Contax-mount Jupiter 11 lens adapter

[serac_ydobon]

Hi guys,

First post, not sure where to leave it. Anyway. Can I please have your help? I bought a Contax bayonet-mount Jupiter 11 lens recently (seller advertised it as an m39 mount, which I thought would be perfect for my Zenit-e). Long story short, I need an adapter that would render this Contax-mount lens usable with my Zenit with an M42 mount.

Please help and excuse the first timer 😀

Cheers

 

[xayraa33]

Hi guys,

First post, not sure where to leave it. Anyway. Can I please have your help? I bought a Contax bayonet-mount Jupiter 11 lens recently (seller advertised it as an m39 mount, which I thought would be perfect for my Zenit-e). Long story short, I need an adapter that would render this Contax-mount lens usable with my Zenit with an M42 mount.

Please help and excuse the first timer 😀

Cheers

Welcome to RFF !

I do not think mounting that lens on a Zenit SLR can be done.

Unless you want to use that 135mm lens as a close up macro lens and even that is iffy. M42 SLRs and the Contax/Kiev RF cameras have a different film plane to lens mounting flange distance. I have a Jupiter 11 lens that was factory made to be used on the early Zenit C SLR camera and that had an M39 lens mount ( not to be confused with a LTM Jupiter 11 lens) so a simple M39 to M42 adapter will mount that lens on a more modern Zenit SLR or M42 Praktica or Pentax SLR etc.

There is a M42 mount Jupiter 11 lens factory made expressly for modern M42 Zenit cameras and other M42 mount SLRs.

https://www.pentaxforums.com/userreviews/jupiter-11-135mm-f4.html

 

[David Hughes]

Welcome aboard.

This might explain things; as you may know, in the early 30's the USSR copied the Leica Model II and called it the FED. WW2 came along and the FED works were destroyed and so KMZ in the USSR made a camera like the FED but improved slightly (and sensibly imo) and called it the Zorki. Then the Zenit SLR was created simply by modifying the Zorki to take a mirror box, do away with the rangefinder and, of course, put the lenses in a mount with space for the mirror to flip up.

Here they are side by side. I hope it is obvious that the SLR is a modified Zorki with a mirror box. Both cameras have the Industar-22 lens fitted and for obvious reasons (using existing machinery) they both screwed in with a M39 thread mount. . The Zorki is slimmer and so the lens body is longer.

Lens registration is 28.8mm for the Zorki and 45.2mm for the Zenit; that's the distance from the lens flange to the film's surface. Later on the German DR standardised the thread for their SLR's to M42 and Zenits followed them. So very early Zenits are M39 but most are M42 mounts. FWIW the M42 register is 0.22mm longer than the M39.

As for the Contax/Kiev the lens register is 34.85mm, perhaps; it's a well hidden figure...

I hope this helps. In your shoes I'd return the lens and get my money back or else sell it and - perhaps - make a profit.

Regards, David


PS I've put a lot more scribble and snaps here:- https://idrh.smugmug.com/Zenit-and-Zorki/

 

[serac_ydobon]

Thank you all for the kind and fast responses, you helped a lot 🙂