Early Russian Lenses, What Features to look for.

Close focus at about 1.25 meters at f3.5, North American columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) thinking about flowering soon.


The critter table near my front door. Point of focus is nose of the turtle, about 1.5 meters at f3.5


Looks like a good lens.
 
I took apart two CZJ 5cm f3.5 Tessars to look at the shape of the front lens group, a 301 series from Jan 1947 and 310 series from Oct 1948. The attached pics are from the 310 series lens, but the 301 series lens was identical. The 310 series lens is often called the "black line Tessar". The shape of the lens group is different that the KOMZ lens in post #200, above. I have no idea if the KOMZ lens has Schott glass, but the front lens group is different from CZJ Tessar production of late 1940s


Partial CZJ serial on fixture
 
How do you like the 3 million series Tessars?

They have a reputation for being not very good in Japan - and to be honest I have not had much luck with them either (bought from overseas). At least they are priced accordingly and I did not lose much.
 
I find they do make slightly better landscape lenses (on film) but similarly to you I rarely use them regardless. I guess one can always give up on f1.5 and use a good copy of a f2 Sonnar and stop down to f8 or thereabouts - voila edge to edge sharpness, also.
 
MarkWalberg said:
Any info on this unusual 1955 KMZ Jupiter 3?
A Jupiter 3 on eBay
It is said to have a flange distance of only about 25.5 mm.
What was it for?
I won't be paying that much for any lens, but it looks interesting.
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These used to go for cheap. Same flange distance as a regular J-3.
It's basically a simplified focus mount, an enlarged J-8 mount. Not as good as the regular mount. It was basically a failure. So failures are rare, and someone wants a lot of money for it for just that reason. Edsels are also rare, I'd rather have a '66 Mustang.
 
Yeah if he says the flange is too short - by 3mm almost! Then this lens has been screwed with already in some fashion. It should have the same register distance that all leica (and Russian) stuff should have - 28.8mm. Leitz specify the tolerance for the correct flange distance as +0.015mm / -0.005mm IIRC. So you can see how far off from usable this lens is.

Anyway, where the Russian lenses differ is that their standard focal length is 52.4mm versus 51.6mm Leitz standard. This means a well calibrated (not all are) Russian lens should be fine at infinity and then increasingly lose focus as you get closer. The focus will be increasingly to the back of your subject, and this is exactly what a good copy will do.

This focal length, by the way, is not just a feature of Russian lenses. Heck even Leitz lenses have it - they used to engrave the FL actual on the barrel for early Leica lenses.

I have a Canon 50/1.8 LTM version II, which of course was intended for use on Canon or Leica rangefinders following Leitz' standard. However the lens focal length is slightly too short. Canon "solved" this by making the shim (flange distance) a fraction of a millimeter smaller than it should be; thus compensating for front-focus as your subject gets closer. This means at infinity, or far distances, the lens overshoots a little bit and gets better as you focus closer. On film this "hack" is not noticeable. Even in film tests at full aperture I never saw an issue, because focus on film is "squishy". It did throw me for a loop when I put it on my (28.8mm calibrated) digital camera, though!
 
The Summarit is also marked internally, and the Five I took apart are 51.1mm The lens is set to focus at Infinity at F1.5, and front focuses about 1" at 3ft. Stop down F2~F2.8, focus shift gives perfect focus. After all "Who would use a lens close-up and wide-open?". ..
 
I picked up a 1954 J-3 on eBay recently. Beautiful glass, hardly a mark on either front element or rear lens group, apeture blades had no oil. However, the focus was so stiff that it would unscrew from the camera when trying to change focusing distance. Apeture was very stiff too, not enough to unscrew the lens from the mount, but not usable as is.
Lower part of the helical. I soaked it in naphthelene for 30 minutes, scrubbed with an old toothbrush, still had to use a sharpened toothpick to remove the crud. The old grease was sticky like crystalized honey


The dark gray stuff in this pic is probably oxidized grease, which had hardened to be almost like paint. Even after soaking in naphthelene, I had to scrape this stuff off with a sharp piece of hard maple. The painted and blackened surfaces underneath the crud were shiny. As shown by the threaded bits, the optical fixture is brass. I had already removed the variable standoff ring and fixture for the apeture mechanism; you can see the threaded hole for the screw that holds the apeture mechanism in place on the right side of the slot.
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I was amazed that the crud on the optical fixture did not transfer to the apeture blades or glass elements, which were actually pretty clean aside from some dust. Will test drive the lens soon.
 
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Lens cleaned up well. Original shim in lens was 1.15mm, I have reduced it to 0.58mm, which is just about perfect for the one meter/wide open test. The lens focuses wide open at one meter, and infinity focus at f1.5 is about 150 meters. Based on what I found, I don't think that anyone had seen the insides of this lens since it left the KMZ factory in 1954.



 
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@dexdog - can you post a picture of the rear triplet? 1954 J-3's are rare. The shape of the rear triplet should indicate Russian or German glass.
 
The serial number of the lens in posts #211 and #212 is 5400279. Pic of the rear group is shown below. It is a type 1 rear triplet.


My other 1954 J-3 serial number 5400774 has a rear group identical to 5400279
 
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One meter wide open, point of focus is the umlaut of the name Dikotter seen on the red book about the Cultural Revolution just to the left of center of the frame (type RFF for password to enter my SmugMug account). The letters for "PLAYING CARDS" in lower left corner of frame are also one meter from plane of camera sensor. I think that the lens is a good one.

 
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Interesting that the two 1954 J-3's are German (Schott) glass. I have two 1955 v2 J-3's, and a 1956 v1. The two type had a lot of overlap.
 
Mark240590 said:
This is strange both my 1951 lenses are Russian Glass and so are my 1956’s ! 😳
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I think what Sonnar Brian is saying is that the type 1 rear triplets are probably using Schott glass, while the type 2 triplets are probably Russian glass. All of my 1950 to 1954 J-3s have the type 1 rear triplet.
 
This is what Sonnar Brian has dubbed the type 2 rear triplet. Threads are in different place, and shape of the triplet is different than earlier versions. I think it likely that your 1951s have type 1 rear triplet, while the 1956s have a type2.
 
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