View Full Version : I Ordered This J-3 - Your Opinions Please
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=110194951033&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT&ih=001
Somehow it seems to me too pretty and too cheap for nowadays prices = suspicious.
Although the real test will be when mounted on camera, meanwhile, until I get it, we can play the game of would you buy this one, since first rule of the game is we all accept J-3s in general are to be owned.
And who the hell is the maker logo.?
Cheers,
Ruben
It looks like a nice lens Ruben ... I paid $145.00 for mine a year or so ago with a case and UV filter and thought I got a good deal ... it's near identical condition to the one you bought so $125.00 is real value!
it looks good. I got a J3 six monthes ago for $60+$30 shipping. Always make sure they been used bit in good condition, that way you can almspt be sure that the focus is spot on.
Mine is destinated to work constantly at f1,5 and between 0,9 and 3 meters. Hmmm.
and this lens have beautiful number 5605606
i love nice numbers :D
Hello Ruben,
Plant factory is Zagorsk (see picture 2). I also own a Zagorsk J-3 from 1956. A great lens, really.
Best,
Jean
Every one is happy, I become even more suspicious...
zhang xk
12-27-2007, 05:46
Hello Jean,
This logo is listed on Princelle's book as Optek, and Zagorski has another factory logo. Are they the same thing? This is the most often seen J-3s according to what I saw.
Regards,
Zhang
Hello Ruben,
Plant factory is Zagorsk (see picture 2). I also own a Zagorsk J-3 from 1956. A great lens, really.
Best,
Jean
zhang xk
12-27-2007, 05:54
Every one is happy, I become even more suspicious...
Hello Ruben,
Do you want to take flattering lady portrait pictures with this lens wide open? Then , you will not be disappointed.:) I didn't know this lens is so expensive now.
I don't want to put a downer on this thread, but to me it looks like the lens is not black inside ? It looks like shiny bare metal between the optics, no ? Wouldn't this cause flare ?
Ahh, finnally I start to breath....:)
Hi Zhang,
This J-3 is intended for Iso 1600 film, street night photography, f/1,5. Whenever I will find more light I will increase speed, not close aperture. Otherwise it will not make sense for me. This is the root of my suspictions.
Cheers,
Ruben
nikonhswebmaster
12-27-2007, 07:26
I thought these lenses were cheap, thus the fun.
Is $125 cheap, considering used Contax prices? This is what one would pay for a Nikkor 50 1.4 more or less.
Dave Wilkinson
12-27-2007, 08:00
I thought these lenses were cheap, thus the fun.
Is $125 cheap, considering used Contax prices? This is what one would pay for a Nikkor 50 1.4 more or less.
Exactly!,,,,,I've sometimes thought of getting one,-but don't think it would do anything my £16 J8 can't!
alternatve
12-27-2007, 08:08
The Jupiter 3 is a great lens, provided it works. I have had some trouble with vignetting at it's max aperture, but am very pleased with it. It's sweet spot seems to be at f/2.8. The Jupiter 8 is not to be scoffed at too.
Samuel
nikonhswebmaster
12-27-2007, 08:18
Don't get upset over a few dollars Fred. That's only the price of a meal for two in your neighbourhood.
The other night I spent more, you simply cannot drink more than one bottle of wine! It is amazing entrées are now routinely at $40 in some NYC restaurants. I actually find it out of control.
M. Valdemar
12-27-2007, 08:34
It's ZOMZ (Zagorsk):
http://tinyurl.com/2azjue
The price now seems absurd, I have several dozen and never spent over $60 at camera shows or online.
Virtually NONE of them have been accurate at close focus, and 90% have cleaning marks, even if minor.
You will need to shim them or otherwise adjust them. When you buy them from Russian sellers online often they have been taken crudely apart and haze cleaned internally to make them salable, then reassembled wrong. Some have been so badly adjusted you just get a blurred mess.
