| Author: | | Veteran Member Registered: February, 2007 Location: Melbourne Posts: 789 | | Review Date: February 16, 2009 | Recommended | Price: $125.00
| Rating: 9 |
| Pros: | bokeh, price, low light, build | | Cons: | stiff, heavy | |
Had this lens for a few months now and have used it for low light concert work, traveling tele and portraits.
It's a little heavy but the build quality is very good, smells weird, focusing and aperture dials are a little stiff but can be warmed up.
I give it a 9 because for a good price you get a lens that is maybe not on par optically with the Takumar 85, 77 ltd or the Helios 85 but they are all much more expensive and the Jupiter 9 has it's own charm that the others can't emulate.
 | | | | | | | Site Supporter Registered: December, 2008 Location: Zetten - The Netherlands Posts: 9,050 | | Review Date: February 7, 2009 | Recommended | Price: $90.00
| Rating: 9 |
| Pros: | Smooth bokeh, f/2.0 | | Cons: | weight, as the lens is quite heavy | |
Much is already sayd about this lens. My copy, bought from a member of these forums, focuses smoothly and there is no visible oil on the aperture blades.
Wide open, this lens can be a little soft, but this could be caused by a very small DOF and my skills! From f2.8 or 4.0 the lens is sharp. Although it is recommended for portrait and low light circumstances, I used it for candid street photography and landscape photography, both with quite nice results (see the pictures below). One of the cons of this lens is that it is supposed to be prone to flare. However, I have made quite good photos into direct sun in which flare is hardly noticeable. Highly recommended!
 | | | | | Veteran Member Registered: July, 2008 Location: Var, South of France Posts: 1,074
1 user found this helpful
| | Review Date: July 28, 2008 | Recommended | Price: $80.00
| Rating: 7 |
| Pros: | fast, cheap, built like a tank | | Cons: | not AF, some CA | |
Excellent for portraits!
Mine (an uncoated version) has a slight hazy tendency, giving some pics a Hamilton feeling. I cannot vouch for stopped-down quality, as I always use it wide open...
Contrasty scenes can be troublesome, so avoid direct/harsh sunlight, and use a hood!
Quite cheap, you won't feel bad opening it to tweak it some... And as it's a fixed lens, the optical block cannot easily be goofed with (everything is tightly fixed together)...
I've done three things to mine:
1 - Clean and re-lub the tracks with teflon : now butter-smooth...
2 - shorten the near-focus stopping pin : the barrel allow for nearly 20° more spin, now focusing as low as 50cm!
3 - drill a little gouge to allow a PK blocking pin to engage and secure the lens against accidental removal while focusing :
For the first two points, you just have to remove the focus barrel (3 screws), so it's quite safe (the lens stays in working order!).
| | | | | Veteran Member Registered: December, 2007 Posts: 8,237
1 user found this helpful
| | Review Date: July 20, 2008 | Recommended | Price: $150.00
| Rating: 8 |
| Pros: | Sharpness stopped down, bokeh, focal length | | Cons: | Extremely soft wide open | |
I have the Multicoated version.
If you can't afford or don't want to pay big bucks for a Pentax 85mm, or 77ltd,
consider this lens. For the price, it's simply wonderful.
85mm's a perfect FL for portraits, and it has some of the magic of the 77ltd -
nice bokeh, nice center sharpness past f/2.4.
 | | | | | | | Veteran Member Registered: April, 2008 Location: Berlin, Germany Posts: 1,386 | | Review Date: April 24, 2008 | Recommended | Price: $50.00
| Rating: 8 |
| Pros: | Looks nice :-) Rare focal length. Good resolution. Nice Bokeh | | Cons: | Quirky aperture handling. | |
Quality lens, low light people shooting is really good, used this for medium range stage shots:
No pp on this one, crop only, f2.4
Color rendition is really OK, little dull, which again is good for stage and low light stuff, to avoid 'red-out'. Still you get all the tones, nothing missing.
When stopped down to f5.6 and more, it gets quite snappy,
Longexposure, f/16 and ND8x filter
I've got the black non-MC version (Lytkarino), and it seems to be a good one. This is a sonnar design, which has one fat element in the middle. This makes for that very nice compromise of resolution vs. bokeh (tried some 135, 180 and 200 CZJ sonnars and they all have that).
I like this lens as well for the looks, it just makes your camera look like in very classic proportions, just like the 'what the duck'-camera :-)
Georg
| | | | | Otis Memorial Pentaxian Registered: March, 2007 Location: Vancouver (USA) Posts: 42,007
2 users found this helpful
| | Review Date: April 5, 2008 | Recommended | Price: $130.00
| Rating: 8 |
| Pros: | Optical performance, great bokeh, color rendition, sturdy build, soft wide open for portraits, price | | Cons: | Weight, preset diaphram, poor flare resistence, ponderous to use | |
I want to be clear, first off, that I truly like this lens, particularly for the price. Mine is the MC variant and was purchased new from a Russian reseller.
