You may (or may not!) have heard of the Jupiter series of lenses - a range produced in the USSR based on Zeiss designs. There are a range of them available dating from the 1950s over the span of a few decades, with all the resulting variation in body type, markings, and quality that you would expect. The Jupiter-3 50mm f1.5 was recently re-released by Lomography as a revival, using the same formula and design but with modern manufacturing - something I can only assume results in less sample variation and newer lens coatings. However, the modern revival Jupiter-3 costs £499.
'Gosh darn it!' I hear you cry; that is a lot of money for an old design! Well, I'm inclined to agree and so I went on eBay and bought an old Jupiter-8 for £30. I wanted something a little different to my modern glass, but which wasn't gigantic (a la full-frame SLR lenses mounted on m43).
Anyway! Enough background. The gist of the above is that the Jupiter-8 that is now in my possession is an old lens, built in a Soviet Russia that no longer exists, and it's different to modern glass. What is it actually like?
BUILD
I'll admit that I had low expectations of this lens - during my pre-buy research I found a lot of forum posts deriding Soviet quality control and the variable survivability of Jupiter lenses. I can only speak for this copy but despite all the internet uncertainty I found it pleasantly solid in the hand. The focus is smooth, as is the aperture (Jupiter 8 lenses do not have 'clicks' in their aperture ring). It actually feels reassuringly well-made. There was a fair smattering of dust in the lens, comensurate with age, but nothing certainly nothing ruinous.
Then I tried the focus out on my GM5, and that's where the interest set in. This lens (or my one, at least) focuses well past infinity. I don't know whether this is a design feature on a lens that changes focus with aperture (the far end of the focus ring does just come into infinity focus at f22) or if my adapter is crap, or whether it's just just bad design. Either way, I am lucky enough to still be left with a useful focal range - I just can't trust the hard stops or the distance scale. The Soviet stamp of quality? Perhaps. The other oddity is that the aperture ring is on the focus helicoid, meaning that when you turn the focus ring the whole aperture ring rotates. The aperture remains unchanged, but the numbers end up moving around the lens. There are two separate aperture scales printed on the aperture ring to combat this but it seems a little quirky.
Jupiters come with several different mounts and the mount on this particular lens is an L39 screw. I bought an El Cheapo L39-m43 adapter off eBay from China. It works fine and cost me a couple of quid. The alignment of the lens markings isn't great on El Cheapo - they end up way round the left hand side - but seeing as I can't use the distance scale anyway (and the aperture markings could end up anywhere) that actually doesn't bother me much. Focusing was actually pretty easy with focus peaking, and it was very quick to adjust when people moved in the frame.
On the GM5 this lens looks reaonsable - compact, lightweight and a little retro. It's not as good-looking as the chrome ones, in my opinion, but it's not half bad (and the black one was cheaper).
IMAGERY
Despite the above, we (or I, at least - each to their own) do not buy lenses for how they look on a camera or how dodgy their focusing scale is. The true test of the lens is in the output, and here is where the character of the lens comes through. Most lenses these days do their best to be sterile - lots of detail and sharpness from wide open across the whole frame, and modern coatings make flare an occasional surprise rather than a constant companion. This gives you, the photographer, lots of control in post-production but it does somewhat detract from the 'romance' of photography.
As evidenced here, the Jupiter-8 is soft wide open. It is susceptible to flare, and it goes from being vaguely soft in the centre to catastrophically soft at the edges (not even just the corners!). Stop it down and it sharpens up acceptably - it's at its sharpest around f5.6-f8. The edges never really catch up. The bokeh wide open varies from smooth to soap-bubble chaos, depending on the highlights. It you're thinking about using this for landscapes or architecture or document copying (?) and so on, stop here and find another option. If you don't mind a lens with some ideas of its own, then read on: you may well be in the right place.
