A friend of mine had a very nice full frame Canon 5D at the time and he used only fast primes with it. When trying his gear I realized what photography should feel like. No more plastic! So I got instantly bored with my flimsy kit lens and wanted primes also. Luckily I had the extraordinary viewfinder in the KM D7D that made it possible with manual focusing on the smaller APS-C format without the aid of microprisms and split matte screens. KM used a traditional pentaprism where the rest had cheaper and duller pentamirrors, so the VF was large and very bright. This quality has been kept after Sony's takeover and A700, A850 and A900 have all had market leading pentaprism viewfinders for you to enjoy.
Back to the story, My budget didn't allow the expensive fast prime lenses with autofocus and not the high end vintage manual ones either such as Leitz or Carl Zeiss. Also the Minolta AF mount in the camera didn't allow adapters for anything else than M42 lenses without corrective optics. At that time a C/Y Carl Zeiss could be had at a very low price and could easily be used on Canon cameras with an adapter. Unfortunately when I joined the manual lens arena the global interest had already exploded and it was no longer possible to make any bargains.
So I started searching the web for cheap and high performing vintage manual lenses in M42 mount that was simple to adapt to the Minolta AF mount. And after hanging around at forums such as the alternative selection of Fred Miranda, Flickr and MF lenses. I realized that the Russian lenses for the Zenit cameras was exactly what I was looking for. They were common, cheap, sharp, and had a wonderful character, especially in terms of bokeh (background blur rendering) and color reproduction. Most of the lenses were clones on the eastern Carl Zeiss designs that was made possible when USSR took charge over eastern germany after WW2.
The lenses I instantly went after was the Helios 44 (58/2) and Jupiter 9 (85/2). The Helios lens is a Zeiss Biogon clone and the Jupiter is a pre war Zeiss Sonnar clone. The Russian engineers have then let the development continue over the years and released updates and changes to the original concept.
At this time I started remembering my fathers camera gear that he had in the late 70-th. I remembered there were some shiny odd looking lenses and they were from the USSR. So I asked him what it was and I got a pleasant surprise when he went down to the basement and rumbled around in the since long forgotten camera bag. There was a beaten up Helios 44 and a nice looking Jupiter 9. Yeay dad, you have great taste!
Anecdote:
By accident, dad had backed over his camera with the car !!! So the focusing ring on the Helios was a little bit loose, but fully functional. Optically still perfect. The Zenit camera got some scratches on the body, but other than that it didn't bother over the deep tissue massage and worked flawlessly. Solid stuff indeed.
Unfortunately the lenses had M39 mounts for SLR, so I had to find a thread insert that converted the M42 adapter to allow 39mm threads without changing the infinity focusing ability. That took some months, but finally I found what I was after on the Bay for a few cents. The Jupiter lens had an iris fault and dad inserted a fixed aperture around f/4. Other that that is is almost in mint condition despite its age.
So here they are accompanied with the modern Helios-44M-4 that I no longer have in my possession.
The old lenses have really low serial numbers and there is a small chance that they are manufactured by Carl Zeiss staff in the German production line under Russian control. I have yet not checked the exact year of manufacture, but I think they are from the late 50-th or perhaps early 60-th. The odd looking symbol on the Helios says that they are from the KMZ factory. Several other factories have made the Helios lenses such as BelOMO, Valdai and MMZ see this link for logos. The Jupiter is made by LZOS.
The old Helios has a 13-blade iris and has a wonderful bokeh. Edge sharpness is perhaps its greatest weakness. Against the sun performance is also not of highest standard due to the simple coating techniques that time could offer. Center sharpness is very high and the out of focus highlights are buttery smooth. Ok, some image samples with the old lenses.
Click on it and see how the flowers appears almost like in 3D due to the rendering style with sharp focus and the transition to the nice background blur
Click on it and experience the IQ of 50 years old lens.
I was now on the track of real photography. As you can see, the fast vintage lenses could easily offer a shallow depth of field with nice and creamy background blur rendering, even on the smaller APS-C sensor size. Something a slow kit zoom has very difficult to offer no matter how sharp it is.
So thanks to dad, I got a new hobby.
Back to the story, My budget didn't allow the expensive fast prime lenses with autofocus and not the high end vintage manual ones either such as Leitz or Carl Zeiss. Also the Minolta AF mount in the camera didn't allow adapters for anything else than M42 lenses without corrective optics. At that time a C/Y Carl Zeiss could be had at a very low price and could easily be used on Canon cameras with an adapter. Unfortunately when I joined the manual lens arena the global interest had already exploded and it was no longer possible to make any bargains.
So I started searching the web for cheap and high performing vintage manual lenses in M42 mount that was simple to adapt to the Minolta AF mount. And after hanging around at forums such as the alternative selection of Fred Miranda, Flickr and MF lenses. I realized that the Russian lenses for the Zenit cameras was exactly what I was looking for. They were common, cheap, sharp, and had a wonderful character, especially in terms of bokeh (background blur rendering) and color reproduction. Most of the lenses were clones on the eastern Carl Zeiss designs that was made possible when USSR took charge over eastern germany after WW2.
The lenses I instantly went after was the Helios 44 (58/2) and Jupiter 9 (85/2). The Helios lens is a Zeiss Biogon clone and the Jupiter is a pre war Zeiss Sonnar clone. The Russian engineers have then let the development continue over the years and released updates and changes to the original concept.
At this time I started remembering my fathers camera gear that he had in the late 70-th. I remembered there were some shiny odd looking lenses and they were from the USSR. So I asked him what it was and I got a pleasant surprise when he went down to the basement and rumbled around in the since long forgotten camera bag. There was a beaten up Helios 44 and a nice looking Jupiter 9. Yeay dad, you have great taste!
Anecdote:
By accident, dad had backed over his camera with the car !!! So the focusing ring on the Helios was a little bit loose, but fully functional. Optically still perfect. The Zenit camera got some scratches on the body, but other than that it didn't bother over the deep tissue massage and worked flawlessly. Solid stuff indeed.
Unfortunately the lenses had M39 mounts for SLR, so I had to find a thread insert that converted the M42 adapter to allow 39mm threads without changing the infinity focusing ability. That took some months, but finally I found what I was after on the Bay for a few cents. The Jupiter lens had an iris fault and dad inserted a fixed aperture around f/4. Other that that is is almost in mint condition despite its age.
So here they are accompanied with the modern Helios-44M-4 that I no longer have in my possession.
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| Russian trio |
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| Russian trio |
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| Tulips with Helios-44 |
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| Rusty pipes with Jupiter-9 |
So thanks to dad, I got a new hobby.
