Heavy Arts

Well I’d fancied getting one for a while, but wasn’t prepared to shell out $150-$200AUD for a copy, which seems to be what they’re going for on eBay. Blame our awful exchange rate against the US dollar, as most Russian auctions seem to be done in USD.
Now! Some background. The Jupiter-9 is an 85mm f/2 lens, a copy of the pre-war Carl Zeiss Sonnar 85/2 – a fairly well regarded lens. The fun part of Russian Rangefinder lenses is that there are a lot of them, and they just happen to be exact copies of some well known German designs. In this case, after the Second World War, The Red Army essentially took all of Zeiss’s factory back to Russia, and started up making their own Contax cameras (Known as the Kiev). They also copied the lenses, and eventually these found their way into Leica Screw Mount (LTM/L39/M39, whatever you wanna call it) – thus offering a fairly good, fast, reasonably priced, somewhat-telephoto lens for your Rangefinder. Cant argue with that.

I managed to get this copy at a reasonable price from an APUG member (the APUG classifieds can be just as tempting as eBay sometimes). It came with front and back caps, plus the factory standard plastic lens case. Making it the first lens case I’ve actually owned personally, which is kinda neat. I’m pretty sure you could drive over it and it wouldn’t break, so that’s handy.
After I ordered it I went about decking it out with accessories. By virtue of ebaying things from china, it all arrived at once, and I now have this:
-Jupiter 9 85/2 Lens [Serial: 7702579, so manufactured in 1977]
-49mm snap cap
-49-52mm step up ring (I’ve got a set of 52mm filters)
-49mm UV filter
-Leica M to screw mount adapter, to get it on my R2A
-Leica M Back cap

I admit accessorising isn’t usually my first priority, but it never hurts, and I already had to buy the M Mount Adapter. So anyway, after unpacking all this and checking the infinity focus, I popped in a roll of Kodak Gold 100 (an oddly underrated film), and wandered about my neighborhood with it for a bit, taking all your stereotypical wide-open-shots-of-flowers. I’ll get it developed and uploaded soon, but all seems to be in order so far.