The Best Zorki-4 Lenses

In this article, we will tell and show you the best Zorki-4 lenses. These lenses are also suitable for other Soviet film cameras with M39 thread mount.

Here we will tell you only about the best Zorki-4 lenses, since a huge number of different lenses have been created for cameras with the M39 thread mount.

General Information

A huge number of lenses were created for Zorki and FED cameras as well as in general for the M39 thread mount. The vast majority of lenses created in the Soviet Union were developed on the basis of German lenses.

For cameras with M39 thread mount in the Soviet Union, there were several lines of lenses created on the basis of different schemes:

• Industar lenses , which were clones of the German Zeiss Tessar lenses. hese lenses are distinguished by their sharpness and smooth image. Among the shortcomings, it can be noted that in the Soviet Union there were no lenses made according to this scheme, whose aperture would be better than 2.8;
• Jupiter lenses that were copied from Zeiss Sonnar. These lenses are just distinguished by a higher aperture than Industar lenses, a more artistic picture and more interesting bokeh. According to the Jupiter scheme, many lenses with a wide variety of focal lengths were created.

In the USSR, there were many other lines of lenses for the M39 thread mount, but they are difficult to find and they cost very unreasonably a lot of money.

Since you don’t see the image through the lens in rangefinder cameras, when changing lenses you will have to use interchangeable viewfinders that match the focal length of a particular lens.

Best Zorki-4 Wide Angle Lenses

Jupiter-12 f2.8/35

The best wide-angle lens for Zorki-4 is Jupiter-12 f2.8/35. The sharpness of the lens, although not extremely good, is not really bad. When you close the aperture to 4 – 5.6, the sharpness increases noticeably.

This lens was copied from the Carl Zeiss Biogon 2.8/35 lens. Originally named as “BK-35” (Biogon Krasnogorsky).

This lens is perfect for both landscape photography and long-range portrait photography. The only thing to keep in mind when shooting portraits with this lens is that you won’t get too much background blur due to the focal length.

Best Zorki-4 Normal Lenses

Industar-61L/D f2.8/50

Industar-61L/D f2.8/50 is one of the sharpest lenses for Zorki rangefinder cameras. Although the lens does not have too large aperture, it is quite comfortable to shoot in different lighting conditions.

The color reproduction of the lens is quite realistic, but it varies greatly depending on the particular instance. Build quality can also vary quite a lot.

Jupiter-8 f2.0/50

Jupiter-8 f2.0/50 is one of the most popular fast lenses for Soviet film rangefinder cameras. Aperture 2.0 is enough for most tasks. Color rendition and background blur make this lens a truly good example of Soviet photographic equipment.

The price of Jupiter-8 is also one of the pros of this lens. Due to the fact that the lens was produced in a large number of copies, it costs like a roll of film, while having very good performance. All these advantages make Jupiter-8 one of the best Soviet lenses.

Jupiter-3 f1.5/50

Jupiter-3 f1.5/50 is a clone of the German Carl Zeiss Sonnar lens, and despite the fact that the lens was assembled in the USSR, it has truly outstanding characteristics. The lens has good sharpness and a very beautiful recognizable bokeh characteristic of this optical design.

This lens costs significantly more than Jupiter-8, but is still much cheaper than most German lenses with the same aperture. At a much lower price, this lens is almost as good as the German ones, making it a great purchase for a film photographer.

Best Zorki-4 Long-Focus Lens Lenses

Jupiter-11 f4.0/135

Jupiter-11 f4.0/135 is the most common and one of the best telephoto lenses for Soviet rangefinder cameras. This lens is also built according to the Zeiss Sonnar scheme, and of course, as in the case of previous lenses, it has very close characteristics to the original.

The Jupiter-11 lens is able to create a very beautiful picture, with excellent sharpness, smooth bokeh and very good separation of the object from the background.

Conclusion

In this article, we told you about the best Soviet lenses for the M39 thread mount of different focal lengths. Of course, hundreds of different lenses were produced in the Soviet Union, which are perhaps in some way superior to those that we wrote about in this article.

But the fact is that most of them are so rare that you simply cannot find them at a reasonable price. Or they may cost a little, but there will also be no point in buying them, since the quality of photographs taken with these lenses will be extremely low, and these lenses will not even be worth the pennies you pay for them.