Petapixel:
In this short presentation, photographer Mathieu Stern—who specializes in finding and reviewing “weird lenses” for his YouTube channel—introduces 4 soviet Jupiter lenses that anyone hunting for a bargain on glass should write down. Created between 1950 and 1980 in the USSR, they are: the Jupiter 9 85mm f/2, the Jupiter 11 135mm f/4, the Jupiter 11A 135mm f/4, and the Jupiter 21M 200mm f/4.
In the video each lens is shown off quickly and followed by a few sample photos Mathieu has captured using that lens. Oh, and all of them except the Jupiter 9 are going for well under $100 on eBay as of this writing, with the Jupiter 9 coming in around $150.
These are some very strange lenses but, if you are a victim of Lens Envy, they might scratch that itch. If nothing else, you’ll have some interesting photographic conversation pieces.
I actually have and used one of the Jupiter 9s and a couple other vintage lenses. Quality wise they’re A-Okay,…. some of them have a ridiculous amount of aperture blades and half of the charm is more to do with the history that goes with them… For instance how lenses from certain numbers to certain numbers are primarily given to high ranking officials in the Soviet army, or how the same models built on different years by the same batch of people could have remarkably different qualities because of the political climate (fall of the soviet union causes a lot of unrest and hence lower quality products), and how some of the foundries and factories were formerly owned by Zeiss or whatnot. Like you said.. it could be a very interesting conversation piece.