You might be lucky and get a good one. Most of them from the 1950's were originally well made with even coating, if they have not been tampered with. Since these were expensive optional lenses for pros in Russia, I suspect most of them were shimmed and adjusted to work on individual bodies by repairmen at the time.
.
"I would like this forum to be a place to celebrate FSU photography and equipment. For now the following is banned.
1) Use of the words dollar, dollars, or the symbol $. There is a forum in the main section where you can discuss money all you want. Finding out what stuff costs is easy, go on eBay, it is boring to endlessly discuss money. Stuff costs what it costs.
2) Any reference to Nikon equipment."
:D
ROTFL!!!:D
Regards,
Bill
There seems to be a general agreement that Princelle got it wrong with the "OPTEK" logo. There are several sources on the web that identify that logo as being the pre-1962 ZOMZ logo. I have a LTM J-3 with that logo, and it's superb.
M.Valdemar,
Are your remarks about the condition of J-3's directed at the Kiev mount version? I know it's tricky to get a good one in LTM, but I have always heard that the Kiev versions were much more reliable, probably because all of the focusing apparatus was in the camera, not the lens. I don't have first-hand experience with this, so I'm asking. I can't follow Ruben's link, because I'm at work :-), but I'm assuming it's a Kiev lens because it's for Ruben.
Dave Wilkinson
12-27-2007, 09:07
[quote=M. Valdemar]It's ZOMZ (Zagorsk):
http://tinyurl.com/2azjue
The price now seems absurd, I have several dozen and never spent over $60 at camera shows or online.
Virtually NONE of them have been accurate at close focus, and 90% have cleaning marks, even if minor.
SEVERAL DOZEN?......wow!!....that's impressive!....stick at it,-you'll get the perfect one yet!!
Today's cigar - for dedication! :D
nikonhswebmaster
12-27-2007, 09:16
"I would like this forum to be a place to celebrate FSU photography and equipment. For now the following is banned.
1) Use of the words dollar, dollars, or the symbol $. There is a forum in the main section where you can discuss money all you want. Finding out what stuff costs is easy, go on eBay, it is boring to endlessly discuss money. Stuff costs what it costs.
2) Any reference to Nikon equipment."
:D
http://www.resourcefundraising.com/images/icon_smiley.gif well you are right, I guess again I was surprised that anyone was mentioning what something cost. I have always just bought whatever I wanted without much thought of price, I just pay what I can afford, or which makes sense to me.
I guess I have always been somewhat dumbfounded by FSU equipment, not sure why anyone buys it, now that the FSU is much more open to the outside world.
I began to think it must be because it was fun to buy cameras so cheap, and experiment with what could be done with them, like shooting with a Holga.
Now I am lost again, why?
Edit:
Can someone calmly explain the allure of these cameras? I am not being obtuse when I say I just do not understand it, outside of a hobby for guys who love to tinker with equipment. Surely these are not the best tools? But then maybe they are, and I am missing what they add?
I do understand price vs performance, and thus understand buying a Bessa body, or a CV lens. I do see the fun that that anything so crude actually functions. I have owned English cars.
This is a serious question that goes to the core of the part of the RFF that is hobby-based.
M. Valdemar
12-27-2007, 09:32
Well, I haven't kept all the J-3's, I have a few really nice ones, and a few 1949-1952 ones which are superb.
I also don't understand the crazy spending on FSU equipment. It's really fine stuff, beautiful stuff, some of it, and there are some real rarities which appeal to the budding cadres of FSU collectors, but mostly I liked playing with them.
The best examples can give stunning results. Where I lived in Manhattan in the 1970's and 1980's, on East 14th Street in Manhattan, all these Russian guys set up "junk shops" where they gypped people on fake Icons (from churches), Russian "antiques", and so forth.