The general construction of the lens is pretty sturdy and the level of finish is surprisingly good. The satin black enamel is evenly applied and all surfaces are smooth and well-finished. The only exception being the dabs of black paint applied over the set screws for the focus and pre-set rings. Both the focus and aperture mechanisms worked smoothly with no binding or roughness. (Very stiff, but smooth none-the-less.)
While the lens is supposed to be multi-coated, the coating on the front element must be really subtle. You can see that the inner and rear elements are coated, but the front reflects clean, white light. While the coatings probably help reduce flare, my initial test shots in bright sunlight show that a hood is indicated. Speaking of the front element...it is one heck of a big piece of glass and has rather little protection from the lens body (shallow setting). Gazing past the front element into the lens itself, the 15 curved diaphragm blades are visible in all their glory. As with all J-9's, mine has light-colored metal blades. A few on my copy have a slight smear of what appears to be oil. (Edit: I have been advised that some oil on the diaphragm blades is normal and necessary on this lens. Edit: The oil on my lens' aperture blades eventually resulted the blades seizing during use with resulting buckling and blades coming loose from their pins.)
My initial and lasting impression is that the lens is on the heavy side. Not particularly bulky, but definitely dense. The combination of mass and the stiffness of the controls makes taking pictures a ponderous exercise. Both focusing and changing/actuating the aperture requires two opposing fingers on the rings. No quick flicking of the aperture pre-set ring on this baby! The focus movement from 0.8m to infinity requires about 300 degrees of viscous arc.
Typical of most screw-mount lenses, metering on the K10D is inaccurate at wider apertures. The J-9 allows for stop-down metering in both AV and manual modes with both modes showing a distinct tendency to underexpose at apertures wider than f/5.6. (At f/2 the bias is about 2.5 stops!) The photographer should use caution regardless of mode to avoid entry of light through the viewfinder window when metering! Apparently, once the lens is stopped down, the light entering the prism from the back may become much more significant. I was working on the tripod and taking my eye away from the camera for the exposure. Imagine my surprise when f/8 at 1/30th second exposure in AV mode became 1/250th second when I moved back from the camera.
Once I got the hang of working the aperture pre-set and focusing with the limited depth-of-field, I can report that I am pretty pleased with the results. The J-9's bokeh lives up to its reputation...smooth, smooth, smooth. This lens is definitely soft wide open and remains so at f/2.8. Acceptable sharpness begins at f/4 and becomes truly impressive at f/5.6 - f/16. That being said, I must note that decreased contrast due to flare can take the edge off that sharpness. (It really does require a hood for outdoors use when the light is bright.) Color rendition is really impressive. I usually don't gush, but I love the Jupiter's rendition of both subtle and garish tones.
Highly recommended. The great performance and low price more than balance out the weight and handling issues, though it is precisely those factors that force me to rate it an 8 rather than a 9.
Edit: Due to frequent confusion regarding the J-9 and mount compatibility, I feel it is necessary to issue an explicit caution. The Jupiter-9 was made in the following mounts:- M39 LTM (rangefinder)
- M39 Zenit (SLR)
- M42 (SLR)
- Kiev/Contax (rangefinder)
- Kiev-10/15 (SLR)
Before purchasing a J-9, confirm with the seller that it is M42 or M39 (Zenit) screw mount. If the seller is not able to provide this confirmation, DO NOT BUY. These are the only two mounts that can be adapted to work on a K-mount camera. The other versions may be adaptable for micro 4/3 or other systems, but that is beyond the scope of this site 
End edit
Example (probably f/4):
Edit (1 Oct 2011):
Prior to recent price increases for this lens, I would have rated value as 10. At current pricing...8
/Edit | | | | | Veteran Member Registered: November, 2006 Location: Cincinnati, OH Posts: 419 | | Review Date: April 3, 2008 | Recommended | Price: $80.00
| Rating: 9 |
| Pros: | Butter-smooth bokeh, amazing sharpness and CA control | | Cons: | Soviet workmanship | |
I can't believe no one else has reviewed this lens before me. The Jupiter 9 is a post-WWII copy of the Zeiss 85mm Sonnar originally developed in the 1930s. The Soviet army "acquired" the design during their time in Germany during the war.
Some people argue that the early production units actually used glass elements taken from the Zeiss factory (although this has been debated). In any case, earlier production units of the Jupiter 9 actually tend to be superior to those produced later.
Unfortunately, the Jupiter 9 is a complicated lens prone to mechanical failure over time. Most old Jupiter 9 lenses (such as mine) have been disassembled by amateur repairmen and put back together. One of the common mistakes amateurs make when repairing the lens is the use of too much oil and reversing the aperture dial. My lens actually has both these problems ... but it still works.
Most of the later production run of the Jupiter 9 have flare and reflection problems. Luckily, using a simple lens hood largely eliminates these issues. The newer "MC" (multi-coated) Jupiter 9 lenses supposedly have better control over flare and reflection. However, quality control with the newer lenses has been spotty at best.
The worse examples of the Jupiter 9 are quite soft fully open at f/2, which isn't bad for portraiture. When stopped down to f/4 or f/5,6 the lens really becomes sharp. If you're lucky enough to get a good sample this lens can actually be quite good even when wide open.
Below is a photo taken with my Jupiter 9 at f/4.
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