Jupiter-37А review

The legend of the last century is a popular lens Jupiter 37A 3,5/135. It is called a small telephoto or  big portrait camera.  It’s an absolute  truth.  They say, Jupiter 37-A takes the second place for the best Soviet portrait lens in the range of 85-135mm.

The Jupiter-37A has a removable shank that marked on the lens with the letter «A». Removable shank allows you to change the «back» of the lens where it attaches to the bayonet mount of the camera. The replaceable shank  is a genius invention  of Soviet producers. With the replaceable shank it’s quite easy to  fasten this lens on cameras for the thread M42 or bayonet «N».

Most likely,  that Jupiter 37A was a copy of Carl Zeiss Jena DDR MC Sonnar 3,5/135 (Sonnar/Sonara). Both lens are pretty good, but narrowly focused specialists say that Sanary still assembled better and gives a little sharper images.

Positive side and its  brief description:

1. Affordable. Of course, nowadays you can get it for cheaper price. This is due to its mass production. This allows the beginners to get a great picture for a low cost.
2. Ordinary enlightenment. However, this enlightenment allows you to avoid unnecessary image distortions. It removes the backlight and side light fear. Nevertheless, Jupiter-37A is afraid of clipping the highlights and gives a light veil on the generated image.
3. The lens came with a great case with an Olimpiad 80 emblem. In the case it comfortably fits the lens hood and the lens itself
4. Blend in the delivery. A metal blend metal is rather long.  However,  there is one drawback of the blend : it is metal, it adds weight and when you are screwing metal into metal, the lens hood gets jammed and then a lot of effort to unscrew it back. So don’t tighten it.
5. Replaceable shank. It Allows you to use a photo of the system with different segments
6. 12 aperture blades. It can act as a great portrait lens with smooth circles of the blurring background. Bokeh is good.
7. Not fixed stroke ring. Let me explain – the ring is not fixed diaphragm values by type 4.5, 5.6, 8, and has a continuous ring gear. This is very useful when shooting video, when you can smoothly to close and open the aperture
8. Long stroke max-min aperture F3.5-F22. Very agile lens. The Jupiter-37A has a function of pre-setting the aperture. To use this function, you need to strangle the aperture ring in one direction to the camera and set the desired aperture value. After which the aperture will close down only to the specified value. This is quite useful when working with manual optics to focus at full aperture, You may close to the desired value and remove it quickly .
9. Metal corpus.
10. Temperature conditions — 15 to + 45°C, it’s nice to read this guide before going on a winter photo walk.

Specifications :

• More than 400 grams, makes you feel all the «power» of the telephoto. But still heavy.
• Fairly convenient location and the very course of the ring diafragmirovanija.
• Near focus from 1.2 meters, about the macro you can forget. The focus ring rotates 270 degrees.
• The filter thread of 52 mm, which is quite popular diameter.
• The lens has 4 lenses in 3 groups

Jupiter 37A 3,5/135 is a good lens. The lens has  nice  blurring background and excellent sharpness starting from  maximum open aperture. Jupiter-37A is one of the best Soviet portrait lens It is  easy to install on a modern digital SLR camera with a system of  replaceable shanks.

Comments:

Vladimir: Hello, everybody. A week ago I became the proud owner of this lens. I mounted it  on the Nikon D 5100.

Yuri:  Since the  Soviet times  Jupiter 37A has been one of the best Soviet lens. I found it in a nice condition. I’ve  recently managed to buy a replacement shank and adapted lens for my Nikon D90. Impressions are amazing ,the picture looks just like volume, live , with good detail.

Igor: I’ve come back  from vacation . This is the first manual I have , and the first  SLR. But  taking pictures was a fun for me.

Anonym: After work with the Jupiter-37A I had  a comparison that it is like AK-47 in the field photo

Maks: Excellent lens.  I strongly recommend it to buy.  For instance, when I tried  Tair 11.  It was not impressive for me as this lens.