Portraits are another matter. Provided you place your subject near the centre of the frame, this lens renders soft skin tones with good subject separation. People 'pop' out of the frame and there is a dreamy feel to the images wide open. Closing the lens down a touch sharpens up the subject but still allows a decent 3D effect. I found that the best balance between these two was around f2.8, where the bokeh settles down a bit and but the depth of field remains shallow enough for great portraits.
As you can see above, this lens is capable of being sharp and detailed if you stop it down enough, but wide open it lacks a certain something. My copy also seemed decidedly less sharp focused to infinity unless it was mercilessly stopped down - don't expect to be using this for anything at long range.
CONCLUSION
The Jupiter-8 represents another era of lenses - one where a mix of construction costs, poor quality control and less effective manufacturing techniques resulted in a lens with a very distinct character and equally distinct flaws. The Jupiter-8 is a terrible lens compared to modern equivalents, but it still has a place. The portraits that the Soviet glass produces are romanticised and characterful in a way that those from my Panasonic 42.5mm f1.7 are not, and the bokeh in particular can be pretty wild if that's your thing. It is also capable of sharp 'ordinary' images given a sufficiently small aperture but at range is almost unusable below f5.6. The handling is actually pretty good - I never found focusing a chore and was pleasantly surprised at how quickly I got used to managing the somewhat-quirky aperture controls. It is also small and light, and incredibly cheap.
Would I recommend it? I think for most people, if you already have a portrait lens of the more modern variety, then probably not. My Panasonic isn't any heavier, produces better images, and can always be filtered to death to try and create a similar effect to the Jupiter (although you'd never manage to recreate the bokeh). However, if you're looking for a low-budget experiment into portraiture, or want something a little different with some attached history, then you can't really go wrong with this little lens.
Build quality: 3.5/5 (odd aperture controls, ridiculous post-infinity focus)
Image quality: 3/5 (excellent portrait lens but not good for much else unless heavily stopped down)
Portability: 4.5/5 (light, compact, and if you accidentally smash it up it's cheap to replace)
Worth having with you? If you like soft-focus portraits, crazy bokeh, or historical lenses then yes. Otherwise, save up and grab yourself a modern 42.5mm.
'Gosh darn it!' I hear you cry; that is a lot of money for an old design! Well, I'm inclined to agree and so I went on eBay and bought an old Jupiter-8 for £30. I wanted something a little different to my modern glass, but which wasn't gigantic (a la full-frame SLR lenses mounted on m43).
Anyway! Enough background. The gist of the above is that the Jupiter-8 that is now in my possession is an old lens, built in a Soviet Russia that no longer exists, and it's different to modern glass. What is it actually like?
BUILD
I'll admit that I had low expectations of this lens - during my pre-buy research I found a lot of forum posts deriding Soviet quality control and the variable survivability of Jupiter lenses. I can only speak for this copy but despite all the internet uncertainty I found it pleasantly solid in the hand. The focus is smooth, as is the aperture (Jupiter 8 lenses do not have 'clicks' in their aperture ring). It actually feels reassuringly well-made. There was a fair smattering of dust in the lens, comensurate with age, but nothing certainly nothing ruinous.
Then I tried the focus out on my GM5, and that's where the interest set in. This lens (or my one, at least) focuses well past infinity. I don't know whether this is a design feature on a lens that changes focus with aperture (the far end of the focus ring does just come into infinity focus at f22) or if my adapter is crap, or whether it's just just bad design. Either way, I am lucky enough to still be left with a useful focal range - I just can't trust the hard stops or the distance scale. The Soviet stamp of quality? Perhaps. The other oddity is that the aperture ring is on the focus helicoid, meaning that when you turn the focus ring the whole aperture ring rotates. The aperture remains unchanged, but the numbers end up moving around the lens. There are two separate aperture scales printed on the aperture ring to combat this but it seems a little quirky.
