Jupiter Lenses

[Gary J Toop <gtoop@uoguelph.ca>]

	I have a feeling that some of you will find the following quite 
interesting, since it is possible to purchase new and used Jupiter lenses 
in Leica Thread Mount at very reasonable prices and since there was some 
discussion of the 20/5.6 Topogon clone (which I do not, alas own) a while 
ago. 

	The night before last I went over to the house of fellow LUGger 
Blair Nonnecke with all of my Russian gear - a Kiev IV (Contax copy) 
body, viewfinder, and 4 lenses, the 35/2.8 Biogon clone, the 50/2, 85/2 
and 135/4 Sonnar clones - some pictures, and some slides shot with 
the Jupiters and with my current series 50 Summicron for comparison.  
Blair was curious to see the Russian stuff and the pictures and I was 
curious to see his Leica gear and to have the chance to see my slides 
projected onto a real screen.

	We both think that the pictures - Ektamax prints from Plus-X and 
TMax 100 negs souped in Rodinal 1:50 - show very nice tonality, 
perhaps a little less contrasty than one would see with Leitz optics, but 
with very nice separation of close values and with, overall, a very 
pleasing effect.  They have a very slight softness that does not 
impede in any way their resolution or ability to reproduce texture.  A few 
colour prints from a Kiev that I owned a few years ago, shot on 
Kodakcolor Gold 100 with another 35/2.8 Biogon, had a nice, slightly 
warm colour cast and well-separated close values. 

	The Ektachrome 64 slides were very interesting.  Although they did 
not provide as exact a means of comparison of the Summicron 50 and the 50 
Sonnar clone as one could wish for - all shots were on the same roll of film, 
which necessitated moving the film from camera to camera and thus a 
change in lighting, due changes in cloud cover - they were nevertheless 
quite interesting.  The first series of shots of a brick building on the 
campus, surrounded by foliage and with a good mixture of light and shade, 
suggest that in terms of resolution and contrast, the two lenses, while 
of different character, are very comparable from 2.8 down.  The Jupiter, 
while producing a slightly softer rendering of some of the brick and 
stone textures on the building, does a fine job of reproducing the 
contrasts between close values and seems to resolve detail in a very 
comparable manner to the Summicron most of the way out to the edges of 
the negative, although with a warmer colour cast (which was pleasing in its 
own way).  Where the sharpness of the Jupiter did break down, it did so 
in a rather soft, pleasing way, and the slightly softer contrast seemed 
to, if anything, improve the Jupiter's ability to reproduce the 
highlights on some of the foliage.  By f4 or f5.6, whatever advantage the 
Summicron might have had in edge to edge sharpness seems to disappear, 
although it is of course possible that a higher resolution film would have 
exposed some difference.  The Jupiter image did appear noticably less 
sharp at f11, but I would attribute that to difficulty of holding the 
Kiev steady at 1/50, given the awkwardness of the release.  Over all, the 
Jupiter 50/2 seemed to hold up very well against the Summicron when 
shooting with light from behind.  

	Another short series of 3 shots at f2, f2.8 and f4 shooting up at a 
part of the same building revealed more of the Jupiter's limitations, as 
flare produced from light from the sky made a much more significant 
difference to its ability to reproduce contrast in the brick work than 
it did to the Summicron.  However, to be fair to the Jupiter, not only is 
it up against one of the best in the business in that respect, but I may 
have left the hood on the Summicron while there was not one on the 
Jupiter (ooops!) and the coating on the Jupiter has been largely worn 
off by repeated cleaning.  One with a better coating, in better condition, 
a hood and stopped down to, say f4, would probably fare considerably better.

	The rest of the slides comprised a series of shots of the wall of 
a red-brick building facing the sun, taken with the 35/2.8, the 85/2 and 
the 135/4.  Each lens held up quite creditably and some aspects of their 
performance was very impressive.  The 35 is, not surprisingly, a trifle 
soft wide open, although a minor focus problem could have accounted for 
some of that, as some of the trees in the foreground seemed to be very 
sharp.  The contrast was quite nice by f4 and really good by f8 and the 
resolution seemed to be very good by then too.  The lens produces 
virtually none of the distortion that often characterizes wide-angle
lenses, doubtless because it is not of a retro-focus design.

	The 85/2 seems to be a very impressive lens, although it is hard 
to be sure that I am being fair to it, as the lens seems to focus a little 
behind the RF point of focus and I did not correct for this when shooting 
the slides last summer.   I suspect that this is not a significant 
problem with this lens, because it looks as though the lens can be 
adjusted be screwing it apart and adding or subtracting some rings 
inside.  Still, in spite of the focus error, the lens resolved quite well 
in the centre at f2 and f2.8 and by f4, all but the corners were quite 
sharp and the screen on a window set back into the wall (and therefore 
perhaps closer to the point of focus) was starting to show noticeable 
texture and the contrast was really super across the field, with close 
values distinguished very well.  f5.6 and f8 only improved on all of 
this. 

	If anything, the 135/4 was even more impressive than the 85/2, 
although this could be due to the focus error in the 85.  It wasn't bad 
at all wide open, very nice at f5.6 and really outstanding by f8, where 
it was not only very sharp out to the corners, but also capable of 
distinguishing very well between very close values in the brick work.  
It should be noted too, that this lens is very small and light.

	Overall, the slides left me very impressed with the Jupiters and 
I think that Blair felt the same way.  The colour was nice, the contrast 
and separation of close values was great, and the sharpness, especially 
of the Sonnar design lenses, was very very good.  The Kiev body certainly 
leaves something to be desired when compared to the Leica bodies, but it 
is very very sturdy, the rangefinder seems quite accurate and while the 
shutter speeds may be slightly off and the shutter is a little clunky 
compared to the Leica shutter, so are many other shutters.  All in all, I 
would certainly recommend the lenses as a very good, cheap alternative to 
Leitz glass or as something to provide a please change of imaging 
characteristics to Leitz glass.

I hope all of this has been interesting!
Gary Toop