I bought CAMERAS and LENSES like a lunatic, for literally pennies. (Great WATCHES too, a whole other universe) I had more stuff and knew more about FSU stuff when it WAS the Soviet Union then most people can even imagine today. Nobody else was buying and the sellers didn't know what to make of it. They couldn't understand why anyone wanted that "garbage" when you could buy a nice Canon AE-1 in America. Poor slobs just off the boat from Russia would show up with sacks of cameras they thought they could sell for a fortune here, and they became bitterly disappointed when they found out it was considered worthless junk in New York.
When I read people "discovering" this stuff now like a bunch of naifs, it amuses me. I had 120 format cameras, Kievs, Hasselblad copies of every stripe, the East German Jena stuff, I had EVERYTHING. Mirror lenses. Suitcase enlargers. I fell in love with a Photosniper when I was 22 years old....I shot all over NYC with it. If I tried that now, some cop would probably shoot me down or I'd wake up in an orange jumpsuit in Gitmo...it looks like a rifle.
There was some stuff that was considered "rare", but the early days of eBay brought it all to the surface, fast.
I accumulated because it cost next to nothing and I was mesmerized by the "other worldness" of the stuff.....like some dropped down from an alien planet.
I even corresponded with the factories by mail and got answers and ordered things. Night vision too, 25 years ago.
I can tell you for certain that the FSU gear you see being flogged now on eBay is the bitter dregs. MOST of it has been tampered with or "restored" by butchers, and it's being sold for extortionate prices.
.
M. Valdemar
12-27-2007, 09:35
PS: I just always LIKED Russian stuff, Fred. That's the heart of it. Like recovering alien technology from a Roswell saucer. I don't know any other answer.
nikonhswebmaster
12-27-2007, 09:46
I can tell you for certain that the FSU gear you see being flogged now on eBay is the bitter dregs. MOST of it has been tampered with or "restored" by butchers, and it's being sold for extortionate prices.
.
Well that is pretty much what I have been thinking. I have owned two MTO mirror lenses (the glossy ones in wood cases :) ). And of course like everyone in the 60's I owned Jena 180s modified to fit on a Nikon F.
The idea of buying a dozen lenses to find one is kind of alien to my life choices about having too much stuff around.
Like I said I do understand buying odd technology, I put my hard earned high school cash into an MG. And I have been tempted to buy a French car or two, but decided against outright suicide, but I see our bearded friend, of many hair cuts, is a brave man indeed.
<>
I thought these lenses were cheap, thus the fun.
Is $125 cheap, considering used Contax prices? This is what one would pay for a Nikkor 50 1.4 more or less.
The Nikkor doesn't fit a Kiev accurately.
After several months of following the bay, I noticed that a fixed Sonnar rarely appears around $250, while there are plenty of from $350 up to $700.
J-3s in Contax mount are, or have became, expensive. For the cosmetical status of the one I bought, $125 today is a rather dirty cheap price. Hence my suspictions about its optics or mechanics.
Cheers,
Ruben
Dave Wilkinson
12-27-2007, 11:31
This threads been great today!.....and all 'cos Ruben wants to take 'soft' nocturnal pictures! ;) .......now wheres that vodka bottle! :D
....and pitxu....don't you ever sleep? :confused:
nikonhswebmaster
12-27-2007, 12:14
FRED. The reason some of us like FSUs is clearly explained in post 25.
Also, I find it a little difficult to "dialogue" with anybody when they repeatedly go back and edit their posts.
I remove stupid comments I make... but sometimes they are immortalized by other's quotes. I live with it. But I think leaving errors on the web, in the days of GOOGLE is a mistake if you are in any way considered an "expert."
People just read one sentence and take it as gospel.
I recently removed an entire thread based on my assumption that the Epson 750 was a superior film scanner. My information was based on information from a friend. I just decided the thread was not of real value since I had no personal knowledge.
Ho Brian, I am so happy to see you here, since you are my back up candidate for the newcomer.
:angel:
Cheers,
Ruben
My story with Kievs started with one I purchased at mid 80's, due to a great flock of inmigrants from the Soviet Union. There was a shop at center Jerusalem using to display a full Kiev system. I became extremely curious. The camera didn't lasted as I broke its front small window, trying to do I don't remember what.
