J8 - strange serial#

[Igor.Burshteyn]

I have silver J8 with serial number 0162083. Looks strange to me - no trace of coating (and it does flare badly), but apperture ring has click stops. Any idea what year this one come from?

 

[peterc]

Which mount is the lens?

 

[Igor.Burshteyn]

sorry for omission - kiev/contax rf mount

 

[peterc]

Shortly after I got my Kiev I read something about the odd serial numbers on some Jupiter 8 lenses (early ones I believe) but I can't seem to find the reference again. I'll keep looking.

Peter

 

[Stu W]

Igor, as far as I know J8's didn't have click stops. Strange. Stu

 

[Kim Coxon]

Hi,
A look on the Communist Cameras site came up with this quote
This is a 50mm F2.0 standard lens with apertures to 22. It focuses from 0.9 meters. This lens does not have a focusing mount built in. It is the most common lens found on Kiev range finder cameras. This lens is for the internal contax mount. There is also a Jupiter-8M which is modified internally but except for the marking and click stops, looks identical .

Kim

 

[FrankS]

I have a silver (with black nose) J-8m in Kiev mount with aperture click stops, serial number begins with 58....

But you are correct, yours has a weird serial number!

 

[Igor.Burshteyn]

Mine is silver black nose too, but it has J8 (not J8M) designation on it in Cyrillic.

 

[Mike Kovacs]

Frankenlens?

 

[darkkavenger]

maybe it's an early J8 ? as far as I know, all J8 were coated, maybe it's a frankensteinization of a KMZ ZK (sonnar copy) lens ? It might be possible that the lens has been assembled from other lens parts, but as far as I know, there are no click stops on J8's before the J8M.

//max

 

[Igor.Burshteyn]

🙂) LOL - "frankenlens" makes sense to me. I already have kiev4a with rewind crank and hot shoe installed from god-knows-what-camera. Works great - build quiality of early kiev 4 and ergonomics of late 4am.
Frankly speaking J8 looks more like lens from some pre-serial batch.

 

[Mike Kovacs]

Its the click stops that just don't seem right on an ZK or Jupiter-8 (not 8M) lens. I recall reading somewhere that the 0 series were some sort of early production lenses.

 

[Hamster]

I think these J-8 were mounted on all sorts of optical equipment, I came across one mounted on a fixed barrel with M42 mount that is attached to some sort of IR-scope as an eyepiece! So I would not be suprised if your lens left the factory that way, given that they would probably cannabalise overun parts from other production lines.

I think they even have one mounted on collapseable M39 mount. See link:

http://www.sy916.net/sy916/showarticle.php?id=1553