New Member Registered: February, 2019 Posts: 15
1 user found this helpful
| | Review Date: June 28, 2021 | Recommended | Price: $50.00
| Rating: 9 |
| Pros: | One of the finer 135mm lenses | | Cons: | Overly hyped up and over-priced by the "Russian Lens" fanclub | | Sharpness: 9
Aberrations: 9
Bokeh: 7
Handling: 10
Value: 9
Camera Used: Sony mirrorless and film cameras
| |
The "fat boy" hand grenade design of this makes it excellent to hold steady. The design is amazing. Preset. Multiple blade iris with metal blades. 40.5mm filter. Purple coating on front glass. Black painted versions are M42 as far as I can work out. Unpainted are mainly M39 but there are some M42 screw mounts.
Cute and shiny in the unpainted version (which some people get excited about for some reason) and romantically exotic for being made in the USSR (which some people get excited about for some reason). Too many folks forget that when you use a lens on a digital cameras, the internal software makes small adjustments to maximise the quality of image. Labs also scan using adjusting technologies to get you the best results. Too many other folks make adjustments in software suites like Photoshop, then they post images and claim it's only the lens that makes the image. Get rid of all that digital interference, and you have a nice lens here that takes very good images.
Wide open old secondhand 135mm lenses often suffer from purple or green chromatic aberration fringing in high contrast imaging; usually where bright sunlight is involved. This has none of that, but you can get it very slightly at the smaller end of the aperture scale. At infinity, this is sharp at F4 to F8. Close up and you can get some nice bokeh backgrounds and very sharp foregrounds.
Being a preset lens and being designed to be compact, it easily fits in your pocket and when it's on the camera you don't feel stupid like you are posing around with a cucumber stuck in your lens. The 40.5mm filter thread is a pain as not many hoods and filters are around for that diameter. It's worth using a hood as the front glass is close to the edge and easily based if you are clumsy or unlucky.
| |
New Member Registered: November, 2014 Posts: 3
2 users found this helpful
| | Review Date: April 30, 2015 | Recommended | Price: $16.00
| Rating: 8 |
| Pros: | adds a certain touch to the pictures; non-stop aperture | | Cons: | m42 ( needs adapter ); flare; | | Sharpness: 8
Aberrations: 8
Bokeh: 8
Handling: 8
Value: 10
Camera Used: Pentax K5 IIs
| |
I've forced myself to use my Jupiter 11 ( m42, f4.0, silver version ) last week at a Beachy Head sunset scenery; it was worth it. Definitely needs a little fixing in contrast in post-processing, otherwise the colours can seem very washed out.
There are not forced steps with the aperture ring; it's continuous and you can literally set whatever you want.
( Due to the 135mm and the m42 I use this one pretty rarely though. )
 | |
New Member Registered: July, 2012 Posts: 4
1 user found this helpful
| | Review Date: October 12, 2013 | Recommended | Price: None indicated
| Rating: 10 |
| Pros: | Sharp, nice colors | | Cons: | - | | Sharpness: 10
Aberrations: 9
Bokeh: 9
Handling: 10
Value: 9
| |
Very nice lens for it's age (1970) and a real beauty in silver version.
  | |
Pentaxian Registered: May, 2012 Location: --- Posts: 6,802 | | Review Date: May 23, 2012 | Recommended | Price: $40.00
| Rating: 9 |
| Pros: | Pretty sharp, good contrast, compact, excellent Bokeh | | Cons: | exposes mount contacts. | | Sharpness: 9
Aberrations: 9
Bokeh: 9
Handling: 7
Value: 10
| |
Very nice lens. A real looker (i've got the silver version)
It's short for a 135mm lens. The F4 is a bit slow, but on a K5 that doesn't really matter. The focussing ring feels a bit lose, but only along the axis. Focussing is hard work as the lens has a 360 degree throw from unlimited to 140cm. It has a double action aperture ring. The front one limits de aperture range F22 max, F4 min. The second one is step less and closes the aperture to the maximum selected F-number.
I'm not really happy that it doesn't cover my mount contacts, but at least it doesn't leave open the gaps in my adapter (like the Orestor and Orestegor do). I didn't really miss not having a lens hood. No flare or bad contrast. Contrast was fine really. Best use for it is close ups I think. I like the Bokeh there. I saw some purlpe abberations near extreme highlights but they were minor.
Here a pic.
 | |
Junior Member Registered: August, 2009 Location: Lexington, KY Posts: 30 | | Review Date: February 2, 2012 | Recommended | Price: $10.00
| Rating: 9 |
| Pros: | Small, good IQ, sharp wide open | | Cons: | Slow f/4 | | Sharpness: 9
Aberrations: 8
Bokeh: 9
Handling: 7
Value: 10
| |
First off, my pristine 1981 Jupiter 11 is in Kiev-10/Kiev-15 mount, which explains the low price. I built my own adapter for it, which wasn't fun, but works.
Wide open, this lens is exceptionally sharp on APS-C from corner to corner. Then again, many f/2.8 135mm lenses get really good by f/4. It has a lot of that old Zeiss look in the images. The main draw, however, is that it's pretty small.
The build quality is unfortunately USSR solid and functional, but not polished. For example, there is a built-in slide-out lens hood. It's a nice hood, but there is tons of play in its movement. No matter; it is still an optically very good lens.
| |
;)
;)
;)