Some 13 years later I wanted to have a silent system camera for home pictures and remembered that one.
Since then two things started to happen. First I became more and more intrigued about how to solve its shortcommings while reckognizing its potential, and the second I fell in love with its contours, feeling, and strong presence.
Gradually I purchased more and more of its lineage system, while on the other hand the Kiev Survival Site emerged. This had a great impact on me.
Now, some three months ago, I started to use the Kievs as my main gun for street photography. In my opinion the Kievs have their place in advanced amateur street photography today, no less than a manual Leica, although for going Kiev and enjoying its very low prices (against Leica) you must achieve a minimum of technical knowledge about disassembling the camera.
And this is exactly what the KSS has given us. Here the place to make crystal clear that although I am curious by nature, I am not the type of quick technical understanding. But I have had the patience and motivation to learn from the KSS.
Now, what do I have in the positive side with my Kiev gear for street shooting ?
a) Very very fast manual focusing, including at dark.
b) Very very accurate focusing
c) Extreme silent operation
d) Normal size and weight relatively to all other existing cameras.
e) Great great optics, for the standard, matching my Zuiko macro.
f) A home fixable and home adjustable camera. Control over my camera.
g) A camera that will live as long as film does.
h) A great looking camera, arousing "wows" around.
i) Unsurpassable price-convinience.
BUT I REPEAT AGAIN AND AGAIN, YOU MUST DARE TO LEARN DISASSEMBLING. Otherwise, buying a single camera with a single lens and expecting to get all of these, is a bit of an illusion.
Now, what I do not have and I must have ? So far, nothing.
What will be nice to have although not a must:
a) A winding crank
b) AE
c) Very advanced AF, as for less than very advanced there is no superiority over its manual focusing.
d) Automatic viewfinder changing with the focal length of the lens, releasing me from auxiliary finders.
Cheers,
Ruben
Earlier in this thread I said I paid $145.00 for my J-3 ... well I don't know where that data came from because I checked my records and discovered I paid $65.00 for it which does sound more sensible. Must be a short in my wiring somewhere and why my brain told me that $145.00 was good value mystifies me. (sorry Ruben)
I have noticed though that my ex girlfriends remain gorgeous in my memories even though they actually may not have been! More of the little red pills I think ... or maybe less! :eek:
> The Nikkor doesn't fit a Kiev accurately.
You could shim it to work accurately reducing the main shim to move it closer to the film place, or even try moving the rear module out ~0.4mm. That is the reverse of what I've done to use the Helios-103's, Menopta's, Industar 61L/D and J-8 on the Nikon RF's.
I picked up a very good condition, EX+ with Perfect Glass, Nikkor 5cm F1.4 in Nikon S-Mount for under $100. Picked up a "beater" with perfect glass for less.
Nice to know, but too late for me. You still remain in the back up list !:bang:
Cheers,
Ruben
............ I paid $65.00 for it which does sound more sensible. ............. (sorry Ruben)
No problem Keith,
I have been following closely the prices of Sonnars and J-3s, and I am sure about my price estimations.
This doen't necessaril contradicts your purchase, but if mine is of good optics it will be quite a normal to low price for its cosmetics.
Cheers,
Ruben
mravigna
12-27-2007, 16:54
Kiev cameras such as the Kiev II and Kiev 4a type 1 are quite nice to use and not too expensive and very similar to the original pre-war Contax II. The lenses are also quite good. Why use them? The challenge of using an older type camera (pre-war technology); the pleasure of printing nice photos from old cameras and 15$ lenses, the history behind the Kiev camera and it's origins?
