By Ivan Zotikov
In 1947, right after the German Carl Zeiss Jena plant was moved to Kyiv’s Arsenal factory, a range of Contax rangefinders emerged under a different name, Kiev.
The need then arose for interchangeable lenses for these new Soviet-made cameras.
Until 1950, the first batches of Kiev camera used stocks of German-made glass. The main lens was the “Sonnar“, renamed in the USSR as the ZK. Initially it had the name “ZK-85” and existed in versions for rangefinder cameras of the Kiev and Zorki types (“Sonnar Krasnogorsky” was used after the name of the plant near Moscow, where the final assembly of the lens took place).
At the same time, in the second half of 1947, in the State Optical Institute in Leningrad (now St Petersburg) work began on developing domestic versions of the German glasses for a new line of lenses for their Kiev cameras.
In this article I want to share information about a portrait lens for rangefinder and SLR cameras, with a focal length of 85mm and an aperture as wide as f/2. In its final form you will know it as the Jupiter-9, but I recently found these materials about its development in the archive (according to the GOI archive documents of the Arsenal Plant Museum).
These materials are in fact published online for the first time. I found a drawing of the Jupiter-9 lens, and photos of it you can see below.
The documents are dated 2 August 1948. A separate footnote on this document states that the original calculation – the first version of this lens – had different optical characteristics in the fifth lens notably a different type of glass. It was marked as the Jupiter-4.
I continued my search and found a drawing of Jupiter-4, a document dated 22 October 1947, the document bears the signature of D S Volosov. This document is presented below.
I think that this model was also produced in experimental reference samples of GOI institute products, but today it is believed only one sample was produced.
In recent years, unique specimens made at the institute have been put up for sale at various auctions, and they include lenses that were almost unknown to the general public. For example, the first versions of the Jupiter-3 50mm f/1.5, the Orion 28mm, the rarest Fotosnaiper set FS-3 600mm, and many more.
The GOI developed a complete technological process, a complete map of technical conditions and reference products for their new designs, which would allow these lenses to be made in different factories across the USSR.
The Jupiter-9 lens was approved for mass production and put into production in the early 1950s at several optical factories of the USSR, namely in Kyiv (Arsenal Plant, a bayonet version for Kiev rangefinder cameras) and in the city of Nizhyn in Ukraine. The lenses made at the “Progress” plant in Nizhyn included versions for both rangefinder and SLR cameras, including a version with an adapter ring (“Jupiter-9A”).
In total, I counted 10 versions produced at different factories, including kits for specialised equipment used for scientific purposes in a set of television and film cameras. Production at some factories continued after the collapse of the USSR until the mid-2000s.
This lens has established itself as an excellent long-focus portrait lens, which is popular among photographers, as evidenced by the demand for these lenses for various systems to this day.
I'm a New Zealander who has been living in London since the mid-1990s, shooting film seriously since the year 2000. Kosmo Foto was launched in 2012 and has since become a film brand, with the release of my first films Kosmo Foto Mono 35mm (2017) and Kosmo Foto Mono 120 (2019).
I’m doing everything I can to promote film photography in the 21st Century, and help it survive and thrive. If you want to write something for Kosmo Foto, please drop me a line at foto.dowling@gmail.com.
