimetheus

I have Jupiter-3 and it has serious back focus problem on my M8 and is unusable for that reason.

The J-3 is built to the Zeiss standard and will usually back-focus on a Leica camera.

My "trick" is to shim the lens to optimize for close-up and wide-open focus. For infinity, stopping down to F2.8~F4 is required. The SOnnar focus shift helps move the point of focus backwards to achieve infinity.

Shimming the J-3 is the same as shimming this Zeiss Jena Sonnar 5cm F1.5, converted to Leica Mount.

Carl Zeiss Jena 5cm f1.5 converted to Leica Mount. - Zeiss User Forums

"Typically", an extra 0.1mm shim is required.