As for Zorkis and Fed's; the Zorki 3 is a nice camera; looks good and works. Its a cheap alternative to a Leica. I still use my Fed 1g) bottom loader. Don't know why, but I think it just brings me back in time and I enjoy the challenge. I also use everything that digital cameras can offer. Why not? I have learned by using both medias.
zhang xk
12-27-2007, 17:58
Hello Ruben,
If you have used a J-9 wide open, the J-3 will produce similar results wide open. Perhaps a Summilux ASPH could produce sharp image wide open as it is designed for it. But I think you may just want soft night images.:-)
Kind Regards.
I think thats the first contax mount J-3 that I have seen. I paid $65 for mine about a year ago. Mine needs to be shimmed. Brian gave me some good tips on how to go about it so i'm in the process now. Hope yours fairs better and btw I don't think you paid a bad price for it. Lately I have noticed all fsu stuff on the rise.
I guess I have always been somewhat dumbfounded by FSU equipment, not sure why anyone buys it,
I like my FSU cameras. To be honest, I have no desire for Nikon rangefinder cameras. Not saying that to be rude. They just don't trip my trigger. I'm sure they are fabulous cameras, I just like walking around with one of my Feds or a Zorki with my Liningrad 6 light meter around my neck. I guess that makes me a Red Neck!:eek: :D
http://www.resourcefundraising.com/images/icon_smiley.gif .............Can someone calmly explain the allure of these cameras? I am not being obtuse when I say I just do not understand it, outside of a hobby for guys who love to tinker with equipment. Surely these are not the best tools? But then maybe they are, and I am missing what they add?
I do understand price vs performance, and thus understand buying a Bessa body, or a CV lens. I do see the fun that that anything so crude actually functions. I have owned English cars.
This is a serious question that goes to the core of the part of the RFF that is hobby-based.
The price/convenience formula is the key for survival in the food chain, for all those at the lower echelons, in which need is the mother of creativity.
The food chain is so extense that it seems to me that from the wagon in which you travel you cannot see those others really far. It is not your sin, but a simple issue of physics.
Had I been blessed with the capability to spend two or four grands in a single stroke without feeling it, I would do it and not loose time with Soviet gear.
But in lands where two hundred dollars hurt, people must adapt and make the most from scratch. This is a very interesting human phenomena, very much linked in principle to mankind's very survival, which I would resume in a single sentence being the leit motif of my counscious life: to grow a flower in the desert
Now if I was your advocate and my prosecutor, I would ask for stoping the attention of the jury to filosophy, and start to question the practical side of the convinience. Here I refer you to my post #36, but now I will add the core behind it.
When you are short of means, you must concentrate in the basics. In case you are not a pro, punnished for life to submit your photos to bored, unsensible, flat minded picture editors, but an advanced amateur with high self demands of quality, the Soviet gear plus your own ability is a panacea source for the basic functions of a camera.
Be it remembered here, that even the pros commanding the most sophysticated and expensive gear available, most of the times use the same basic functions including the small Sekonic L308, instead of their AE patterns.
This is a fact I am a witness of first degree. Light continues to be an enigmatic tricky issue for a camera to replace the human brains.
Nevertheless I concede that in terms of optics, pros have the upper hand, by far. Yet in overall balance, good Soviet optics are something to be taken into account by the folk unable to spend two grands on a lens.
In addition, there is a contradictory human phenomena showing both magnetic attraction to high tech and rebelion towards it at the same time. This is the source of the "wows" we get when our old cameras are seen. People seem to regard them as "the real cameras" of "real photography". The overcrowded gadgetery of digital devices is correctly understood by people as funny gadgetery to play with. This is another reason for which even folks with the means to afford more expensive cameras, buy and venerate their Soviet oldies.
Our Soviet cameras, without batteries, that have lived 40 years or more and will continue to live another 40 years or more, are correctly appreciated by the occasional bypasser, amuzed with an era in which things were designed for life instead of life-computer short terms.
Can any Soviet oldie compete with a modern expensive camera ? In most areas no. In a few areas yes. The problem starts with the camera industry itself, submitted to the market profits and own survival. With every new advance of photographic technology, something else was taken from the old ones, without technical justification, but by cost/profit interests. They too want their small space under the sky.
