Jupiter 9 focusing on Leica M4 vs Digital (XE-1)

David Hughes said:
Hi,

More to the point, who needs to focus at infinity? Most of the things I photograph are fairly nearby and the DoF usually takes care of infinity.

Equally I use 85/90mm as portrait lenses and about 9 to 10 ft away is about the nearest I get.

Regards, David
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I can say I had one lens that would not focus at infinity, and it was a pain. No mountains, no buildings, not horizons could ever be sharp.
 
David Hughes said:
Hi,

That's why I'd like the percentages. I don't know if the rejects are common or what. And if they made, f'instance, 20,000 J-9's then 1% faulty would be 200 lenses and I've not seen that many comments about them. Also they are getting old and anything could have happened to them, without the factory being involved.

Regards, David
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I agree. I'd say the people repeating the internet lore that "FSU quality is bad and you have to try a bunch to get a good one" are more numerous than the actual, proverbial "bad FSU lens."
 
Kind of ridiculous that J9 prices have gotten up so high that for a couple of bucks more one can buy a far more decent 85mm lens. It is not that FSU lenses are of bad quality, but by no means a J9 can be praised as a high quality fast 85mm lens (and for sure not a collectible one).
Examples of other better 85ers can be, the Canon FL 1.8, the Canon FD even better, or the Vivitar Series 1 35-85 2.8 zoom, or even the Nikkor 1.8 85mm for a few more.
 
The 85s you list aren't LTM or M mount, though. That's the appeal to me - being able to shoot with it on my M4. :)

Mine cost 109 USD plus another ~60 when it's all said and done (shipping etc.) for the CLA and adjustment for which it just got sent out. I've already seen that the glass is good. Hopefully the shimming/registration distance/focusing gets sorted out and I'll have a nice little FSU gem to shoot with.

Thanks for all of your thoughts, everyone!
 
David Hughes said:
Hi,

Thanks but I expect some did. What I'd dearly like to have are some accurate percentages. Soviet stuff was turned out by the thousand, or tens of thousands or more. So I figure the percentage will tell us the truth.

For example, I had a Leica and the sensor failed rather dramatically and I got a new one fitted for little less than a few months' wait but that fact alone tells us little. Hence my above comment.

Regards, David
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I don't think it is possible to extrapolate a percentage of how many FSU duds came out of their camera and lens factories now.

My gut feeling and from owning several FSU photo products is that the late made stuff was more indifferently made regarding quality control and with more factory modification in regards to simplification and corner cutting and using inferior quality materials.

Plus the unrealistic ramped up production quotas as time went by, did not help quality.
 
goamules said:
I can say I had one lens that would not focus at infinity, and it was a pain. No mountains, no buildings, not horizons could ever be sharp.
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OK, but that was a faulty lens.

I'm asking if we even focus on infinity deliberately. For landscapes I'd expect the DoF to cover the horizon but you don't have to set the focus to infinity. And the rest of our shots are usually at things nearby, not at infinity. I'll make an exception for star trails and moon shots but those are rare.

Regards, David
 
Nikos72 said:
Kind of ridiculous that J9 prices have gotten up so high that for a couple of bucks more one can buy a far more decent 85mm lens. It is not that FSU lenses are of bad quality, but by no means a J9 can be praised as a high quality fast 85mm lens (and for sure not a collectible one).
Examples of other better 85ers can be, the Canon FL 1.8, the Canon FD even better, or the Vivitar Series 1 35-85 2.8 zoom, or even the Nikkor 1.8 85mm for a few more.
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Hi,

Yes that's true but as a portrait lens the Jupiter has a lot going for it as few portraits benefit from being razor sharp. If we were talking about architecture then I'd use another lens for picking out detail. But my money's on most users wanting a portrait lens.

Regards, David
 
xayraa33 said:
I don't think it is possible to extrapolate a percentage of how many FSU duds came out of their camera and lens factories now...
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Hi,

That's exactly my point. We are talking about the output from a factory behind the soi disant Iron Curtain during and just after the cold war and I'm always amazed at the number of people who can tell us exactly what was going on there then; especially as I suspect that some of them weren't even born then. Most people, I suggest, have bought an ex-USSR camera on ebay and, as it's now an elderly second-hand camera we are discussing, I don't see any link with the factory.

Nor to I hear anything about other makes that compares with the comments on ex-USSR stuff when the other makers' cameras fail. There are hundreds of posts about other makes of camera failing and most people seem quite tolerant of the faults, except for ex-USSR stuff.

Regards, David

PS And many of the items, lenses f'instance are exact copies of the originals and yet the originals don't get any of the flak the ex-USSR ones get. Neither did the Hubble telescope now I think of it...
 
David Hughes said:
Hi,

That's exactly my point. We are talking about the output from a factory behind the soi disant Iron Curtain during and just after the cold war and I'm always amazed at the number of people who can tell us exactly what was going on there then. Most people, I suggest, have bought an ex-USSR camera on ebay and, as it's now an elderly second-hand camera we are discussing, I don't see any link with the factory.

Nor to I hear anything about other makes that compares with the comments on ex-USSR stuff when the other makers' cameras fail. There are hundreds of posts about other makes of camera failing and most people seem quite tolerant of the faults, except for ex-USSR stuff.

Regards, David

PS And many of the items, lenses f'instance are exact copies of the originals and yet the originals don't get any of the flak the ex-USSR ones get. Neither did the Hubble telescope now I think of it...
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The FSU camera gear failed at a higher rate then say main stream Japanese made camera gear.

My theory is that if the FSU consumer grade camera gear survived, then it was because it was from a good batch. For instance my bought used 1973 KMZ Zenit E is still going strong but a new Belomo made Zenit E from 1980 had to be returned to the store because the built in take-up spool was not internally hooked up to the gearing, in fact the whole batch that the store had was defective in the same manner!

The German designs the Soviets used were OK, just the quality control was missing and this got worse with the ramped up quotas, plus as I mentioned, they liked to simplify a design later on and that was not always a good thing.

For instance, most of the early Kiev 2 and 3 cameras were excellently made cameras ( with shanghaied real Zeiss techs at Arsenal and all) in the early 1950s but by the early 1980s the Kiev M and AM were hit or miss in the quality and reliability department, but by then they had cut so many corners from the original design and the quantity was ramped up to unreasonable production numbers.

PS: I don't believe the Hubble telescope really exists/ just my personal belief, that I don't really care to discuss.
 
Hi,

Well, I think we'll have to differ on this.

BTW, I thought the US Army turned up and persuaded the top men at Zeiss and the best of their machinery to go before the USSR people turned up to claim what was rightly theirs.

It was in a Kiev/Contax thread some time ago. Needless-to-say, I bookmarked it and did back ups but the machine had a mega crash and the new one with W10 wouldn't take the old software and so my back-ups were pointless. I have a cunning plan to get at them but haven't the time...

Regards, David

PS I understand about Hubble, I wonder if America exists at times. Perhaps our Govt invented it for the same reason the church invented the devil. Meaning useful to have someone to blame all the time, like for interest rates this week...
 
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