Jupiter Jupiter 39 135mm 5.6

I picked up this lens with the Biotar 58mm f2. When I first saw it, I had no idea what it was. It had a huge front element, it wasn't the typical Soviet lens design, and I had never read about it. I was a bit stumped.

It looked more like an enlarger lens than an SLR one. I did recognize the M42 (or Russian M39) thread mount, and luckily I had my M42 to Sony E-mount adapter, confirming it was indeed made for the M42 mount.

The slow aperture had me scratching my head. It meant it was used somewhere that had little variance in light (a studio?), or it was a really cheap version. If it was cheap, though, wouldn't it be plentiful? And this was post-WWII, so the Jupiter-11 existed with an f4 maximum aperture.

Searching online yielded no results, apart from auction-site listings, which said it was used by the police and military, with one site pointing to a camera called a Selena.

Such a curious lens. Let's see what it can do.

The aperture ring is very flimsy on my copy. It's preset, without stops, and it won't stop wobbling, at times changing just a little bit on its own. Construction-wise, this lens leaves something lacking. It's like the machined parts do not fit too well together.

The aperture blades function well, but have oil on them. (Most pictures I've seen online have this as well.)

It feels like it might fall apart at times. Me no likey.

Chromatic aberrations run rampant, with purple and yellow fringing on high-contrast spots, even when stopped down to f8. Sharpness-wise, I can't complain. It's a good lens. (Perhaps because it's capped at f5.6, so it's hard to get that wrong?)

You do get vignetting and soft corners wide open. Throughout the range, colors are pleasing. A bit to the warm side. You might want to compensate, unless you're going for a summer-heat vibe. Contrast is good enough.

I'd say this is a good lens, if the chromatic aberrations weren't so dominant and distracting. At times, small details in a scene seem to be overtaking it, making you woozy just looking at the picture.

This is a rare lens, but rare doesn't always mean good, or worth it. It was interesting to try it out, but there are lenses which are a lot easier to find out there, and better by a long shot. (The "bokeh monster" Pentacon 135mm, or a Carl Zeiss Sonnar 135mm.)

This is a pass for me, apart from the sheer curiosity of a rare lens.