And whenever you want to enjoy the new advances with the old advantages included, then prices rise up to unbearable proportions for most of us.
Finally, there is nothing wrong if you can afford very expensive cameras and lenses and do it. If you can, do it, and face the next challenges confronting you. And in a more personal tone, Fred, I wholeheatedly tell you that the work you have done at 9/11 justifyies you to own the most expensive gear available. At the hour of trial you showed your face. (just don't tell me now you did it with a cheapy camera)
But if you are in the opposite situation, suicide is not a must.
And if you are somewhere in the middle, Soviet gear may provide you with a lot of fun, challenge your curiousity, and deliver technical highly good pictures too !.
Cheers,
Ruben
I guess I have always been somewhat dumbfounded by FSU equipment, not sure why anyone buys it, now that the FSU is much more open to the outside world.
I began to think it must be because it was fun to buy cameras so cheap, and experiment with what could be done with them, like shooting with a Holga.
Now I am lost again, why?
Edit:
Can someone calmly explain the allure of these cameras? I am not being obtuse when I say I just do not understand it, outside of a hobby for guys who love to tinker with equipment. Surely these are not the best tools? But then maybe they are, and I am missing what they add?
I do understand price vs performance, and thus understand buying a Bessa body, or a CV lens. I do see the fun that that anything so crude actually functions. I have owned English cars.
This is a serious question that goes to the core of the part of the RFF that is hobby-based.
its easy - i buy fsu because there is nothing that non fsu rf camera can that fsu rf cant. i also dont have money for more expensive cameras but i think that i would use some fsu cameras even if i have some leica or zeiss. i would never quit kiev II, zorki 6 or fed 2 because they are pefect to use.
giovatony
12-30-2007, 06:26
Well, I haven't kept all the J-3's, I have a few really nice ones, and a few 1949-1952 ones which are superb.
I also don't understand the crazy spending on FSU equipment. It's really fine stuff, beautiful stuff, some of it, and there are some real rarities which appeal to the budding cadres of FSU collectors, but mostly I liked playing with them.
The best examples can give stunning results. Where I lived in Manhattan in the 1970's and 1980's, on East 14th Street in Manhattan, all these Russian guys set up "junk shops" where they gypped people on fake Icons (from churches), Russian "antiques", and so forth.
I bought CAMERAS and LENSES like a lunatic, for literally pennies. (Great WATCHES too, a whole other universe) I had more stuff and knew more about FSU stuff when it WAS the Soviet Union then most people can even imagine today. Nobody else was buying and the sellers didn't know what to make of it. They couldn't understand why anyone wanted that "garbage" when you could buy a nice Canon AE-1 in America. Poor slobs just off the boat from Russia would show up with sacks of cameras they thought they could sell for a fortune here, and they became bitterly disappointed when they found out it was considered worthless junk in New York.
When I read people "discovering" this stuff now like a bunch of naifs, it amuses me. I had 120 format cameras, Kievs, Hasselblad copies of every stripe, the East German Jena stuff, I had EVERYTHING. Mirror lenses. Suitcase enlargers. I fell in love with a Photosniper when I was 22 years old....I shot all over NYC with it. If I tried that now, some cop would probably shoot me down or I'd wake up in an orange jumpsuit in Gitmo...it looks like a rifle.
There was some stuff that was considered "rare", but the early days of eBay brought it all to the surface, fast.
I accumulated because it cost next to nothing and I was mesmerized by the "other worldness" of the stuff.....like some dropped down from an alien planet.
I even corresponded with the factories by mail and got answers and ordered things. Night vision too, 25 years ago.
I can tell you for certain that the FSU gear you see being flogged now on eBay is the bitter dregs. MOST of it has been tampered with or "restored" by butchers, and it's being sold for extortionate prices.
.
