Unused Jupiter-8

M

Mablo

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I recently bought a J-8 through the big bay. After a couple of weeks it arrived. I was thrilled to find out that the lens is brand new, It has never been used. Serial number starts wit 92 which I assume is the year of production. The lens is black and numbers are painted, not carved, in metal.

Someone somewhere must have a huge stock of them if you can buy a new lens produced 17 years ago.
 
There are indeed rumors abounding that there were a large amount of russian camera type equipment recently found walled up somewhere.
I dunno how true this is, but I've heard it from a couple of different sources that aren't connected.

Sounds like you might have one of them there!
 
I suspect that a large amount of over-produced optical gear was simply destroyed or buried in landfill after the economic changes in east Europe. The stories from the Pentacon works are bad enough, but in other countries the existing stock was often seen as worthless during the drive for modernisation.

A few sellers on the auction site bought up old stocks of new-in-box (or bag) lenses etc from warehouse stocks which were being cleared, and it is these which appear every now and then. I bought two brand new I-61's like this and after cleaning the dried up lube they work as-new.
 
DanOnRoute66 said:
Yeah, there's a guy on there selling individual Helios-103 53mm lenses with the Kiev (Contax) mount, as well as a lot of 50 -- yeah, count 'em, 50 -- Helios-103s with those hard plastic cases for $800, including shipping. That works out to $16 each, by the way.
Click to expand...

A couple of years ago, I bought such a "new" H103 lens. It was very good and quite cheap.
I risked the bay again and bought the more exotic Menopta lens from a well known Soviet seller. It didn't cost much, the postage was more...

It arrived with the aperture setting way off. As though the aperture ring was clamped in the wrong place, but with the right number of click settings. I sent it back.
I was pleasantly surprized when a replacement arrived. This looked good (and identical to the H103) but had a very rough feel to the aperture ring, although it functioned well enough. Other buyers at the time seemed to be happy with theirs, but I wondered if the seller had found a stock of manufacturer's rejects.
 
it is interesting that it has written Jupiter-8-1 on it. i wonder did they changed optical formula in it... it would be interesting to make test against older models..
 
It's in Princelle, with a picture, but that's it. The Fed-5 was the only Soviet LTM rangefinder still in production at that time, so I would guess the J-8-1 was sold as a high-end lens for the Fed. Just a guess. No idea if the optical formula was altered. I have an 80's J-8 from KMZ that is really superb.
 
i also have on from 80s and it looks a bit sharper than older ones. but that still need confirmation in some test. i have to do it one time...
 
In China, new to this kind of packaging J8 sales​



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