Jupiters come with several different mounts and the mount on this particular lens is an L39 screw. I bought an El Cheapo L39-m43 adapter off eBay from China. It works fine and cost me a couple of quid. The alignment of the lens markings isn't great on El Cheapo - they end up way round the left hand side - but seeing as I can't use the distance scale anyway (and the aperture markings could end up anywhere) that actually doesn't bother me much. Focusing was actually pretty easy with focus peaking, and it was very quick to adjust when people moved in the frame.
On the GM5 this lens looks reaonsable - compact, lightweight and a little retro. It's not as good-looking as the chrome ones, in my opinion, but it's not half bad (and the black one was cheaper).
IMAGERY
Despite the above, we (or I, at least - each to their own) do not buy lenses for how they look on a camera or how dodgy their focusing scale is. The true test of the lens is in the output, and here is where the character of the lens comes through. Most lenses these days do their best to be sterile - lots of detail and sharpness from wide open across the whole frame, and modern coatings make flare an occasional surprise rather than a constant companion. This gives you, the photographer, lots of control in post-production but it does somewhat detract from the 'romance' of photography.
As evidenced here, the Jupiter-8 is soft wide open. It is susceptible to flare, and it goes from being vaguely soft in the centre to catastrophically soft at the edges (not even just the corners!). Stop it down and it sharpens up acceptably - it's at its sharpest around f5.6-f8. The edges never really catch up. The bokeh wide open varies from smooth to soap-bubble chaos, depending on the highlights. It you're thinking about using this for landscapes or architecture or document copying (?) and so on, stop here and find another option. If you don't mind a lens with some ideas of its own, then read on: you may well be in the right place.
The bokeh is tremendously variable, creating fairly chaotic soap-bubble specular highlights wide open. Stop the lens down even to f2.8 and it becomes much more 'normal' in appearance.
Portraits are another matter. Provided you place your subject near the centre of the frame, this lens renders soft skin tones with good subject separation. People 'pop' out of the frame and there is a dreamy feel to the images wide open. Closing the lens down a touch sharpens up the subject but still allows a decent 3D effect. I found that the best balance between these two was around f2.8, where the bokeh settles down a bit and but the depth of field remains shallow enough for great portraits.
At f2.8 the little Jupiter becomes an excellent portrait lens, provided you keep your subject relatively close to the centre. You'll have to forgive the twig coming in from the side - a car was coming so I had to be quick!
Double glasses. Jupiter=8 50mm f2 @ f2.8.
CONCLUSION
The Jupiter-8 represents another era of lenses - one where a mix of construction costs, poor quality control and less effective manufacturing techniques resulted in a lens with a very distinct character and equally distinct flaws. The Jupiter-8 is a terrible lens compared to modern equivalents, but it still has a place. The portraits that the Soviet glass produces are romanticised and characterful in a way that those from my Panasonic 42.5mm f1.7 are not, and the bokeh in particular can be pretty wild if that's your thing. It is also capable of sharp 'ordinary' images given a sufficiently small aperture but at range is almost unusable below f5.6. The handling is actually pretty good - I never found focusing a chore and was pleasantly surprised at how quickly I got used to managing the somewhat-quirky aperture controls. It is also small and light, and incredibly cheap.
Would I recommend it? I think for most people, if you already have a portrait lens of the more modern variety, then probably not. My Panasonic isn't any heavier, produces better images, and can always be filtered to death to try and create a similar effect to the Jupiter (although you'd never manage to recreate the bokeh). However, if you're looking for a low-budget experiment into portraiture, or want something a little different with some attached history, then you can't really go wrong with this little lens.
Build quality: 3.5/5 (odd aperture controls, ridiculous post-infinity focus)
Image quality: 3/5 (excellent portrait lens but not good for much else unless heavily stopped down)
Portability: 4.5/5 (light, compact, and if you accidentally smash it up it's cheap to replace)
Worth having with you? If you like soft-focus portraits, crazy bokeh, or historical lenses then yes. Otherwise, save up and grab yourself a modern 42.5mm.
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