So , how do you explain the 6 perfect working FSU`s I have ?
John
M. Valdemar
12-30-2007, 06:37
I never said all of them were bad, but as a general rule, the pickings on eBay are getting slim.
They were produced in the tens of millions, so obviously there are plenty of good ones as well as bad ones floating around.
If I were you I'd go to the race track and bet on a few long shots.
Well, upon making in the past kitchinette lens tests, I think that submitting the J-3 to a test along all other kiev standard lenses will tell quite quickly what I have got.
So let's wait and see.
Cheers,
Ruben
I never said all of them were bad, but as a general rule, the pickings on eBay are getting slim.
.........
I very much agree with you here. Then we are left with the issue of the sellers, are they to refund your money or not. As with any other nationality, FSU are varied in their attitude.
In general at eBay, I have met a single one I can regard as a straightforward crook (comfirmed by other buyers here at RFF) and she is not from the FSU, and resells "Black Beauty" Yashicas electro.
Most FSU sellers I have dealt with, are aware they cannot be a hundred percent sure about what they have bought and sold to you. Hence they may come to terms with you, to an extension depending on each one character, your own demmands and the mutual relationship established.
Cheers,
Ruben
I am not being obtuse when I say I just do not understand it, outside of a hobby for guys who love to tinker with equipment. Surely these are not the best tools? But then maybe they are, and I am missing what they add? [...] This is a serious question that goes to the core of the part of the RFF that is hobby-based.
Mostly these are not "good" cameras or "the best tools" in the sense that you would have bought them because this is the only camera that does the job you want it for. Some of them certainly are; the way Ruben speaks about his Kievs definitely convinces me that this is the best tool for the particular situation he's in. But either way they are cameras that were good enough for a couple of million people to live with them, to produce them, for some of them to live their lives around them, and for all of them to produce, sometimes outstanding, pictures with them. Personally I just have some kind of personal affection for many things Eastern European. I'm working in post-Soviet countries, I have family over there, I get along well with Russians, I speak Russian more or less fluently. Given that I'm interested in photography, against this background it's hardly surprising that I'm interested in Soviet photographic gear as well. And the fact that I have this kind of personal affection beyond mere collectorship has put me in the lucky position that a couple of people regard me as a good friend, instead of a business opportunity. So I guess I'm not completely wrong.
In addition I apparently have a strange taste in cameras. My only Leica is an M5, I've used a Canon EF-M with great enjoyment, and I'm just replacing my broken Canon AE-1 by a T90. Having a liking for Soviet cameras might fit in there as well.
Given that this is all hobby-based, with all due respect I am not being obtuse when I say that I don't understand how people can consider $8000 an adequate price for what seem to me random 1950s Japanese cameras. In spite of being a historian I also don't see the allure that could inspire people to form a hobby-based historical society around them. Darned if I can understand it, but given that this is their hobby, I don't mind if they do. A hobby means that people do what they like to do, so that's what we all end up doing.
Philipp
This Friday the lens arrived.
Mechanically it is great.
Optically I will shoot with it on bW and say, hopefully within a week. Yet very curiously they came with both glass sided extrely clean and shining, as new from the box. I understand it as a good sign about the seller (Kubanoid).
Cheers,
Ruben
Should I post ebay feedbak at this stage, or optical performance should be part of the package?
Brian Sweeney
01-26-2008, 07:36
And in the meantime, I also picked up a J-3 in Kiev mount. I have a test roll in, using it on a known-accurate Contax to M-Adapter. After that, it will live on the Contax IIIa. It looks good. Especially now... Popped the glass and cleaned all the surfaces.
This Friday the lens arrived.
Mechanically it is great.
Optically I will shoot with it on bW and say, hopefully within a week. Yet very curiously they came with both glass sided extrely clean and shining, as new from the box. I understand it as a good sign about the seller (Kubanoid).
Cheers,
Ruben
Should I post ebay feedbak at this stage, or optical performance should be part of the package?
