These were taken with a Jupiter 8 that is brand new and unused. It is one that was to be used for an Elektronica TV camera, is from 1987, and is a KMZ lens, long after Arsenal was making J-8's. It has no focus or aperture mechanism. I found a way suggested on the internet to use it for macro pictures as will be described below:
I saw something like this done in an old internet article. The large thread on the lens barrel is M42 which is the same size as the mount thread on my Mamiya Sekor SLR. By using a Telesar extension tube set I can mount it without interfering with the mirror on the camera. It is not the same thread pitch, but for some reason it seems to mount without cross threading. This gives a very crude macro capability which has to be used by moving the camera back and forth, and because there is no way to make the aperture smaller than wide open the focus range is very limited. I have to use a camera with through lens focusing and external metering is helpful.
I took the photos hand held, set the external meter at F2 and used shutter speed to determine exposure, A tripod would have really helped so I will do that in the future. I bought the TV lens, and another just like it for very little, thinking I would be able to use the brand new glass in another lens, but I kind of like this macro capability for a Sonnar type lens. It would help to add a J-8 aperture iris to increase depth of field, since the aperture activation ring is there and turns and i can see the slot for the activation mechanism. Unfortunately that would use the 42mm thread unless I jury rig another way to move the ring manually. I could use a variable ND filter also to give me a few more exposure options.
Does anyone with some experience with these have any suggestions about aperture adjustability? Also, what year and type of J-8 would have the same type of lens barrel as this? This is well into the J-8M era, but it is a KMZ and labeled as a J-8. I might want to use my other new TV lens by adding on the correct parts from a Contax/Kiev mount J-8 or J-8M to give me a basically unused J-8 for my Kiev camera.
