Jupiter 9 Review - 85mm f2.0

I received my Jupiter-9 lens in the mail about 1.5 weeks ago, and I finally had a chance to use it yesterday. The Jupiter-9 is a lens made in Russia, available in various mounts (mine is M42, easy to use on most DSLRs), its 85mm focal length, and wide aperture of f2.0 make it a fine lens for portrait photography.

It seems to be selling for around $120USD or so (plus shipping) on Ebay these days. I paid about $140AU total for mine, as I wanted a good condition example, and this particular example included the plastic hard case, both caps, and a lens in reportedly excellent condition. I was not disappointed when it arrived, the condition was like new. For anyone interested the seller was petersburg_deals. Shipment was quite quick considering it was from Russia.

Down to the lens itself. I find it to be very sharp, but I have only tested at f2.8 and f4.0 so far. Most reviews say the lens is a little soft at f2.0, but the kind of softness that works great in portrait photography. I find the colours to be great, let me know what you think. Here are the first lot of test shots.

Very first shot with the lens mounted on my K200D. A friends free promotional mug at work. This is at f2.0, but doesn't give a good indication of sharpness.

This is an f2.8 test shot, unfortunately the light was very uneven, but you can see the lens is sharp.

This is a 100% crop from the previous image, showing how sharp the image is. No post processing sharpening has been applied (click the image to view at original size).

Russian lenses

I believe I may have a problem... I thought I had enough lenses for a while, until I saw a Helios 44-2 M42 lens (58mm f2.0) for a tiny $15, I did a quick search of Flickr and liked the look of the images from it. I bought it and its a great lens, not just great value for $15, but just a generally great lens! This lens led me into researching Russian lenses in general. I then was able to get a Mir-1 (37mm f2.8) M42 from the PentaxForums trading section from an Australian member, it included the lens, original hard plastic case and instruction in russian. I just recently replaced my Hanimar 135mm lens with a Russian Tair-11A 135mm f2.8 M42, and hope to add add the very popular Jupiter 9 (85mm f2.0) M42 lens to my collection. If you don't know much about these well regarded (and quite cheap) Russian made lenses, I suggest you look into them.