Don't post feedback until you've seen the images. If there's a problem, and the seller isn't helpful, the threat of negative feedback may be the only lever you have.
Semushkin
02-01-2008, 18:54
To support the cause and keep the red flag flying comrade
Thank you Comrade!
Semushkin
Semushkin
02-01-2008, 18:59
... a good sign about the seller (Kubanoid).
....
Comrade Reuben,
Kubanoid is a good man and a good comrade. I have bought from him and would buy again.
Valery Pavlovich Semushkin
(pseudonym) :angel:
Comrade Reuben,
Kubanoid is a good man and a good comrade. I have bought from him and would buy again.
Valery Pavlovich Semushkin
(pseudonym) :angel:
Yes, I have heard this opinion too in the past. He will get my good feedback.
Cheers,
Ruben
..........The idea of buying a dozen lenses to find one is kind of alien to my life choices about having too much stuff around.
It happens that by chance I do own a dozen standard lenses. Some years ago I performed my first tripod mounted all lens test, in a film that in the same row was inserted in an Olympus OM4Ti camera to test the several Zuiko standards as well. Widest aperture, 1meter.
The results showed me the following results:
Plainly crappy lenses
1) Helios (then I had a single and bad one)
2) Zuiko f/1.4 (quality control issues in Japan?)
Superb lenses
1) A Jupiter 8 surpassing the Zuiko Macro f/3.5
2) Zuiko 50 f/1.8
3) A Jupiter 8M from year eighty something
Good to Very Good lenses
All other Jupiters 8M.
Afterwards, 2 subsequent Helios I purchased, one with a camera and the other by its own, showed similar great performance.
So at least in my case, from near a dozen SOVIET lenses, most were good to very good, one superb, and only one crappy. And in this last cathegory, crappy, the Soviets have no monopol at all.
In general, once properly refined when one has the knowledge, Soviet gear becomes first class. And sometimes even without any special treatment. Thus for example the optics of the 35mm finder are exceptionally good. The Soviet Turret Finder is an improvement of the original Zeiss one (I own both).
In the area of the Kiev rangefinders, my opinions are known to boredom. But a Fed 2 I bought from Oleg Khlayavin, after requesting him to silence it, resulted in a more quiet camera than a Leica M2, one of my friends in Israel gave me the opportunity to hear.
As for the basic question Fred forwards, the source of his no-understanding is not in the gear itself but in his advantaged viewpoint. If one enjoys the necessary income to buy the most expensive of all, and the necessary connections to replace any dubious piece - then the whole issue of dealing with Soviet gear, testing and repairing becomes a mis-understable burden.
Cheers,
Ruben
gcoad@btinternet.com
02-10-2008, 04:46
When I grew up in the 60s and 70s in the UK, there were a lot of FSU gear available, mostly imported by a company called Technical and Optical Equipment (TOE) and many people took advantage of its solid useable photo gear at prices WAY below the BIG COMPANIES.
(I understand that although us Brits would import almost anything from anyone, that the US weren't so keen to import kit from the Soviets......)
Anyway, a couple of months ago at a 'car boot sale' I played with a Russian camera which was totally jammed, yet it brought back fond emories.....Now I am collecting.an 'outfit'... I just like FSU stuff too, and my Canon DSLR kit is gathering dust while I wrestle with remembering how to load film in bottom loading cameras, wind on with knobs, and focus through a tiny viewfinder that scratches my specs.
I'm having fun making pictures with kit that was made while I was in my cradle, and the total cost of which wouldn't buy me a new lens for my DSLR!
I get all my russian lenses plus CLA from Yuri and never got a dog.
I get all my russian lenses plus CLA from Yuri and never got a dog.
In my opinion, optics is the real strong side of Yuri. But he had not J-3s available.
Cheers,
Ruben
chambrenoire
02-10-2008, 13:32
Who is Yuri? I need a black J-3!
Who is Yuri? I need a black J-3!
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