My recent escapades with my FED 2 and Industar 26m 50mm f/2.8 had me thinking about the quality of the lens. It's not the smoothest operating lens I have ever used. It's not the worst either, but it's lumpy and needs to be stripped down, cleaned and fresh grease applied to it's focusing mechanism. Not being one to mess about with stripping lenses down too often, I decided to see if I could find a better lens and went hunting for a Jupiter 8 50mm f/2, a lens with a good reputation amongst the Soviet rangefinder afficionados. I spotted a reasonable one on ebay attached to a Zorki 4 that looked reasonable too. I put a bid in and a few days later it was mine for the princely sum of £36.
When it arrived I was glad to see the camera and lens looked much better up close than on the photo's and it came with a decent black leather case. I gave the camera a good inspection and couldn't find any reason why I shouldn't throw a roll of film in it and give it a try. I wasn't too fussed if it didn't work as the lens was my main objective for this raid on evil bay. I loaded a roll of Kodak Gold and went hunting for some late afternoon sunshine.
Sunny afternoons in early November are rather brief affairs here in Wigan. The clocks have gone back an hour to GMT meaning dusk is around 5 pm, thankfully I managed an hour or two getting aquainted with my Zorki along the local farm roads. There are a few trees showing lots of colour and I hoped I would get there before the sun dipped below the trees on the south side of the valley.
The trees are changing by the day with more and more leaf litter building up around the tree trunks at the side of the trails and I managed to find one that was still quite leafy with yellow, orange and golden brown leaves almost ready to fall. I was so engrossed in using my Zorki that I forgot I had my DSLR with me. I had planned on using it more for it's light meter than anything else, but it stayed in my bag as I "Sunny 16'd" the Zorki with wilfull abandon. It didn't take long to shoot my roll of Kodak Gold and, with darkness was approaching fast, I had to head home.
I developed my roll of Kodak Gold in my Unicolor C41 kit. I know it is past its best, but this wasn't a critical test roll. I just wanted to see how the Zorki performed and it did rather well. There's a couple of niggles to iron out, but Soviet rangefinders have lots of quirks and niggles that can be overcome with a little TLC. I edited my images in Affinity Photo to sort out the colour shifting brought on by the old developer and to crop the wonkiness from the frames. Simple minor fixes really.
The item that didn't have a glitch is the Jupiter 8 lens which was the whole reason for buying my Zorki. It performed beautifully. The aperture and focus move nice and smoothly and the lens elements are clean and unblemished. It's maximum aperture of F/2 combined with 9 aperture blades should produce some nice bokeh balls when the christmas lights are switched on in town.
When I managed to nail the focus it revealed a flaw of my own I need to sort. I kept knocking the diopter adjustment and had to sort it before taking my next shot. A little blob of Blu Tac will sort that until I get used to the ergonomics of the Zorki. It functions like my FED 2, including the important step to wind the film on before setting the shutter speed, nothing that I can't get used to.
The Jupiter 8 50mm f/2 is a great lens and, whilst it will never be in the same league as the Leica and Voigtlander lenses made for M39 mount, it sits rather nicely in a league of its own. It has bags of character, beautiful colour rendition and really nice bokeh.
Here's a few shots from my roll of Kodak Gold shot with my Zorki and Jupiter 8. It was fun taking them and I have placed them and more in an album on my Flickr account which you can visit using the link below. I hope you enjoy them.
Kodak Gold - Zorki 4 - Jupiter 8 50mm f/2
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